CHAPTER 1: THE GAVEL FALLS

The air inside Christie’s auction hall carried the scent of expensive perfume, old money, and barely disguised desperation. A smell unique to Manhattan when fortunes are at stake.

I’m Marcus Thorne. At thirty-two, I was the youngest Chief Authenticator in the firm’s history. The golden boy. The man with the “Eye.” My signature could turn canvas into gold.

That Tuesday, November 14th, was the pinnacle of my career. We were auctioning “The Eclipse,” a rediscovered abstract expressionist masterpiece attributed to Julian Vane. Vane had died in a motorcycle crash in 1965, making his work exceedingly rare. This piece, according to the papers, had been unearthed in a dusty attic in upstate New York.

I had devoted six months to verifying it. I flew to Zurich to check archives. I hired forensic geologists to test the frame dust. I was confident.

The bidding opened at $4 million.

“Do I hear five? Five million on the phones!” the auctioneer, a Brit named Giles with a voice like melted butter, boomed.

I lingered in the wings, sipping lukewarm sparkling water. My hand was steady, but my heart raced like a sprinter. The commission on this sale would buy me a SoHo apartment. No more renting. No more roommates.

“$8 million! From the gentleman in the back!”

The room crackled with electricity. A paddle rose from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund representative.

“$10 million!”

That was Elias Thorne (no relation), a Silicon Valley tech billionaire. Front row, t-shirt under a blazer worth more than my car. He wanted it. Needed it.

“$11.5 million… going once.”

Giles scanned the room, gavel poised like a weapon.

“12 million!” Elias shouted, bypassing the paddle.

Gasps swept the hall. A Vane record.

“12 million to Mr. Thorne. Going once…”

I closed my eyes. I had done it.

“Going twice…”

“THIS IS A FORGERY!”

The voice didn’t belong. Not a refined collector or a whispering agent. Young, raw, and terrifyingly loud.

My eyes snapped open.

At the back, near the velvet curtains, chaos erupted. Someone was forcing her way through tuxedos and gowns.

A girl.

High school casual: faded gray hoodie, baggy jeans, messy bun. Dirt smudged her clean canvas of presence.

“Stop the sale!” she screamed, voice cracking. She pointed—a finger with chipped black polish—right at the stage. Right at me.

“Security!” Giles barked, flustered for the first time in twenty years.

Two massive guards moved to intercept her.

“Don’t let them buy it!” she yelled, dodging with the agility of a cat. Small, maybe 5’3″, desperate as a cornered animal. “It’s a fake! Not a Julian Vane!”

The room went deathly silent. The kind where even the hum of lights is deafening.

My stomach froze. In the art world, “fake” is worse than “murder.” Murder is tragic; a fake is financial annihilation.

I had to act. I stepped onto the stage, polished shoes clicking. Authority. Domination. Control.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please,” I said smoothly. “Security is handling the disturbance. Please, ignore this.”

“I’m not a disturbance!” the girl shouted. The guards now had her, one arm each, dragging her backward, sneakers squeaking.

She locked eyes with me.

Not madness. Not attention-seeking.

Clarity. Intelligence. Burning hatred.

“Ask him!” she screamed. “Ask the ‘expert’ about the red paint! Ask him about the cadmium!”

“Get her out of here,” I hissed.

“The red pigment!” she fought. “It’s PR-108! Synthetic organic! Not commercially available until 1978! Julian Vane died in 1965!”

Toxic words hung like smoke.

Elias rose. “Stop.”

The guards paused.

“What did she say?” his voice low, dangerous.

She straightened, hoodie adjusted, small but unyielding.

“I said,” she said, trembling but firm, “that the red paint in the bottom right corner contains a chemical compound that didn’t exist when the artist was alive. If you buy that, you’re buying a lie.”

CHAPTER 2: THE MICROSCOPIC LIE

All eyes turned to me.

Five hundred people. Investors, critics, journalists. They were staring at Marcus Thorne, the boy wonder.

“Marcus?” Elias’s tone had lost all friendliness. “Is this true?”

I forced a brittle laugh. “Mr. Thorne, please. This is… absurd. I’ve conducted extensive chemical analysis. Provenance is ironclad. Clearly a prank by some activist group.”

“Then prove it,” she challenged.

Unyielding.

