Page 49 of The Forgery Mate


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When we separate, he doesn’t go far. “Have you thought about it before?”

I hesitate. “Yes, after the first time I left you. I considered burning all my IDs, settling somewhere quiet, and becoming just one person.”

“What stopped you?”

The question cuts to the heart of things, exposing nerves I’ve kept buried under layers of protective deception. “I didn’t know who that one person would be.”

Ezra searches my face for something I’m not sure I possess. “I do.”

Two simple words, yet they sound so certain. In all my fabricated identities, my crafted personas, my careful constructions, Ezra alone claims to see the original beneath.

And the terrifying thing is, I believe him.

14

The whiskey bottle grows emptier between us. Well, mostly me, but I pretend not to notice, each sip melting me a little more into Ezra’s embrace.

“It’s a family business,” I say into the comfortable quiet, the back of my head resting on Ezra’s shoulder, the glass loose in my grip. “It’s what I know. My grandfather taught me more about forgery than school ever taught me about truth.”

Ezra’s fingers trace idle patterns across my skin, neither urging nor interrupting, just present in a way that draws the words out of me.

“He wanted to be an artist. A real one, with his name on gallery walls and in auction catalogs.” The whiskey burns pleasantly down my throat, warming me from the inside out. “He had the talent. God, did he have talent. But not the connections. Not the right background or education or friends in high places.”

My grandfather’s studio materializes in my memory. The north-facing windows he’d covered with translucent paper to diffuse the light, the worn brushes arranged by size and purpose,the paints mixed to precise recipes he recorded in a leather-bound journal I still keep hidden among my things.

“No one would buy his paintings.” A familiar bitterness seeps in despite the years between then and now. “But they’d pay fortunes for his forgeries. For his perfect Renoirs and Monets and Vermeers.”

Ezra shifts behind me, his chin resting on my shoulder as he reaches for the bottle to refill my glass. “So, he gave them what they wanted.”

“At first.” I accept the refilled glass, watching the amber liquid catch the light. “But then he realized he could go a step beyond simply copying pre-existing works. And he did something most forgers never attempted.”

“Painting perfect originals,” Ezra supplies, revealing more depth to his knowledge.

“Yes.” I take a sip of whiskey. “He stopped just copying and started creating new works in the style of established masters, paintings they might have made if they’d lived longer or worked more. And they were good. Better than good. They were…”

“Authentic,” Ezra finishes when I falter. “In everything but their provenance.”

My chest constricts. “Yes.”

He holds me closer, his steady breaths on my neck soothing. “But it wasn’t enough for him.”

“No.” The word comes out heavy with inherited grief. “He wanted recognition, even if it was anonymous, and no one knew his name. He wanted his work to exist in the world. To be seen. To matter.”

Ezra presses his lips to my shoulder in silent encouragement to continue.

“So he started replacing other people’s artwork with his own.” The confession falls into the quiet room, the final piece of a puzzle I’ve kept scattered. “He’d steal an original, create aforgery so perfect that the owner would never realize it wasn’t real, then sell the original to fund his true passion. Painting new masterworks.”

“That no one would buy because they weren’t by a known artist,” Ezra says.

“Exactly.” The irony had never been lost on my grandfather, nor on me when I followed in his footsteps. “He’d laugh about it sometimes, this circular trap he couldn’t escape. The better he got at forgery, the more he was paid to be someone else, never himself.”

Ezra’s hand slides up my arm, fingers trailing heat across my skin. “What happened to him?”

The question picks at a scab I’ve let harden over the years. “Caught stealing from a private collection in Geneva. Spent his last years in prison. Died of pneumonia three weeks before his release date.”

“I’m sorry.” The simple words carry genuine regret, and it strikes me again how different Ezra is from what I expected when I first approached him as Knox.

“Don’t be.” I drain my glass, the burn of alcohol matching the burn in my throat. “He died having created his greatest masterpiece. The fact that no one knew it was his was the price he paid for playing the game.”