The Mistress

by Danielle Steel

  “It must be terrible,” Natasha said softly, looking upset and sympathetic. And then she glanced at Athena. “Do you think they’ll find them?” She hoped they would, she just didn’t want Vladimir to go to prison for it. She felt torn in both directions.

  “I don’t know,” Athena said quietly. “Art thefts are strange. Sometimes people keep them and hide them, just to know they own them. Or they get frightened and destroy them, or they disappear to other countries. It depends on why they were stolen. By a frustrated art lover who couldn’t buy them, or as some kind of revenge. Or to sell them. We don’t know why they were stolen, which makes them harder to find.” It had been a month since they were taken, and there were no clues. Natasha nodded thoughtfully as she listened. “Do you have any ideas about it?” she asked her innocently, and Natasha shook her head with an unhappy look, as though she didn’t want to discuss it.

  “No, I don’t.” She wished that Athena would stop looking at her as though she knew something. She had eyes that seared right into Natasha’s brain and tore at her conscience. She kept thinking of what she’d seen and wished she hadn’t, and she knew what he’d done was wrong. But she didn’t want to betray him. He had always been good to her. But he had stolen a hundred million dollars’ worth of art, and perhaps if they found out, they would blame her too, and think she had known about it. Why were they talking to her now? Maybe they suspected her. “We were almost boarded by pirates off Croatia,” she said to change the subject, and Athena looked shocked.

  “How awful. That must have been terrifying.”

  “It was. But we got away, and no one was hurt.” But she still looked troubled as she said it. She was thinking of the gun room again. And Athena could tell something was upsetting her, more than just the pirates.

  “That could have been very dangerous if you were boarded,” Athena said sympathetically. She was startled by how young Natasha seemed. She had the feeling that Natasha didn’t speak to strangers often, and led a totally sequestered life.

  “I know,” Natasha almost whispered, remembering the pirates, and the paintings. And then feeling swept away by a wave of compassion for Theo, Natasha knew she had to tell her. It was too wrong, and she didn’t want to be part of it. She wanted Theo to get his father’s paintings back. And Vladimir hadn’t stolen one, he’d stolen twelve. “The crew got out the guns. We keep them in a locked room for emergencies.” She looked straight at Athena as she said it. She stood up then, as though she had to go somewhere, and Athena understood that the visit was over. They had come up dry again. She was discouraged by her gut feeling that whatever this girl knew—and she thought there was something—she obviously wasn’t going to tell her. Natasha walked her downstairs herself from the upper deck, and halfway between two levels, she turned to Athena and spoke in a whisper.

  “I think they’re in the gun room. I saw them.” And then she continued down the stairs, expressionless, as though she had said nothing. Athena was shocked for an instant, but didn’t react, and looked casual and relaxed as they continued down to the loading dock, and thanked her for letting her come onboard. She knew that Natasha had just endangered herself by giving her the information, and didn’t want to increase the risk she had just taken. It was incredibly brave of her. They shook hands formally, and Athena looked disinterested as she and Steve got in the police boat. He had stayed downstairs to talk to the crew and shoot the breeze. Athena had wanted to be alone with her, in case she was shy, and they connected better without a man present. She was still struck by Natasha’s seeming innocence, and bowled over by what she’d told her, but it didn’t show.

  They were halfway to shore when Steve asked her the question he already knew the answer to. He could see it from the expression on Athena’s face. “Blanks again, right?” She waited until they were out of the speedboat before she answered in a low voice.

  “They’re on the boat. Now all we need to do is get a warrant. I’m not going to tell them who told me. I’m just going to tell them I know. I don’t want to put her at risk. He could hurt her, or worse.” She was deeply concerned for Natasha and sensitive to the position she was in. If Vladimir knew Natasha had betrayed him, there was no telling what he would do to her. Athena felt honor bound to protect her, and somehow Natasha had felt that, which had allowed her to speak.

  Steve looked shocked. “Wait a minute! She told you they’re on the boat?” Athena nodded. “You have to tell them how you know. They’re not going to give you a warrant for a guy like him on a hunch. He’s never been in trouble before. You’ll have to reveal your source,” Steve said with a determined look, stunned that Athena had a lead and had gotten it from Natasha.

  “He’s just never been caught. We’d probably be horrified if we knew what he’s done in his own country. If I reveal my source, he’ll kill her. I’m not taking that chance. I don’t care how much the damn paintings are worth. I’m not trading her life for them, at any price. And God knows what he’s capable of. He’ll chain her to a wall for the rest of her life, or throw her overboard. He won’t take it lightly if he finds out.” She was dead serious as she said it, and Steve knew she could be right about Natasha, and what Stanislas might do to her.

  “He’ll be in prison,” Steve said calmly, if what his partner had said was true, and they found them on the boat. “That would protect her.”

  “Maybe not. Or maybe he’ll have someone else kill her. It’s my way or no way, and that goes for you too. She’s my source! If you put her life on the line, I’ll kill you.” And Athena looked as though she meant it.

  “Okay, okay. Relax. But you’re not going to get a warrant out of anyone with hocus-pocus like that. And he’ll get away with it if you don’t get a warrant.”

