Chapter 35

The next day, Saturday, Priscilla was alone in her bedroom in her mansion. She had just arrived here from the penthouse downtown no more than twenty minutes ago. After checking in with Madeline and getting a brief rundown on anything she needed to be aware of, she had told her assistant that she would be upstairs in the bedroom, and that she didn't want to be disturbed—at all—for at least an hour.

Emily wasn't with her. After breakfast this morning, Emily had stated that she needed to spend some time at her condo downtown "…to catch up on personal things, and make some phone calls."

Priscilla figured that Emily also wanted to take some time to be alone with her thoughts, particularly as they concerned their future.

She was quite impressed with how Emily never gave up on the idea that she had been the one who had stolen the painting. There was no proof…the search warrants hadn't uncovered anything…and she herself had said nothing that could be construed as self-incriminating. Yet Emily had never given up on fingering her for the theft. Priscilla could use someone like that in her organization. Dogged persistence was a useful attribute in her world…provided it was kept tamed.

Although it was still morning, Priscilla had a glass of wine in her hand as she sat in a leather barrel chair, with her legs crossed.

She was staring at The Young Shepherdess, admiring the perfection of the painting, and the beauty of the young woman depicted, who was staring right back at her.

"Well, my love," she said to the shepherdess, raising her wine glass, "at least I proved it could be done." She then took a sip of Sauvignon Blanc. "Took long enough, didn't it?" she added, remembering the first time she had looked into the shepherdess's eyes and considered bringing her home.

She had never intended to keep the painting. The scheme had always been to return it. However, she had anticipated holding onto it for at least two months. But that was before she knew that someone named Emily Bacon would be assigned by the insurance company to recover the painting, and that Emily Bacon would be deliciously gorgeous, and that she would be gay.

Oh…and that she would be the type of woman Priscilla wanted to keep in her life for however long Emily wanted to stay in it.

Yep…that had really thrown a wrench in the works.

She'd had to adjust her plans because of Emily…move the schedule up. Fortunately, she was Priscilla Kroyn, and those that worked for her were used to adapting to any changes she demanded with agility.

Still though, she was going to be sad to no longer have the shepherdess here in her bedroom. For the past couple of weeks, she had felt as though she was the luckiest woman on the planet—at least, the luckiest art collecting woman on the planet. And she had even relished the fact that The Young Shepherdess was something that she'd had to—by necessity—enjoy alone, with no one beside her. It seemed that with each passing year, increasingly, people were losing the ability to have anything all to themselves. Every purchase, every acquisition—whether it cost ten million dollars or ten dollars—was shared online, if not by the one who acquired it then by their family and friends. What's more, if it was a high-value purchase, the media inevitably got involved, and then everyone knew about it.

But The Young Shepherdess had been hers and hers alone for these past two-plus weeks, without anyone knowing about it. Sure, Emily's remarkable mind had worked out that she had been the one to steal it, but that hardly counted. Emily had never been here in the bedroom like Priscilla was now, sitting with a glass of wine, in private commune with the spectacular work of art.

But…Priscilla accepted now that she'd had her bit of fun, and it was time to move on. It had never been about keeping the painting, it had always been about proving she could take it. Well, she had done that: proven to herself that she had been up to the monumental task she had set all those years ago. It had been a pleasurable diversion planning the heist…a diversion which had occupied a lot of years. In truth, she credited it with more or less helping to keep her sane over that period of time.

She had a lot of different hobbies—many of them capable of providing an injection of adrenaline into what would normally be an average day. And those hobbies certainly had a therapeutic value, allowing her to release the stress wrought in her system by overseeing her business empire. But…

Skiing down a Black Diamond run always seemed to end so quickly.

Racing boats or cars might occupy most of an afternoon, but that was all.

Placing a $100,000 bet on where a roulette ball would land was thrilling for a moment—maybe two moments if she won.

White water rafting the Futaleufú River in Chile could take up a weekend…at most.

But the heist had occupied her mind for years. And in her opinion, planning it had been just as valuable to her mental health as her sessions with her therapist.

There had been so many iterations of the Plan over the years that she had honestly lost count. There had been so much to learn…about security at the museum, about the building itself, even about Balboa Park as a whole—and some of that information had changed over time, forcing her to revamp her plans.

She'd also had to find people to help with the Plan. People who lived in a shadowy type of underworld, and who valued money above all else. What's more, she'd had to deal with those individuals without letting them in on the fact that they were dealing with her, and without letting them know what exactly the overall scheme was.

All of that hadn't been easy—even for someone with a mind like hers—a mind that allowed her to sit in a conference room in New York or London with someone else whose sole aim was to get the better of her, but who had already lost the war before the meeting even began because she was already ten steps ahead of them.

In short, planning the perfect art theft had been, in her opinion, worth ten decades of sessions with Dr. Dunaway.

But now it was time to return the painting to the people of San Diego.

She was hoping that she and Emily could, in fact, make a go of it as a couple. She was also certain that once The Young Shepherdess had been returned, Emily would eventually stop obsessing about it. Oh, Priscilla knew that Emily might continue to tease her about the painting or make veiled hints about knowing she had stolen it—perhaps in an attempt to catch her off guard and finally admit to it—but she wasn't worried about that.

She wasn't the type to slip up.

However…

As much as she enjoyed thinking about a possible future with Emily, she also knew herself well enough to know with certainty that being with her just might not be enough to help her release all of the stresses she would inevitably continue to have being Priscilla Kroyn.

She would, in fact, need another…project to work on. Something else that would require a lot of planning and re-planning, examining every fine detail repeatedly in order to work out all of the flaws.

She already had such an idea in mind, actually. One that would truly test her mastery of being able to achieve practically anything…

After all, she owned a penthouse apartment in Paris, and had always thought it would be fun to have the Mona Lisa visit for a while…