“I don’t have to prove anything to a teenager crashing a private event,” I sneered, sweat sliding down my spine.

“If you’re so sure,” Elias said, stepping forward, “then entertain us. Check it. Right now.”

I looked at my boss, the Director of Operations, standing in the wings. He looked like he was having a stroke. He gave me a tiny nod. Fix this.

“Fine,” I said. “If it will put our valued clients at ease.”

I pulled my jeweler’s loupe from my breast pocket. It was a Zeiss, the best money could buy. I walked over to the painting. It stood on a golden easel, bathed in spotlight. It was beautiful. A chaotic swirl of blacks and dark reds. I loved this painting.

I knelt down to the bottom right corner, exactly where the girl had pointed.

I brought the loupe to my eye. I switched on the tiny LED light attached to the lens.

I magnified the surface 10x. Then 20x.

I was looking for the jagged, uneven granular structure of natural cadmium red, which Vane used exclusively. It should look like tiny, crushed rocks under magnification.

My breath caught in my throat.

The pigment wasn’t jagged. It was smooth. Uniform. Perfect spheres of color.

Synthetic.

My heart stopped. Literally missed a beat.

She was right.

The paint was modern. It was high-quality, expensive artist paint, but it was acrylic-based synthetic polymer. It wasn’t oil.

The painting wasn’t from 1965. It was… new.

I felt like I was falling. How could I have missed this? I had tested samples from the center, from the top left. Why hadn’t I tested this corner?

I realized then that the “restoration” notes I had received mentioned a “minor touch-up” in this area. I had assumed the restorer used vintage-appropriate materials. I hadn’t checked.

I was an amateur. A fraud.

I lowered the loupe. The room was spinning.

“Well?” Elias asked.

I looked at the girl. She wasn’t gloating. She looked sad.

I looked at the crowd. If I lied now, I could maybe get away with it for tonight. The sale would go through. I’d get my money. But if Elias tested it later—and he would—I would go to prison for fraud.

If I told the truth, my career was over.

I stood up. My knees felt like jelly.

“I…” My voice failed. I cleared my throat. “There appears to be… an anomaly.”

The room erupted. It wasn’t a gasp this time; it was a roar. People were shouting. Elias turned purple.

“An anomaly?” Elias roared. “Is it fake or not?”

“It requires further testing,” I stammered.

“It’s a fake!” the girl shouted again. “My dad painted it! He painted it two weeks ago!”

The guards released her. There was no point holding her now. The damage was done.

I walked to the edge of the stage and jumped down. I ignored my boss screaming my name. I walked straight up to the girl.

Up close, she smelled like turpentine and cheap laundry detergent. She had paint under her fingernails.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice hollow.

“I’m Maya,” she said. “And you just tried to sell my dad’s practice canvas for twelve million dollars.”

“Where is he?” I grabbed her arm. “Where is the artist?”

“He’s dead,” she said flatly. “He died three days ago. That’s why I’m here. I’m not letting you vultures profit off the thing that killed him.”

“Marcus!” My boss was marching toward us, security in tow. “Get to my office. Now!”

“I need to talk to her,” I said.

“You’re fired, Marcus!” he screamed, spit flying from his mouth. “Get out of my building! You’re finished!”

I looked at Maya. She was my only lifeline. The only person who knew the truth.

“Run,” I whispered to her.

“What?”

“They’re going to call the police,” I said fast. “They’ll arrest you for trespassing and probably fraud. If you want to tell your story, we have to leave. Now.”

She hesitated, then nodded.

We turned and ran. Not toward the exit, but toward the service elevator. I swiped my badge—it still worked, thank god—and the doors slid open.

As the doors closed, I saw Elias Thorne screaming at my boss, and the security guards running toward us.

We hit ‘B2’—the garage.

I had just lost my job, my reputation, and $12 million. And I was trapped in an elevator with a teenager who had just destroyed my life.

PART 2

CHAPTER 3: THE GETAWAY

The elevator descent was agonizingly slow. The hum of the machinery felt like a countdown.

Maya stood in the corner, arms crossed, hugging her hoodie tight around herself. She was shaking now. The adrenaline was wearing off, replaced by the reality of what she had just done.

“You really think they’ll arrest me?” she asked, her voice small.

“You just cost a room full of billionaires twelve million dollars and humiliated one of the most powerful auction houses in the world,” I said, loosening my tie. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “They’d shoot you if they could get away with it. Arrest is the best-case scenario.”