  “Watch me,” she said with a determined look in her eye.

  She went straight to her chief inspector later that afternoon, and he told her there was no way he was going to get a warrant on flimsy information from an informant she wouldn’t identify. He didn’t believe her, and was afraid she was just guessing, since she had refused to reveal her source. “You’re going to have to get me more than that,” he said.

  “I can’t. This is the best I’ve got. But it’s solid, I can swear that to you. Are you going to let him get away with it, because everyone is too chicken to give me a warrant?”

  “That’s how it is,” he said stubbornly. “Get me more. No judge is going to give us a warrant with what you’ve got.”

  She argued with him for three days and got nowhere. And by then, Vladimir was back from London, and the chief purser had told him about Athena’s visit, and Vladimir asked Natasha about it at dinner the night he got back. He had told Natasha he’d seen their new Monet in London and it was spectacular.

  “What did she want to know?” he questioned her about Athena. He watched Natasha carefully as he asked her.

  “She wanted to know about the portrait and the painting you bought and if we know the Lucas, and I said we didn’t, we just saw them at the restaurant. I told her about the pirates off Croatia, and she said it could have been very dangerous for us. And she said they don’t have any clues about the art theft yet. She said sometimes paintings like that just disappear.” He nodded, and seemed satisfied with her answer. Natasha looked as innocent as ever, and far more concerned about the pirates than the art.

  “Did she ask anything else?”

  “Not really. She seems smart. Maybe she’ll find the paintings and who took them.”

  “She is smart,” he confirmed. He didn’t like that she had visited Natasha while he was away. “You don’t have to see her if she shows up again.”

  Natasha nodded obediently. “She asked to see you. She only asked to see me because you weren’t here. And I thought I had to, because she’s the police.” She sounded childlike as she said it.

  “You don’t,” he informed her. “We don’t know anything about it. She’s been here twice. That’s enough. We have nothing to tell her. She’s just fishing, and she wants to s
ay she’s been to the boat. You know how people are.” Natasha nodded again, and played with her food. She wasn’t hungry. It had been three days since Athena’s visit, and nothing had happened. She wondered what they were going to do. She had been a nervous wreck since then. She said she had a headache that night and went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. Vladimir was in his office, working, and she heard one of the tenders leave after midnight, which was unusual. She wondered who was going ashore, probably some of the crew, although it was late for them too, or maybe they were picking some of them up from shore. But she never heard the tender come back, and she was asleep when Vladimir came to bed. He didn’t wake her to make love to her. He just kissed her, and she smiled in her sleep.

  Chapter 12

  Theo was asleep when the police called him at seven A.M. He was used to being woken up now. There was always something, some problem, some crisis, some question. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a month, and hadn’t set foot in his studio for as long. He ran a restaurant now, he didn’t paint.

  The call was from the chief inspector, who asked him to come to the restaurant immediately and wouldn’t say more. Theo was panicked that there had been another robbery, and they’d lost more paintings. He drove to Da Lorenzo as fast as the deux chevaux would go.

  The chief inspector was waiting for him outside the restaurant and got right to the point. He told Theo that both security guards had been shot with tranquilizer guns and tasered the night before, and had been unconscious for several hours but were unharmed. They had called the police when they woke up and were being tended to by paramedics in an ambulance parked outside. Theo braced himself for what he was going to hear next, that the rest of the paintings were gone. He followed the inspector inside, and stared at the walls in disbelief. The stolen paintings were back, in their right places, bolted to the wall. Everything was immaculate. None of them were damaged when he examined them. It was as though they had never left.

  “Do they look like forgeries or the real deal?” the inspector asked him, and Theo looked at them closely. He hadn’t even thought of that. They could have been stolen to be replaced by forgeries, but they weren’t. He was sure of it.

  “They’re my father’s,” he said quietly. “What does this mean?”

  “Technically, it makes the whole art theft a prank. As far as the police are concerned, it’s over. What really happened and why, we’ll never know. No one’s talking. One of our inspectors got a tip that Stanislas had them onboard, but we couldn’t get a warrant based on that, and we can’t prove it. I think it was a bogus tip. Whoever took them may have figured the whole thing was too hot and got scared, so they put them back. I think you got lucky, Mr. Luca,” he said seriously.

  “So do I,” Theo said, smiling broadly, shook the inspector’s hand, and thanked him for their hard work. An army of people had been working on it. And now the paintings had been returned. It seemed like a miracle to him, and he knew it would to his mother.

  He called her and told her the good news, and an hour later Athena got a call too.

  “You don’t need a warrant,” the inspector told her.

  “The hell I don’t. They’re on the boat.”

  “Not anymore, if they ever were. All twelve of them are in their right places at the restaurant. Someone tasered and drugged the two guards, and put everything back sometime last night. Same MO—they disabled the alarm and the cameras. But all’s well that ends well. We’re done. Good work.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it or was making fun of her, and she was shocked. What the hell did it mean? She wondered if Stanislas suspected Natasha had talked, or decided that prison wasn’t worth it, if he got caught. She hoped that Natasha hadn’t said anything, and confessed, and put herself at risk. But Athena had no way of contacting her safely, and knew better than to try.

