Chapter 6 - I Opened the Envelope With Two Attorneys Watching
I did not open it at home.
I did not open it alone.
The envelope was photographed, logged, and examined first.
Then my attorney, the auction house’s counsel, and a forensic document specialist watched while I broke the old wax seal.
Inside were seventeen folded pages.
No will.
No secret inheritance.
No confession about a hidden child.
The first document was an appraisal.
Not of the astronomical clock.
Of another antique from my family collection.
A seventeenth-century bronze sculpture called The Falconer.
I knew it immediately.
It still sat inside the private family gallery.
Or at least something that looked like it did.
The appraisal described tiny casting flaws, an old repair beneath the left arm, and a nearly invisible maker’s mark under the base.
Then came photographs.
The original Falconer.
Then photographs labeled:
REPLACEMENT.
My stomach tightened.
The replacement was the sculpture currently in our gallery.
Next came invoices.
Shipping records.
Private correspondence.
And finally a handwritten note from Victor.
Domenico—if you are reading this, Marco never found the packet. Compare the Falconer before confronting anyone. Trust the metal, not the paperwork.
I stopped reading.
The room had gone completely silent.
Marco had not been desperate to protect some embarrassing family secret.
My father believed he had substituted a valuable original antique with a replica.
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And the envelope contained the beginning of the proof.
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