“I didn’t steal anything,” she defended herself. “I told the truth.”

“In New York, costing rich people money is worse than stealing.”

The doors dinged. B2. The parking garage.

“My car is over there,” I said, pointing to my vintage Porsche 911. It was the one thing I owned outright. A relic of my first big commission.

“Nice car,” she muttered sarcastically. “Does it run on fraud?”

“Get in,” I snapped.

We jumped in. I fired up the engine just as the stairwell door burst open. Two security guards spilled out.

“Hey! Stop!”

I slammed the car into reverse, tires screeching on the concrete, then threw it into first. I gunned it toward the exit ramp. The gate was down.

“The gate!” Maya yelled, gripping the dashboard.

I didn’t brake. I flashed my headlights. The parking attendant, a kid named Jose I tipped generously every Christmas, saw me coming. He saw the panic in my eyes.

He hit the button.

The arm rose just as I flew under it, the antenna clipping the metal. We shot out onto 49th Street, merging aggressively into the yellow stream of taxis.

I drove like a maniac for ten blocks until I was sure we weren’t being followed. Then, I pulled over into a dark alley in Hell’s Kitchen.

I killed the engine. The silence was heavy.

I turned to her. “Okay. Talk. Who is your father? And how the hell did he forge a Julian Vane so perfectly that he fooled me?”

Maya looked out the window. “My dad was Arthur Pendelton.”

The name rang a faint bell. “The restorer? The guy who got blacklisted in the 90s?”

“Yeah,” she said bitterly. “The guy you people blacklisted because he refused to certify a fake Rembrandt for a museum donor.”

I knew the story. Or the rumor. Arthur Pendelton was a genius technician, but he was labeled “difficult.” He disappeared from the scene twenty years ago.

“So he became a forger?” I asked.

“No,” she spat back. “He was a painter. A real one. But nobody would buy his work because his name was mud. So he started… studying. He became obsessed with Vane. He said Vane’s technique was the only one that understood chaos.”

“And ‘The Eclipse’?”

“He didn’t paint it to sell it,” Maya said, tears forming in her eyes. “He painted it to prove he could. It was his masterpiece. He spent three years on it. He sourced the canvas from a 1960s furniture store. He made his own pigments. Except for that one red.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why use modern acrylic?”

“He ran out,” she said. “He was sick. The chemo… it was expensive. We couldn’t afford the real cadmium anymore. He just wanted to finish it before he died. He used a tube of Liquitex I had for school.”

I rubbed my temples. A $12 million fraud caused by a tube of high school art supply.

“How did the auction house get it?” I asked. This was the key. “If he didn’t sell it, how did we end up with it?”

“A man came to the house,” she said. “Two weeks ago. Dad was in hospice. I was at school. The man said he was a friend. He said he wanted to exhibit Dad’s work. He took it.”

“Who?” I demanded. “What did he look like?”

“Tall. Bald. distinct scar on his eyebrow.”

My blood ran cold.

I knew him.

That was Victor Kroll. My boss’s private “fixer.” The guy who handled the logistics for the “sensitive” acquisitions.

“He stole it?” I asked.

“He left an envelope with five thousand dollars on the table,” she said. “And a contract Dad was too weak to read. Then I saw it in the catalog online. Listed for $12 million. Dad died the next day.”

I slammed my hand against the steering wheel. “They knew.”

“What?”

“My boss. The Director. They knew it was a fake,” I whispered, the realization horrifying me. “They knew it was from your dad. They set me up to authenticate it because they knew I was eager for the commission. If it sold, they’d be rich. If it was caught… I’d be the fall guy.”

I looked at my phone. Five missed calls from “The Director.” A text message: Don’t say a word. We can fix this. Come back.

“I’m not just fired,” I said to Maya. “I’m the patsy.”

“So what do we do?” she asked.

I looked at this sixteen-year-old girl in a hoodie. She had more guts than anyone in that auction room.

“We need proof,” I said. “Not just that the painting is fake. We proved that. We need proof that they stole it and knew it was a fake. Does your dad have notes? Sketches?”

“He has journals,” she said. “Stacks of them. He documented every brushstroke.”

“Where are they?”

“In the garage,” she said. “In Queens.”

I started the car. “Then we’re going to Queens.”

