Chapter 5 - Unraveling The Canvas
For six hours, Sadie forgot about her bandaged leg, her lost apartment, and the terrifying men who wanted her dead.
She was in her element.
She sat under the soft blue glow of the halogen lamps, wearing white cotton gloves, carefully examining every millimeter of the 16th-century paper with a fine-tipped optical scanner connected to a monitor on the wall.
Callum didn't leave the vault.
He sat at a steel desk near the door, conducting his empire through quiet phone calls and encrypted text messages, his deep voice providing a steady, low background hum that surprisingly calmed Sadie’s nerves.
Every time she shifted her weight or let out a quiet sigh of fatigue, Callum’s eyes would flick toward her, monitoring her comfort with subtle, fierce watchfulness.
At three in the afternoon, Sadie froze.
“Callum,” she whispered.
He was beside her in less than two seconds, leaning over her shoulder, his hand resting on the back of her chair.
“What did you find?”
Sadie adjusted the optical scanner's focus dial.
On the high-definition monitor, the dark iron-gall ink of the Italian sketch magnified ten thousand times. Underneath the visible brown stroke of the horse's mane, microscopic indentations appeared—tiny, precise punctures arranged in geometric sequences.
“It's not an inscription written in ink,” Sadie explained, pointing her gloved finger at the screen. “It’s Braille. Punctures made with a surgical needle before the paper was mounted onto the wooden frame.”
Callum’s jaw tightened as he read the magnified patterns. “Numbers. Account routing strings for Swiss commercial holdings.”
“There are six sets,” Sadie said, zooming out to reveal the full border of the paper. “Whoever mounted this canvas wasn't just an art restorer. He was a master counterfeiter.”
Callum leaned down closer, his face right next to hers. She could feel the heat radiating from his broad shoulders.
“Can you translate the whole sequence?” he asked.
“Give me two hours,” Sadie said, her grey eyes shining with intense focus. “I’ll give you every character.”
Before she could turn back to the microscope, Callum reached down and gently placed his hand over her gloved fingers, stopping her.
“You’ve been sitting here for six hours without food,” he said softly. “You need to rest.”
“I’m fine, Callum—”
“That wasn't a question, Sadie,” Callum murmured, his tone possessing a gentle authority that made her heart leap in her chest. “Marcus is bringing lunch down. You eat, you stretch your leg, and then you finish.”
Sadie looked into his dark brown eyes, seeing something deeper than just a Mob boss protecting his investment. She saw a man who looked at her not as an employee, but as something precious that he was bound by honor to protect.
“Alright,” she agreed softly. “Lunch first.”
Callum smiled—a real, genuine warmth that transformed his fierce, rugged face into something breathtakingly handsome.
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“Good girl,” he murmured, his thumb briefly stroking the side of her wrist before he stood back up.
The compliment sent a hot flush of red across Sadie’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the heat lamps.
