I had spent fifteen years trying to pay off the debts Arthur left behind when his workshop burned to the ground.
The police had called it an electrical fire.
They told me Arthur had been trapped inside, trying to save his tools.
But I knew he had been working late to finish the Falcon, a piece he promised would secure our future.
Seeing it sitting here, polished and paraded in front of billionaires, felt like watching my husband’s grave being robbed in broad daylight.
“I won’t leave until you show me the provenance paperwork,” I demanded.
Julianne didn't even bother to answer. She just gave David a sharp nod.
The older guard stepped up to me.
I braced myself, expecting him to grab my arm and drag me toward the revolving doors.
Instead, he positioned his broad shoulders perfectly, completely blocking Julianne’s view of my hands.
He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a small, blank magnetic keycard.
With a swift, practiced motion, he slid the card directly into the side pocket of my coat.
I stared up at him in shock.
David looked straight ahead, his face totally blank, but he tapped the radio on his shoulder twice.
“Time to go, ma'am,” he said loudly.
Then, dipping his head just a fraction of an inch, he whispered a sentence that sent a shockwave down my spine.
“They didn’t just steal the jewelry. They stole the blueprints. Come to the north loading dock at nine o'clock tonight.”
The cold Chicago wind hit me like a physical blow as David ushered me out the heavy glass doors and onto the wet pavement.
I stood on the sidewalk for a long time, the rain soaking through my thinning wool coat, my fingers tightly gripping the plastic keycard in my pocket.
The imposing limestone facade of the Vanguard Auction House loomed over me, its towering windows glowing with warm, exclusionary light.
I walked the six blocks to the bus stop in a complete daze, the sound of the traffic completely drowned out by the roaring in my ears.
When I finally reached my struggling neighborhood bookstore on the south side, I locked the front door, flipped the open sign to closed, and collapsed into the worn armchair behind the counter.
The bank had sent another foreclosure notice that morning.
I had spent my entire day pleading with a loan officer who wouldn't even look me in the eye, carrying Arthur’s death certificate and our old tax returns in a desperate attempt to prove I just needed one more month.
Now, sitting in the quiet dust of my failing shop, I pulled the magnetic keycard out of my pocket and placed it on the counter next to the raw, uncut sapphire.
Arthur had given me the stone the night before the fire.
He had pressed it into my palm, his fingers stained with machine oil, and told me it was the final piece.
He said he needed to calibrate the spring mechanism one last time before setting it.
The fire happened six hours later.
By the time the fire department pulled him out of the rubble, his lungs were completely destroyed.
He lingered in a medically induced coma for two agonizing days before his heart finally gave out.
The police report concluded that all the jewelry in the shop had melted in the extreme heat.
But the Falcon hadn't melted. It was sitting in a glass case three miles away.
At 8:45 PM, I walked down the narrow, trash-strewn alley behind the Vanguard building.
The rain had turned into a thick, freezing mist.
The north loading dock was a massive concrete bay secured by a heavy rolling steel door and a small pedestrian entrance.
I approached the keypad next to the metal door, my hand shaking violently.