CHAPTER 4: THE QUEENS STUDIO

The drive to Queens was tense. I kept checking the rearview mirror, expecting police lights or black SUVs.

We pulled up to a small, dilapidated house in Astoria. The garage was detached, a crumbling brick structure covered in ivy.

“It’s in here,” Maya said, unlocking the padlock.

She flipped a switch. The overhead fluorescent lights flickered on with a hum.

I stepped inside and gasped.

It was like walking into the mind of a madman. The walls were covered in sketches, color charts, and chemical formulas. Canvases were stacked ten deep against the walls. And they weren’t just Vanes. I saw Rothkos. Pollocks. de Koonings.

They were all fake. And they were all magnificent.

“He practiced,” Maya said, walking over to a workbench. “He wanted to understand how they thought.”

“Your father was the greatest genius I’ve never heard of,” I muttered, running my hand over a fake Modigliani. It was drying.

“Here,” she said, handing me a leather-bound notebook.

I opened it. It was dated three months ago.

Entry 45: The layering is complete. The underpainting matches Vane’s ’58 period. But the sickness is getting worse. I need money for Maya. Kroll was here again. He offered to buy “The Eclipse.” I told him it’s not ready. I told him about the red. He smiled. He said it didn’t matter.

I froze.

“Read that again,” I said aloud.

He said it didn’t matter.

“Kroll knew about the acrylic,” I said. “He knew about the flaw.”

“Why would he buy it if he knew it was flawed?” Maya asked.

“Because of me,” I realized. “They needed a scapegoat. If the buyer ever found out, they could blame the authenticator—me—for missing it. They could sue me for negligence, claim insurance on the ‘fraud,’ and keep the money.”

It was a perfect crime. And I was the insurance policy.

Suddenly, the sound of tires crunching on gravel outside made us both jump.

“Are you expecting anyone?” I asked, killing the lights immediately.

“No,” Maya whispered.

I moved to the dirty window and peered out through a crack.

A black SUV was idling in the driveway. The headlights were off.

Two men got out. One was tall, bald, with a scar on his eyebrow.

Victor Kroll.

And he was holding a crowbar.

“They found us,” I whispered. “How did they find us?”

“My phone!” Maya gasped, pulling it out of her pocket. “I posted on Instagram before I came to the auction. I tagged the location.”

“Turn it off!”

Too late.

Kroll smashed the lock on the garage door with one swing of the crowbar.

“Marcus!” Kroll’s voice was calm, terrifying. “I know you’re in there. And I know you have the girl. Open up. We just want to talk.”

“Is there a back way?” I asked Maya.

“There’s a window behind the canvases,” she said. “But it’s small.”

“Go,” I said. “Take the journal.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to buy you time.”

I grabbed a jar of turpentine and a lighter from the workbench.

“Go!” I shoved her toward the back.

The garage door began to roll up. Kroll stood there, silhouetted by the streetlights.

“Marcus, Marcus, Marcus,” Kroll sighed, stepping inside. “You really are making this difficult. Give me the book, and you can walk away. We’ll even give you a severance package.”

“I don’t want your money, Victor,” I said, holding the lighter near the open jar of turpentine. “I want the truth.”

“The truth is whatever we say it is,” Kroll smiled. “That’s how the art world works. You know that better than anyone.”

He took a step forward.

“Back off!” I shouted. “I’ll burn this whole place down!”

“And destroy all these masterpieces?” Kroll laughed. “You don’t have the guts. You love art too much.”

He was right. I hesitated.

That was my mistake.

The second man lunged from the shadows. I hadn’t seen him enter. He tackled me to the concrete. The jar flew out of my hand, shattering. The lighter skittered away.

I took a fist to the jaw. Stars exploded in my vision.

Kroll walked over and picked up the lighter. He looked down at me, blood pooling in my mouth.

“Where is the girl, Marcus?”

I spat blood at his shoe.

“Find her,” Kroll told the other man.

As the man moved toward the back of the garage, I prayed Maya was fast. Because if they caught her, we were both dead.

PART 2 (Continued)

CHAPTER 5: A MASTERPIECE IN FLAMES

The taste of blood in my mouth was metallic and warm. Kroll’s henchman, a brute with knuckles like bags of walnuts, held me down against the concrete floor.

