The Mafia Princess He Abandoned Became An Art Queen Chapter 05
I stood by the airport’s floor-to-ceiling window, watching the empty stretch of sky where my plane had disappeared.
My phone was back on.
The second it got a signal, dozens of missed calls and messages came flooding in.
Almost all of them were from Mario.
I glanced down and locked the screen.
The announcements switched between French and English. I followed the crowd toward the exit.
The Paris air was cooler than I was used to, carrying the scent of bread and coffee.
I flagged a cab and stumbled through the name of a hotel near the school.
The driver was a plump middle-aged man who asked, in heavily accented English, if I was there to study.
I said yes.
He smiled. “Bienvenue.”
I leaned against the window and watched unfamiliar streets and buildings slide past like scenes from a film I didn’t know.
I checked in and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a long time.
The phone was quiet.
No one was calling.
I rolled over and slept the deepest sleep I’d had in years.
The next morning, I went to the school to register.
The elderly woman at reception wore delicate gold-rimmed glasses. She looked through my paperwork, then looked up at me for a beat too long.
“J’ai lu votre travail.”
She said she’d read my work.
I blinked, then thanked her.
She smiled, gave me my student ID, and pointed me toward the studios.
I stepped out of the administration building with the thin plastic card in my hand.
Sunlight caught it, lighting up the photo and the name printed on it.
Rossella Conti.
I turned the card over in my fingers, then tucked it carefully into my wallet.
Melissa had already found me an apartment.
Sixth floor, no elevator. The stairs were brutal, but the view was worth it.
From the balcony, I could see the tip of the Eiffel Tower.
I unpacked piece by piece.
Clothes in the closet. Art books on the nightstand. Laptop on the desk.
The last thing I took out was the photo of the shattered computer.
I pinned it to the wall above my desk.
Then I opened my laptop and created a new folder.
I thought about the title of the new series for a long time.
Finally, I typed:
Rebirth.
Sunlight streamed through the window and pooled over my keyboard. It was warm.
I painted straight through the afternoon. When I finally looked up, the sky had gone dark and the Tower was blinking softly through the dusk.
I made a cup of tea and carried it out onto the balcony.
The Paris breeze was light. Somewhere below, someone was walking a dog. The bakery on the corner sent up the smell of fresh bread.
A month earlier, I’d been in that cramped room at the Conti estate, where the door could burst open at any second, where a slap could come out of nowhere.
I sipped my tea. The wind blew my hair across my face, and I brushed it back.
I felt lighter than I had in years.
My phone buzzed. A flood of messages from Melissa.
I opened them: screenshots and links.
The story was still gaining traction.
#IreneContiArtFraud was the number one trending hashtag in the world.
People had put together a detailed timeline comparing all of Irene’s work from the past five years.
Her earliest pieces were mediocre, indistinguishable from student exercises. Then, suddenly, her later work exploded with compositional habits and color choices that mirrored Brightness’s.
Professional bloggers had gone through her acceptance speech frame by frame and pointed out that she couldn’t even explain the central visual motif of The Undercurrent in any coherent way.
The comments were brutal.
“She’s been stealing for years and the whole art world missed it?”
“I always thought she wasn’t as good as people claimed.”
“Rossella’s story is heartbreaking. Her work was stolen, her identity was stolen, and her own family humiliated her.”
“Once Brightness stepped in, Irene was finished. There’s no coming back from this.”
Melissa sent another update.
“Every gallery Irene worked with has pulled her pieces.”
“Two foundations have terminated her contracts. The auction houses have frozen payment on several of her major sales.”
“Between endorsement deals and collaborations, her breach-of-contract penalties are already over eighty million dollars.”
“And because of Irene’s scandal, the FBI and IRS are now looking into the Contis’ charitable foundation, art fund, and auction ties. Their business is about to take a serious hit.”