Chapter 6 - The Restoration Clue
The following afternoon, Rosa escorted me down to a secure workshop that Kalin had set up in the lower level of the manor—a fully equipped replica of my lab at the Rossi Gallery, complete with polarized magnifying lamps, chemical solvents, and archival workbenches.
"If the decryption key or the missing document is hidden within your work," Kalin said, standing by the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, "we find it before Vance does."
I adjusted my protective goggles, pulling a high-intensity ultraviolet lamp over a seventeenth-century landscape painting that my team had transferred from the gallery earlier that morning under armed guard.
"My father didn't know anything about digital encryption," I muttered, brushing a micro-brush dipped in mild solvent across the corner of the canvas. "He was a traditional gambler. He kept paper receipts, notebooks, cocktail napkins—anything he could scribble a bad investment on."
"Look closer at the canvas framing," Kalin instructed, stepping closer. "Your father served on the Rossi Gallery acquisition board for six months before he was ousted. He helped curate this exact collection."
I frowned, switching the UV light to a deeper frequency. The pale blue glow washed over the aged varnish, illuminating the microscopic craquelure of the paint.
Then, near the lower wooden stretcher bar of the frame, something caught my eye.
Beneath layers of amber-tinted dammar varnish, a faint, geometric watermark bled through the fabric—not part of the original seventeenth-century canvas, but a modern micro-print laser-etched onto a thin strip of security polymer glued between the linen and the wood.
"What is that?" Kalin murmured, leaning down until his shoulder brushed mine.
"It's a micro-dot security strip," I whispered, my heart racing. I picked up a pair of precision tweezers and a scalpel with surgical care. "My father didn't hide digital files. He hid physical access codes inside the structural frames of the gallery's permanent collection."
With a steady, practiced hand—the same steady hand I used to save priceless masterpieces—I gently lifted the edge of the canvas.
Tucked neatly inside the hollow core of the wooden stretcher was a micro-SD card, wrapped in a scrap of paper bearing my father's frantic handwriting: For Elena's eyes only. If Vance comes, give this to Moretti.
I froze. The name scrawled on the paper wasn't Kovatch.
I looked up at the man standing beside me. "Moretti? Your name is Kalin Moretti?"
May you like
Kalin’s jaw tightened. He reached out, gently taking the micro-SD card from my tweezers.
"Kovatch is my mother’s family name," he said quietly, his eyes dark with a sudden, heavy gravity. "Moretti is the name Vance’s syndicate has been warring against for control of the New England shipping ports for a decade. Your father didn't just borrow money from loan sharks, Elena. He stole from the syndicate to pay off his gambling debts, and he trusted me—and you—to finish the exchange."