Kroll crouched over me. He didn’t look angry. He looked disappointed, like a teacher whose favorite student had failed a test.

“The book, Marcus,” Kroll said softly. “I saw her take it. Where is she going?”

“To the police,” I lied, wheezing. My ribs felt like they were cracked. “She’s probably halfway to the precinct by now.”

Kroll chuckled. He stood up and dusted off his expensive suit pants.

“The police? No. A scared sixteen-year-old girl doesn’t go to the cops. She goes to where she feels safe. Or she hides.” He turned to the brute holding me. “Tie him to the radiator. Then find the girl. She’s on foot; she can’t have gone far.”

The brute hauled me up and dragged me to an old cast-iron radiator against the wall. He used zip ties—thick, industrial plastic ones—to bind my wrists to the piping. I struggled, but it was useless.

Kroll began walking around the studio. He picked up a can of linseed oil. He splashed it over a stack of canvases.

“What are you doing?” I yelled. “Those are paintings! Even if they’re fakes, they’re art!”

“Evidence, Marcus,” Kroll corrected me. “To the world, these are just the ramblings of a failed artist. To my employer, they are a loose end.”

He splashed turpentine on the workbench. The smell was overpowering.

“You’re going to burn it down?” I asked, disbelief washing over me. “With me inside?”

“Tragic accident,” Kroll said, pulling a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket. “Disgraced art expert, distraught over his public humiliation, seeks out the source of the forgery. A struggle ensues with the mentally unstable forger. A fire breaks out. Everyone dies. It’s a clean narrative. The insurance payout on ‘The Eclipse’ will be processed by Monday.”

He flicked the lighter. The flame danced in the drafty garage.

“You’re insane,” I whispered.

“I’m efficient,” he said.

He dropped the lighter onto a pile of oil-soaked rags near the door.

The effect was instant. A whoosh of heat hit my face as the fire roared to life, climbing the drapes and catching the wooden easel.

“Goodbye, Marcus,” Kroll said. He stepped out into the night, the heavy metal door slamming shut behind him.

I was alone.

The heat rose rapidly. The smoke began to pool at the ceiling, thick and black. I pulled at the zip ties until my wrists bled. The plastic dug into my skin, refusing to give.

The fire was eating the fakes. I watched a beautiful reproduction of a Rothko curl and blacken, the colors blistering away. It was heartbreaking. But I was next.

I looked around frantically. The radiator was hot, but not hot enough to melt plastic. I needed something sharp.

The floor was littered with debris from the struggle. A few feet away, gleaming in the firelight, was a palette knife. A sharp, metal spatula used for mixing paint.

It was just out of reach.

I stretched my leg, straining every muscle. The smoke was dropping lower, stinging my eyes, filling my lungs. I coughed, a racking, painful sound.

Come on.

My shoe brushed the handle. I hooked it with my heel and dragged it closer.

I contorted my body, sliding down until my bound hands could grasp the handle. It was slippery with oil.

I wedged the blade between the zip ties. I sawed. Back and forth. The plastic was tough. The fire was roaring now, the heat blistering the skin on my face. A canister of spray paint exploded on the other side of the room, sending a fireball into the ceiling.

Snap.

The tie broke.

I scrambled to my feet, stumbling. The door was blocked by a wall of fire. There was no way out the front.

The back window. The one Maya used.

I ran to the back of the studio, weaving through the maze of burning canvases. I found the window. It was small, high up, and covered in grime.

I grabbed a heavy bust of a Roman emperor from a shelf and smashed it through the glass. Fresh air rushed in, feeding the fire behind me.

I hoisted myself up, glass shards slicing my palms, and tumbled out onto the wet grass of the backyard.

I rolled away from the building, gasping for sweet, cold air.

Behind me, the garage windows blew out. The roof collapsed with a sickening crunch. The entire life’s work of Arthur Pendelton was gone.

I lay there for a moment, watching the sparks fly up into the Queens night sky. I was alive. But I had nothing. No phone. No car keys. No proof.

“You look like hell,” a voice whispered from the bushes.

I jumped.

Maya stepped out. She was shivering, hugging the leather journal to her chest. Her face was streaked with soot and tears.

“You didn’t run?” I asked, coughing.

“I couldn’t leave you,” she said. “And besides… I got the license plate number of their SUV.”

I looked at her and started to laugh. It was a hysterical, broken laugh.

