“Go on then!” Alex said. “Shoot me! Shoot us both!” She was practically shrieking now, her body trembling. “Is that what you want, the two of us rotting away in your little vault with your dead artists and your dead artworks! Go on then. Shoot!”

Baine just sighed and shook his head. “How little you understand about beauty and immortality, Alexis. It’s hard to believe you really are my daughter. And such a sweet child you were, all smiles and golden ringlets, and so eager to please.” He turned to me. “Of course, she still is. Not with me, not unless it’s about money, but you saw it, didn’t you, Luke, her eagerness to please, to do whatever is necessary. Quite effective, isn’t she?”

Alex turned to me, tears tracking down her cheeks, and I lunged, tried to wrest the gun from Baine’s hand, but he swung it hard into my face and I staggered back, a hand to my cheek.

Alex screamed.

Baine cried, “Watch out! Do not get blood on my paintings!”

I stared at my fingertips, the red, the blood, and it came to me. All he cared about. His paintings. I swiped my bloody hand against an Edouard Manet seascape.

“Stop!” Baine shouted.

I yanked the painting off the wall and threw it to the floor, foot hovering inches above it. “The painting or Alex,” I said, daring him. Was he really willing to kill his own child for a roomful of art? When he said nothing, I brought my foot down hard, grinding it into the canvas. Baine’s face went from pain to stone, but he didn’t lower the gun from Alex’s heart.

“Plenty of Manets in the world,” he said with a studied calm, though I could see his hand was shaking. “Enough. I want my answer now. Which Mona Lisa is the original?” He pressed the gun against Alex so hard she let out a cry.

“Wait—” I said. “I’ll tell you.” I moved quickly to the twin paintings, made a show of looking from one to the other.

Baine was waiting but impatient, the gun twitching in his hand.

“Give me a minute,” I said. “I’m trying to find something here.”

“Where?” Baine inched closer.

“Something the art forger, Yves Chaudron, put into his copies.” I bent down to study the lower painting, peering closely at its surface. “Yes. It’s here.”

“What is…where?”

“Wait…” I glanced up, eyes on the painting above. “Damn. It’s in this one too!”

Baine’s eyes flicked between the two paintings.

“I hate to tell you,” I said, “but you’ve got two fakes.”

“No! How can you tell? Show me.”

“It’s easier to see in this one,” I said and bent down, pointing at the spot just below Lisa del Giocondo’s hands. “Look for yourself.”

Baine kept the gun trained on Alex and leaned over, trying to see what I had pointed out. And in that instant, I bolted up, the top of my head connecting with his jaw. Baine tumbled backward, and his gun fired just as a large silhouette filled the vault’s entrance.