“Wow,” I breathed despite myself as I stepped into the room. “This is a dream.”
“I always thought so too,” a female voice agreed from my right.
I looked over to see a beautiful older woman with a softly creased face smiling at me as she walked over in a lab coat. She was wearing gloves to protection whatever she had been working on, but she plucked those off in order to shake my hand.
“It’s wonderful to meet you, Bianca,” she surprised me by saying. “I’ve heard so much about you from your father. My name is Emelie Fairchild.”
My eyebrows cut hard into my forehead. “You knew my father?”
She laughed, grey eyes twinkling. “I knew him very well, he was my brother’s best friend all their lives.”
I blinked into her green eyes, hit by the realization that this woman was Elias’s mother and Beckett’s sister. Before I could curb the impulse, I took a step away and let her hand drop from mine.
Her expression flickered. “Mr. Klemm, thank you for delivering Ms. Belcante. I’ll take over now and make sure she is seen out securely.”
“But––”
Suddenly the warm, unassuming woman seemed every inch the Constantine wife she was. “That’s enough, Mr. Klemm. I thank you.”
The older gentleman grumbled but saw himself out without protesting further.
“I just came to see the painting.” If Emelie was a Constantine, even just by marriage, there was a huge chance she would tell Caroline what I’d been doing at The Met. “I have a passion for Picasso.”
Emelie’s eyes sparkled in the descending white light of the winter evening. “Yes, I’ve heard. There’s no need to be concerned, Bianca. Between Lane and, now, Elias, I know you’re a good woman and I’m happy to finally have the opportunity to meet you.”
“Caroline doesn’t know I’m here,” I tested.
She nodded easily, waving her hand. “Not to worry. Where do you think Elias gets his rebellious nature from? Our part of the family has long born the black mark of Caroline’s displeasure. I won’t find it in my heart to capitulate to her dictatorship now.”
“Thank you.” I wasn’t sure I could trust her, but the damage had already been done. She knew I was there to see Child with a Dove and, it seemed, she knew I was Lane’s love child.
“Come,” she encouraged, holding out her hand to me. “Let me show you the painting. It was damaged badly, but of course, the cameras malfunctioned the evening of the party so we don’t know exactly what happened.” She paused, casting a glance at me as she led us to the corner of the large room. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I shrugged, but her small smile told me she suspected I had something to do with the damaged painting.
“I was with him when he bought it,” she told me as we stopped in front of the portrait. “It was an unlisted item at the auction, but he’d had feelers out for years about Picasso’s dove paintings. He told me they reminded him of someone special.”
I nodded, my heart in my throat as I took in Picasso’s blue period masterpiece. I’d never been so close and the details were exquisite.
“He bought Le Reve that day too,” she continued, oblivious to the way my entire body reacted to her words.
“Is it here?” I asked breathlessly. “I’d love to see it.”
“It’s in storage. Lane and Caroline had donated countless items over the years to The Met. What’s not on display is housed in the vaults below the museum.”
“Do you have access?” I asked, as if I didn’t care, as if I was just bored and it was the only thing I could think of to ask.
By the way Emelie’s eyes gleamed with curiosity, I didn’t pull it off.
“I do,” she said slowly. “For the Constantine family, not much in The Met is off-limits. We’ve been patrons for decades.”
“I’d love to see it,” I reiterated.
Emelie studied me for a moment. “As an art lover or as Lane’s daughter?”
“Both,” I said honestly, gambling everything on that moment. “I think he might have left something for me in the portrait. He’s done it before.”
To my shock, she laughed delightedly. “Oh yes, that sounds like Lane. He loved to play games and create riddles. All right, Bianca, let’s see what your father left you.”
The storage vaults beneath the museum were a maze of security procedures and cramped corridors, but Emelie navigated us through them with ease. She chatted easily the entire time, talking about art resurrection projects, speaking about the internship program they had for undergraduates in the field because Lane had mentioned years ago that I had an interest in the field.
Inside my chest, my heart burned like a banked coal.
I barely breathed as Emelie finally stopped at a marked door and entered a code into the keypad before pushing the seal door open.