“Kid,” I said, standing up on shaky legs. “We’re going to take these bastards down.”

CHAPTER 6: THE VIRAL SPARK

We retreated to a 24-hour diner three blocks away. It was 2:00 AM. The place smelled of bacon grease and stale coffee. We sat in a booth in the back, away from the windows.

I ordered two coffees and a plate of fries. Maya hadn’t spoken since we left the fire. She just kept her hand on the journal.

“So,” I said, wiping soot off my forehead with a napkin. “We have the journal. We know Kroll works for the Director. We know the painting is fake. But the painting is in their vault, and the rest of the evidence just burned down.”

“Not all of it,” Maya said.

She pulled out her phone. The screen was cracked.

“While you were in there… before they came… I took pictures,” she said. “I took pictures of the journal pages where Dad talks about the acrylic paint. I took pictures of the chemical tests he did.”

“That’s good,” I said. “But it’s not enough. Pictures can be faked. They’ll say we forged the journal.”

“I also recorded audio,” she said.

I froze, a fry halfway to my mouth. “What?”

“When I was hiding in the bushes,” she said. “When Kroll was talking to you. I recorded it.”

My heart started pounding again. “Did you get the part where he admitted to the arson? Where he admitted to the fraud?”

“I got it all,” she said grimly. “The part where he said ‘insurance payout.’ The part where he said ‘clean narrative.’ It’s faint, but you can hear it.”

I leaned back against the vinyl seat. This was it. The smoking gun.

“We need to go to the police,” I said. “Right now. We have a confession.”

“No,” Maya shook her head. “If we go to the police, the lawyers will get involved. Kroll will disappear. The Director will pay someone off. The evidence will get ‘lost’ in the evidence locker. You know how rich people work.”

She was right. I knew exactly how they worked.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

Maya unlocked her phone. She opened TikTok.

“We go to the people,” she said. “I have 200 followers. It’s not much. But if we tag the right accounts… if we use the right hashtags…”

“You want to post a confession of a murder attempt on TikTok?” I asked, skeptical.

“Not just that,” she said. “We’re going to tell the story. The whole story. ‘The $12 Million Lie.’ People love a takedown.”

I looked at the phone. It felt reckless. It felt dangerous.

“Do it,” I said.

We spent the next hour editing. Maya was a wizard. She spliced the audio of Kroll’s voice over the images of the burning garage (which she had filmed from the bushes). She added photos of the journal. She added a video of me, bloody and sooty, explaining exactly how the chemical test failed.

At 3:15 AM, she hit ‘Post’.

Caption: “They tried to kill us to hide a fake painting. @Christies @FBI #ArtFraud #JulianVane #Corruption”

We sat there, watching the screen.

One view. Ten views. Fifty views.

“It’s not moving fast enough,” I said, anxious.

“Give it a second,” Maya said. “The algorithm needs to wake up.”

Suddenly, the phone buzzed. A comment.

User88: Holy sht is this real??*

Then another.

ArtLoverNYC: Wait, that’s Marcus Thorne. I saw him at the auction today! He’s missing!

Then another.

TruthSeeker: The audio… that sounds like Victor Kroll. I know that voice.

The numbers started to climb. 1,000 views. 5,000 views. 10,000 views.

By 4:00 AM, the video had 500,000 views. It was being shared on Twitter. It was trending on Reddit.

My phone, which I thought was dead, suddenly pinged. I had bought a cheap burner at a bodega on the way here.

It was a text from Elias Thorne. The billionaire buyer.

Text: “Marcus. I just saw the video. I’m looking at the painting right now. If you’re lying, I will bury you. If you’re telling the truth… I’m listening.”

I looked at Maya. She was grinning, her face illuminated by the blue light of the screen.

“We got their attention,” she said.

“Now we need to finish it,” I replied. “We need to prove it physically. We need to get back into the auction house.”

“How?” Maya asked. “Security will be tripled.”

“Elias Thorne,” I said, showing her the text. “He has the painting. Or he thinks he does. If he hasn’t taken delivery yet, it’s still in the vault.”

I typed a reply to Elias.

Me: Meet us at the gallery at 8:00 AM. Bring your own chemist. And bring the police.

I hit send.

“We’re going back to the scene of the crime,” I told Maya.

“I’m ready,” she said. She looked tough. The scared kid was gone.

