Chapter 3

Mark stepped forward, his face etched with frustration. He grabbed my arm, forcing me to face him.

"Don't be childish, Ava. This isn't about street art. This is about a possible da Vinci. It's the biggest case of our careers."

"Your career, you mean," I shot back, pulling my arm away. "The one you built on my stolen work and her cheap tricks."

Chloe scoffed, stepping closer. "She's just jealous, Mark. She can't stand that I succeeded where she failed. She couldn't handle the pressure, so she ran away to spray paint garbage cans."

The words were designed to hurt, to paint me as a bitter, unstable failure. A few months ago, they would have shattered me. Now, they just sounded pathetic.

"Jealous of what, Chloe?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm. "Your 'artistic intuition'? The one that's conveniently 'blocked' now that you're facing a real challenge? The one that looks an awful lot like the notes you used to steal from my private research journals?"

Mark's face hardened. "That's a serious accusation, Ava. Chloe has proven herself time and time again. You're the one who was found negligent. You're the one who destroyed the Degas."

Hearing him say it, so matter-of-factly, was like a splash of cold water. In that moment, I saw him clearly for the first time. He wasn't just a man who had been fooled. He was a willing participant. Chloe's success benefited him. It brought fame, money, and prestige to his studio. He didn't want to see the truth because the lie was more profitable. The love I thought we had, the partnership we'd built, it was all secondary to his ambition. The realization didn't hurt anymore. It was liberating.

"I won't work with her," I said, my decision final. I pointed a finger at Chloe. "I wouldn't trust her to restore a child's coloring book, let alone a da Vinci."

My defiance seemed to shock them. They were used to the broken Ava, the one who ran. They weren't prepared for this version.

"You need us, Ava," Chloe said, her voice turning sharp. "What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life in this filthy alley?"

"My life is my business," I said. "Now get out of my alley."

I turned my back on them, a clear dismissal. I picked up my sketchpad, my 'work object' for the night's project, and started walking away, deeper into the maze of backstreets. I could feel their eyes on my back, their shock and anger radiating in the cool night air. For the first time in months, I felt a sense of power. I was no longer reacting to their moves. I was making my own.

I didn't go back to my apartment. The encounter had left me energized. I found a new wall, a huge, blank canvas on the side of an abandoned warehouse. The case they'd mentioned, the da Vinci, it was stuck in my head. Not because I wanted to help them, but because the puzzle of it intrigued me. My mind, a machine built for solving these kinds of problems, kicked into gear.

For hours, I worked. Not with spray paint, but in my head. I thought about da Vinci's techniques, his use of sfumato, the specific chemical composition of his pigments. I cross-referenced it with known forgeries, with the habits of the great 19th-century forgers. I didn't need a lab or a spectrometer. My brain was the lab. By dawn, as the first light hit the city, I had a theory. A simple, elegant solution to a complex problem. The forgery wasn't in the paint; it was in the canvas itself, anachronistic material cleverly aged. It was a rookie mistake, but one that would be easy to miss if you were looking for something more complicated.

A few days later, I was grabbing a sandwich when I saw the news on a TV in the deli. The headline read: "Art World Stunned as 'da Vinci' Forgery Exposed." The reporter was standing in front of the National Gallery, a beaming Chloe by her side.

"Chloe, you've done it again," the reporter said. "How did you know the canvas was a 19th-century forgery?"

Chloe gave her signature, mystical smile. "The painting spoke to me," she said. "I felt a deep sadness, a lie at its very core. The spirit of the masterpiece was... absent."

My blood ran cold. It was my theory. My exact conclusion. How could she know?

Then, the gallery director stepped up to the microphone. He was an old colleague, a man I respected.

"While we are grateful for Ms. Chloe's unique insights," he said, clearing his throat, "we must also express our profound disappointment in her former mentor, Ava Vance."

My sandwich turned to ash in my mouth.

"Ms. Vance was consulted on this piece years ago," he continued, reading from a prepared statement. "Her initial analysis, which we have on file, completely missed the fraudulent canvas. It is another unfortunate example of the negligence and declining skill that has come to define her later career."

It was a lie. A complete, fabricated lie. I had never seen that painting before in my life. They weren't just stealing my work anymore. They were actively rewriting history to destroy me.