Chapter 2: Disassembling the Provenance
Marcus slammed his hand down on the white-clothed table, the silver cutlery rattling against the porcelain. "Julian, you cannot possibly listen to this nonsense. She is playing some kind of angle. Call the manager, have her fired and thrown out on the street."
Julian didn't look at Marcus. He kept his eyes locked on me, his fingers drumming a slow, rhythmic tattoo against the mahogany edge of the table. "Let her speak, Marcus. You said yourself this document came from a private collection in Verona. Verona has archives, doesn't it?"
"It does," I said, stepping slightly closer, though keeping a respectful distance from the seated men. "And the Chancery of Pope Sixtus IV never inverted the papal keys or the anchor-and-cross insignia. If you look closely at the gold leaf pressed into the outer rim, the tooling is modern alloy. A true fifteenth-century cast uses hand-hammered gold wire, not stamped brass."
Julian reached out with his left hand, picking up the parchment by its clean upper edge. He tilted it toward the warm pendant lighting above us, squinting at the red wax seal I had just condemned. The anger in Marcus's posture had shifted into something much harder, a cold, calculated panic that rippled through the set of his jaw.
"Marcus," Julian said softly, his voice dropping an octave. "You assured me this provenance was verified by the Milanese institute."
"It was!" Marcus lied, his voice pitching slightly too high. "She's a fraud. Look at her—she's carrying a water pitcher for minimum wage. Why would a scholar be working in a private dining room?"
"Ask the university committee that cut my funding after I published my monograph on forged ecclesiastical seals," I said evenly, the old bitterness rising in my throat like copper. "They called it career suicide to question the authenticity of institutional collections. Here, it seems, it's just bad service."
Julian let out a short, humorless breath through his nose. He lowered the document back to the table and turned his head toward the two guards stationed by the mahogany double doors. "Hold Mr. Cole right where he is. Nobody leaves this room."
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Marcus took a step backward, his face draining of color. "Julian, you're making a catastrophic mistake. You'll ruin relationships across three continents over the word of a girl serving ice water."
"If the document is genuine, Mr. Cole, you have nothing to fear from a closer inspection," Julian replied, standing up to his full height. He towered over Marcus, his dark suit impeccably tailored, his presence filling the room. He turned his attention back to me. "Can you prove this, or are you just reciting trivia from a textbook?"