But as we stood up to leave, the news flickered on the TV above the counter.

“Breaking News,” the anchor said. “Fire reported at a residence in Queens. Police suspect arson linked to disgraced art dealer Marcus Thorne, who is now a person of interest in the disappearance of a local teenager.”

My jaw dropped.

They had spun the narrative. Kroll had called it in.

“They’re blaming you,” Maya whispered. “They’re saying you kidnapped me and burned the house.”

The waitress behind the counter looked up at the TV, then looked at me. She looked at the soot on my face. She looked at the girl in the hoodie.

Her eyes went wide. She reached for the phone.

“Run,” I said.

We bolted out of the diner, sirens already wailing in the distance. We had four hours until 8:00 AM. Four hours to stay free. Four hours to survive the entire NYPD looking for us.

And we had to make it to Manhattan.

PART 3

CHAPTER 7: THE MANHUNT

The city was waking up, but for us, the nightmare was in full swing.

Sirens wailed in every direction. The NYPD had an APB out for a “kidnapper and arsonist.” That was me.

“We can’t take a cab,” I said, pulling my collar up as we ducked into a subway entrance at Queens Plaza. “They’ll track the plates or the credit card. We have to take the train.”

“There are cameras everywhere,” Maya hissed, keeping her head down.

“Not in the tunnels,” I said. “And at 5:00 AM, the cars are full of construction workers and early shifters. We blend in.”

We hopped the turnstile. I felt like a criminal. I suppose, technically, I was one now.

We squeezed into the back of an E train heading to Manhattan. I stood in the corner, shielding Maya with my body. My phone—the burner—buzzed again.

I checked TikTok.

12 Million Views.

The video was the number one trending topic in the world. #TheEclipseLie was beating #MetGala.

People were dissecting the footage. Chemistry professors were dueting the video, confirming Maya’s science about the paint. Lawyers were weighing in on the legality of the sale.

But then I saw the comments on a new video posted by a news outlet.

“He kidnapped her! That poor girl.” “No, watch her face in the video! She’s not scared of him. She’s filming!”

The public was split. We were losing the narrative.

The train screeched to a halt at Lexington Avenue-53rd Street.

“We need to switch to the 6,” I whispered. “Get us closer to the Upper East Side.”

As the doors opened, I made eye contact with a transit cop standing on the platform.

He looked at me. He looked at the soot on my face. He looked at the girl in the grey hoodie.

His eyes widened. He reached for his radio.

“Run!” I yelled.

We bolted. We didn’t wait for the stairs; we sprinted up the broken escalator.

“Hey! Stop!” The cop was fast.

We burst out onto 3rd Avenue. The morning sun was blinding.

“Where do we go?” Maya panted. “The auction house is twenty blocks away!”

“We can’t outrun a radio,” I said, looking around frantically.

A delivery truck for a bakery was idling at a red light. The back door was slightly ajar.

“In,” I ordered.

I boosted Maya up and scrambled in after her, pulling the roll-up door down just as a squad car screamed past the intersection.

We collapsed on stacks of flour sacks. The truck lurched forward.

“This is insane,” Maya laughed nervously. She was shaking. “We’re in a bread truck.”

“We’re almost there,” I said, checking the GPS on the burner phone. “We need to get to the loading dock before 8:00 AM. If Elias leaves, or if the police arrest me before I can prove it, Kroll wins.”

“Marcus,” Maya said, her voice quiet. “Why are you doing this? You could have just run away. Left me.”

“I spent my whole life looking at fake things,” I said, looking at her. “Fake art, fake people, fake smiles. You’re the first real thing I’ve seen in ten years. I’m not letting them burn you.”

The truck hit a pothole. We were in the city.

I peeked out the back. We were on Madison Avenue.

“This is it,” I said. “Jump on three.”

CHAPTER 8: THE $12 MILLION TRUTH

We rolled out of the truck at 7:55 AM, hitting the pavement hard. We were bruised, dirty, and exhausted.

Christie’s loading dock was a fortress. Security guards were everywhere.

But standing right in the middle of them, checking his watch, was Elias Thorne.

He was surrounded by his own private security detail—massive men who looked like they ate rocks for breakfast.

And standing opposite him, looking calm and smug, was Victor Kroll and the Director.

“Mr. Thorne!” I shouted, sprinting across the street.

