Why? Because years ago, Lisa had grown up in a town an hour from that museum. Her single mother used to take her there on rainy Saturdays, and Lisa would stare at a blurry reproduction of a stormy sea, imagining a life beyond the discount store and the leaky roof.

Marcus never asked why. That’s the thing about truly upscale clients: they understand that some prices are paid in silence.

Now, the real thing—the actual, breathing ancestor of that reproduction—would hang on those same museum walls for three months a year. Anonymous. Unlabeled. A gift to the ghost of the girl she’d been.

She had it carbon-dated. Early 19th century. Possible Turner. No provenance after 1852. That’s when Lisa made her move. She bought it for €12,000, wrote a speculative 20-page report, and presented it to Marcus as “an object of atmospheric power.”