“Please mister, buy this painting so we can buy bread,” three dirty triplets begged. The billionaire mafia boss stared at the canvas, his heart stopping. The woman painted on it was the wife he mourned for years. With shaking hands, he pulled out a black card and whispered, “Take me to her.”

my gut. My breath hitched in my throat. They were not flaws. They were fingerprints. Three distinct, miniature fingerprints pressed faintly into the dried oil—uneven, delicate, hesitant. The exact kind of marks a small child leaves when touching something they’ve been explicitly forbidden to touch.

The penthouse seemed to violently tilt on its axis.continue reading …