Read Chapter 8: The Collector's Game

The baroness’s soirée wasn’t so much a party as a theatre of wealth. Marcus had expected something quieter—a private room in a Mayfair club, a discreet handshake over old brandy. Instead, they stepped from the rain into a converted bank vault on Savile Row where champagne flutes chimed against the sound of a string quartet and the air smelled of money, old wood, and desperation thinly veiled.

Sophie wore black, her wolf coin hidden beneath the collar of her dress. Marcus had rented a dinner jacket that fitted well enough to pass and knew his face was one punch away from revealing the scar tissue of a decade’s mistakes.

“There,” Sophie murmured, touching his arm. “Far corner. Grey hair. The necklace with the emeralds you couldn’t afford to insure.”

Baroness Von Halber was smaller than he’d pictured. A compressed, regal woman in her sixties, she sat at a velvet-draped table like a chess grandmaster surveying amateurs. She wasn’t playing cards. She was watching people play and losing.

“She’s got the parchment.” Sophie’s voice dropped. “Arnaud’s contact said she keeps her collection close. That’s her game—she lets things slip to the desperate and then reels them in.”

Marcus swiped two glasses of champagne off a passing tray, drank one in a single motion, and set the empty down. “Then let’s be desperate in a way she finds interesting.”

He crossed the room before Sophie could parse his strategy from his stride. He didn’t introduce himself properly—he let his voice carry with that Oxbridge weariness he’d never quite shed, even after all the smuggling and ruin. “The Bardi chart sold to a private buyer in Zurich is a forgery,” he said, stopping a foot from her chair. “The one the late Monsieur Kerbrat kept in Paris was real, and I’ve seen it.”

The baroness tilted her head. Her eyes travelled over him slowly, lingering on his hands, his jaw, the careful negligence in his posture. “You’re the insurance man who got himself suspended.”

Marcus offered a thin smile. “I’m the insurance man who knows what your parchment is worth to the wrong people.”

“Wrong people. How quaint.” She gestured to the empty seat before her. A footman materialised, sweeping away their glasses and depositing a single card deck on the green baize. “Kerbrat’s copy had a defect—a watermark error careless copiers always reproduce. Mine is clean. Sit down, Mr. Webb. If you want what I have, afford me the courtesy of a game.”

From the corner of his eye, Marcus saw Sophie arrive at his shoulder. She didn’t look worried. That was more unsettling than if she had.

“Baccarat,” the baroness said. “Banker’s rules. You win, the parchment leaves with you this evening. You lose, you leave with nothing but a story about the night you tried very hard and failed.”

Marcus sat. “What do I wager you actually want?”

The baroness laughed, a dry, papery sound. “The coin, of course. The silver wolf. I know it’s in your lieutenant’s décolletage.” She nodded at Sophie without looking. “He’s the sort who keeps his prize close. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Not to win papers—any cutpurse could try that—but to trade?”

Marcus didn’t flinch. “The coin is worth more to me than the chart.”

“Undoubtedly. Which is why you’ll lose it tonight, and then we’ll see how badly you want the dead man’s route.”

The dealer—a sober man in a grey waistcoat—divided the cards. The room seemed to recede; the quartet went distant, the laughter of the rich became a dull hum. Marcus had played baccarat in worse rooms than this. He’d played in Tangier with borrowed money and a knife on the table, in Macau against men who smiled like wolves themselves. But those stakes, he’d known. Every card felt inevitable now in a way that soured his gut.

The first hand went to the banker. The second, to the baroness. The third, too. She didn’t gloat; she simply watched him with patient amusement, the way a cat watches a bird with a broken wing.

“You’re rushing,” Sophie said quietly.

Marcus ignored her. He pushed more on the fourth hand, lost again, and felt the edges of his plans fraying like cheap thread. He’d climbed steep ladders before, but always with a rung to spare. Here, the rungs were gone.

The fifth hand. He drew three and seven. The baroness exposed a natural nine.

The table fell silent.

The baroness reached into a pocket of her gown and produced a slim leather tube. She slid it across the felt toward him, but her fingers held it firmly in a kind of cool, merciless custody.

“I find you a more interesting creature than I first supposed,” she said. “You lost the wager, but you haven’t yet lost the game. I will give you the parchment—freely.”

Marcus stared at her. He knew better. “For what?”

She smiled—the first genuine human expression he’d seen on her. “The iron ledger. The one beneath the Alps. When you bring it to me, I will also surrender the names file your brother is in. Tom Webb, currently archived in Turin. You want to know why he vanished? You want a reason, a purpose, a culprit? All of that is in the names ledger.”

“He’s not a file,” Marcus said, his voice flat. “He’s my brother.”

“He was both,” the baroness said. “That’s the tragedy of the Bardi archives, Mr. Webb. Nothing personal survives. Only numbers, debts, and claims.” She released the leather tube. It stayed upright on the felt between them like a tiny obelisk.

Sophie lifted it. She unrolled the parchment, scanned it once, and nodded once—real.

Marcus stood. The room tilted slightly, corrected itself. He didn’t look at Sophie. He looked at the baroness, who had already turned to greet another guest as if he no longer existed.

As they stepped back into the rain-streaked street, Sophie pressed the parchment into his coat and took his arm. She didn’t speak until they were two blocks clear.

“She knows more than she’s telling.”

“Everyone does,” Marcus said. “That’s the game.”

He felt the leather roll against his ribs like a second spine, carrying the weight of a dead collector, a thief’s lie, and a brother he hadn’t seen in seven years.