  It was all over the news by that afternoon, and Natasha saw it too on TV on the boat. It was totally strange. She wondered if that was the tender she heard leaving the night before. Or if someone had warned him. But at least the Lucas had their paintings back. She was happy for them, and wondered why Vladimir had returned them. She had no idea what had changed his mind. Or had he intended to return them all along?

  Vladimir made love to her that afternoon, and then told her they were going out to dinner at eight o’clock. He didn’t tell her where and said it was a surprise. She put on a new dress that he had bought her at Dior in January—and she hadn’t worn it yet since it had arrived only a few weeks before. She looked exquisite as she stepped into the tender, and he smiled at her and told her she had never looked more beautiful and he loved the dress.

  He got out of the tender first and stood watching her as they handed her out of the boat, and she put on her shoes on the quai. The Rolls was waiting for them, and as they walked toward it, he stopped and looked down at her with an expression she’d never seen before. His eyes were like ice, but his face was a mask of regret.

  “It’s over, Natasha. I know what you saw. I don’t know if you told that woman, but I can’t take the chance. I’m not going to prison for you, or anyone. He should have sold me the painting—it would have been simpler for everyone. But I can’t trust you anymore. I have the feeling that you said something, but it’s just a guess. I’ll never know for sure. You have a month in the apartment in Paris. I’ll send your clothes from the boat there.” She was staring at him in disbelief as he said it. It was over, just like that, after eight years, without a look back. “You can have all your clothes and jewelry. You’ll get a good price for them if you sell them. And you can have whatever is in your bank account. Be out of the apartment by the end of July. I’m going to sell it. You’re a beautiful girl, Natasha. You’ll be fine.” And then he added softly, “I’m going to miss you. The plane is waiting for you at the airport.” And with that he walked back to the tender with his head down, as she stood watching him go. She wanted to run after him, to stop him, and tell him she loved him, but she didn’t know if she did anymore. She couldn’t respect him after what he’d done.

  He had saved her before, and now he had thrown her away, to survive on her own. Without even knowing for certain if she’d betrayed him, he was severing all ties with her to protect himself. He was taking no risks. She wasn’t worth it to him. She watched the tender pull away from the dock and go back to the boat with him on it. He never looked back at her. And she didn’t make a sound. She got into the Rolls with tears running down her cheeks and sat staring out the window as they drove to the airport. She was alone in the world, with no one to protect her or take care of her, for the first time in years, and as terrifying as it was, she knew he was right. She would be fine.

  And as Vladimir stood on the deck, thinking about her, he had no regrets. He couldn’t risk everything he’d built for a woman, or for anyone. He still wondered if she had some kind of tie to Theo Luca, or if she had betrayed him to the police. He’d never know now. It didn’t matter. The problem was solved. He had taught Luca a lesson. And he would miss Natasha. But not for long. And by the time he went to his cabin after dinner, her belongings had been packed, and all signs of her were gone.

  Chapter 13

  Natasha wondered, as Vladimir’s plane flew her to Paris, if the crew onboard knew that they were serving her for the last time. Had someone told them? Had they been warned? Did they know why she was going? She had on a dress to wear out to dinner when he told her, and she looked like she was going to a party as they landed at Le Bourget airport in Paris. She thanked them, although she hadn’t said a word on the flight, and had sat staring out the window, wondering what would happen now, how she would manage, where she would go. She didn’t know what she had in her bank account or how long it would last. She had to look into all of it, and she would have to get a job. She hadn’t had one since the last factory she worked in, and she knew she wouldn’t go back to Russia. Maybe she could find something at a gallery in Paris. And her heart snagged for a minute when she walked into the apartment on Avenue Monta
igne. She had loved putting it together for them nine months before. She had chosen each item and fabric so carefully to make it feel like a home to both of them, and it had. But no more. All she could allow herself to think of now was what she was taking and what she was leaving. Vladimir had been very clear. Only her clothes and her jewelry belonged to her, and none of the art. Except Theo Luca’s portrait of her, which Theo had given her as a gift. Vladimir had never given her art, since he considered it an investment. And she wouldn’t have dreamed of taking anything he didn’t want her to. She knew she was fortunate that he had left her what he had.

  She never went to bed that night. She kept walking around trying to absorb what had happened. He had said he could no longer trust her after betraying him, if she had, since he said he wasn’t sure. But she could never have trusted him again either, once she discovered he was a thief and had stolen a hundred million dollars’ worth of art. She wondered what he had been planning to do with it before he changed his mind and returned it. She would never know now. All she did know for certain was that he had had it stolen and concealed it on the boat. It was shocking and a revelation of who he was, in a way she had never understood before.

  She kept opening cupboards and closets in the apartment all night and realized that his suggestion to sell what she had had been right. There was no point keeping all the fabulous couture, furs, and evening gowns, the alligator Birkin bags with the diamond clasps. She had nowhere to wear them, and couldn’t imagine herself in that kind of life again. It was the only one she had known for eight years, but she wanted a simple life now, a life where she depended on no one but herself. And she could use the money to live on, after whatever she had in her bank account ran out. She had to call the bank and look into that in the morning.