Chapter 5 - The Gallery Number
Valeria had one advantage Marcela never understood.
She knew art.
Not the way wealthy collectors knew art.
Not by auction prices or famous names.
Valeria understood canvas fibers.
Pigments.
Old repairs.
Woodworm patterns.
Varnish.
The tiny physical details that could prove where an object had been and who had touched it.
From her hospital bed, she began cataloging the photographs on the memory card.
Alejandro sat beside her.
They identified nine pieces.
Six appeared in international databases of stolen cultural property.
One had disappeared from a church outside Puebla.
Another had been reported missing after a gallery fire in 2004.
A third belonged to the family of a collector who had died without ever recovering it.
Alejandro stared at the screen.
“How could all of this be under my house?”
Valeria looked at him.
“That’s the question you need to answer.”
He flinched.
The mansion was legally owned through an Aranda family holding company.
Alejandro had lived there for most of his life.
He knew the wine cellar.
The garage.
The private cinema.
The old library.
But not the climate-controlled rooms beneath the west wing.
He remembered being told as a child that those rooms contained utility equipment.
It had never occurred to him to question it.
Valeria opened another image.
A crate label.
ARANDA DESARROLLOS.
Alejandro’s company.
His stomach turned.
“No.”
Valeria said nothing.
“That doesn’t mean you knew.”
“My company moved them.”
“Maybe.”
Alejandro stood and walked toward the window.
“If Aranda trucks transported stolen art, my signature could be on shipping authorizations.”
Valeria watched him.
Now he finally understood what she had risked.
Not only a family scandal.
A corporate disaster.
A criminal investigation.
Possibly the destruction of everything Alejandro had spent his adult life building.
He turned.
“Is that why you said everything would fall apart?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you destroy the memory card?”
Valeria looked almost offended.
“Because the truth doesn’t disappear just because it’s expensive.”
Alejandro lowered his eyes.
He deserved that.
There was a knock.
Tomás entered.
He checked Valeria’s chart and then looked at Alejandro.
“I want her here overnight.”
Alejandro nodded.
“Whatever she needs.”
Tomás examined Valeria briefly.
Then he noticed one of the photographs on the laptop.
His expression changed.
“You found it.”
Alejandro looked at him.
“You knew?”
Tomás hesitated.
Valeria answered.
“I showed him one photograph three nights ago.”
Tomás closed the door.
“My father used to work for the Arandas.”
Alejandro stared at him.
“In what capacity?”
“Private physician.”
Alejandro remembered the name.
Dr. Ignacio Beltrán.
He had treated Alejandro’s father years earlier.
Tomás continued.
“My father quit working for your family shortly before Ricardo died.”
Alejandro felt a chill.
“Why?”
Tomás looked at the old ledger photograph.
“Because Ricardo Aranda discovered those rooms too.”
Alejandro stopped moving.
May you like
Tomás lowered his voice.
“And according to my father, your father was planning to expose everything the week he died.”