“Freeze!” A police officer stepped out from the side, gun drawn. “Hands in the air!”

“Wait!” Elias barked. His voice was like a whip crack.

The billionaire stepped forward, pushing the officer’s gun arm down gently. “I invited him.”

“He’s a fugitive, sir,” the officer said.

“He’s my consultant,” Elias said. He looked at me, then at Maya. “You look terrible, Marcus.”

“You should see the other guy,” I managed to wheeze. “The other guy is your painting.”

Kroll stepped forward. “Elias, this is ridiculous. This man is mentally unstable. He burned down a house last night. He kidnpped this child.”

“I’m not kidnapped!” Maya shouted, stepping next to me. “I’m the witness!”

“Open the vault,” Elias commanded the Director.

“Sir, we can’t—” the Director started.

“I have transferred twelve million dollars to your escrow account,” Elias said coldly. “Technically, I own that painting. Open. The. Vault.”

The Director looked at Kroll. Kroll’s eyes were cold, calculating. He gave a slight nod. Let them try.

We moved inside. The loading dock smelled of diesel and sawdust.

There it was. “The Eclipse.” Still sitting in its crate, ready for transport.

“Here is my chemist,” Elias said, pointing to a woman with a terrifyingly professional demeanor and a metal briefcase. “Dr. Aris.”

“She doesn’t need to do a full analysis,” Maya said, stepping up to the painting. She looked small next to the massive canvas. “Just do a solvent rub test on the bottom right corner.”

“A solvent rub?” Kroll laughed. “You want to damage a masterpiece with acetone?”

“If it’s oil paint from 1965, the acetone won’t hurt it if you’re gentle,” Maya said. “It’s cured. But if it’s fresh acrylic… it will dissolve.”

“Do it,” Elias ordered.

Dr. Aris put on gloves. She took a cotton swab and dipped it into a small bottle of solvent.

The room was silent. Even the police officers were watching.

Kroll shifted his weight. I saw his hand inch toward his pocket.

“Don’t even think about it,” one of Elias’s bodyguards murmured, stepping behind Kroll.

Dr. Aris approached the painting. She found the spot. The red corner.

She touched the swab to the canvas. She rubbed gently in a circular motion.

One second. Two seconds.

She pulled the swab away.

The tip was bright red.

And on the canvas, the paint had smeared, revealing the white primer beneath.

“It’s soluble,” Dr. Aris announced. “This is fresh acrylic. Maybe two weeks old.”

The room went silent.

“It’s a fake,” Elias whispered. He turned to the Director. “You sold me a fake.”

“I… I didn’t know!” the Director stammered, stepping back. “It was Marcus! He authenticated it!”

“And you tried to kill me to cover it up,” I said, my eyes locked on Kroll.

“Prove it,” Kroll snarled.

“I don’t have to,” I said. I pulled out my burner phone. “Maya, play the audio.”

Maya pressed play.

Kroll’s voice, tinny but unmistakable, filled the loading dock. “To the world, these are just the ramblings of a failed artist… The insurance payout on ‘The Eclipse’ will be processed by Monday.”

Kroll went pale.

“Officer,” Elias said, turning to the cop who had tried to arrest me. “I believe you’ve got the wrong man in cuffs.”

The police moved quickly. The Director attempted to flee but tripped over a crate. Kroll didn’t run; he just stared at me with pure hatred as they cuffed him.

“This isn’t over, Marcus,” Kroll spat.

“It is for you,” I replied.

EPILOGUE: THE REAL MASTERPIECE

Six months have passed.

The scandal rocked the art world. Christie’s fired half their executive board. Elias Thorne sued for $50 million—and won.

I didn’t get my old job back. I didn’t want it.

Instead, I opened a small gallery in Chelsea.

Tonight is our opening. The sign outside reads: “The Art of Deception: The Works of Arthur Pendelton.”

The gallery is packed. Elias Thorne is here. He bought the first piece—a “fake” Pollock that Arthur had painted in the ’90s. $500,000. Not for being a Pollock, but for being a Pendelton.

Across the room, Maya stands. Nice dress, but still in her Converse. She’s laughing, chatting with art students who treat her like a rock star.

She waves at me.

I raise my glass.

This time, we didn’t sell a lie. We sold the truth. And it turns out, the truth is worth far more than $12 million.