Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“Was involved in organized crime?”
“Yes. But Nonna told a lot of stories and loved to gossip, so I never knew when to believe her.”
“No, we are. Or were. We’re retired now, but as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s not the kind of thing you can ever fully walk away from.”
I nodded. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“Of course. You’re family, so you deserve to know the truth.” He leaned back and crossed his ankle over his knee. His Italian loafers looked as expensive as his perfectly tailored suit. Now I understood why this branch of the family had always been so well-off.
“I want to be honest with you, too.”
“Let me guess.” He held my gaze steadily and grinned. “You’re about to tell me you spent the better part of the last decade forging works of art at your uncle’s behest. Am I right?”
It felt like all the air had left the room. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I have connections all over the world, and I make a point of staying informed about what my family members are up to. You never know what might blow back on the rest of us.”
“Does the whole family know this about me?”
He shook his head. “There was no reason to share this information with everyone.”
“Okay.”
“Even though I dug pretty deep, I don’t actually know much about your uncle. There’s no record of him prior to marrying your dad’s sister, so he must have changed his name and taken on a new identity. But I’ve gathered he was a two-bit grifter until you came along, and you were his ticket to a much more lavish lifestyle.”
I muttered, “That sums it up.”
“So, what was the racket, exactly? Start at the beginning.”
“Uncle Flavio recognized my talent early on and saw an opportunity. I didn’t realize what he was doing at first. He expressed an interest in me and hired the best art teachers he could find. I was naïve, and I didn’t get where this was going.”
“Well, yeah. You were just a kid.”
“Yes, in the beginning. But later on… I won’t try to excuse what I did by saying he manipulated me. I participated willingly, for a lot of reasons—the money, the challenge, the fact that the people we stole from were all filthy rich bastards who made their fortunes by exploiting others. I didn’t feel guilty about sticking it to them.”
“You don’t need to justify it, Sal. I come from a long line of lawbreakers, so I don’t really care that what you were doing was illegal. I’m just curious about how it all worked.”
“Usually, it would start with a request. One client might want a specific Monet, which its owner refused to sell. Another might want a certain Mondrian, or maybe a Picasso. Whatever it was, I could duplicate the original so precisely that no one, including a well-trained expert, could tell them apart. My uncle worked with a pair of thieves, and it was their job to swap out the originals with my copies. We only targeted private collections, never museums. We would sell the original to the client for a tidy sum, and the previous owner would be none the wiser, so we didn’t have to worry about anyone calling the police.”
Dante asked, “How did the buyer know he was getting the real deal, and not your perfect forgery?”
“Our thieves would document the switch with photos and videos.”
“This is all very interesting.”
“It worked perfectly for several years—until one of the thieves got caught in the act of switching out a painting with its copy. Unfortunately, the man whose artwork was being stolen turned out to be an incredibly powerful billionaire named Philip Ashcroft. He’s not the type to take being ripped off lightly. It wasn’t enough to take out his anger on the thief, either. He wants all of us to pay for daring to cross him.”
“So, you’re in L.A. because you’re hiding out.”
“Precisely.”
“Where’s your uncle?”
I muttered, “I don’t know or care.”
“Did you two have some sort of falling out?”
“It was more than that. As soon as he found out one of the thieves had been caught and had spilled the beans about our operation, he fled without bothering to tell me what had happened. All he cared about was saving himself. That was when I realized how little I mattered to him. I’d been nothing more than a means to an end, a way for him to get rich.”
“What a prick.”
“That might not even be the worst of it,” I said. “When the thief’s partner finally called to tell me what had happened, I asked about my uncle. He told me it was best to forget about him, after what he’d done.”
My voice was shaking with anger. I had to take a moment to calm down before saying, “When I asked him what he meant, he said he’d heard my parents’ car crash was no accident. According to his source, my uncle had arranged to have their brakes rigged, with the plan of stepping in as my guardian once they were out of the picture. He did it because he wanted to exploit my talent for his own personal gain, but he knew my parents would stand in his way.”