Part 10:
They want first access to the car if the authentication confirms. They’re prepositioning before we even know what it is. That’s how this market works at the high end. The significant money moves early. And if the authentication fails, if it turns out my father bought an expensive antique nobody cares about, then the consortium has no interest and neither does anyone else. He paused.
But that’s not what’s going to happen. You’re that certain. I’m that certain. She was quiet for a moment. I’ve been doing research, she said, on Stellarini, on the history of this kind of work. I found a catalog of their known productions. Voss and another scholar co-authored it. 12 years ago. I have a copy.
The photographs in it. She paused. The way those cars looked, the lines. He waited. My father had a print in his office, she said. I always thought it was a sketch, like a design drawing for something that never got built. It was on the wall for as long as I can remember. Something shifted slightly in Ethan’s understanding of things.
Do you still have it? It’s still in his office. I I haven’t I haven’t really gone through his office. Would you look at it? Tell me what’s in the bottom right corner. If there’s any text or marking. He heard her moving a door. Footsteps on what sounded like hardwood. The soft sound of something being taken from a wall.
Then it says Stellarini Carrotia 1968 and a number B-04. The room Ethan was standing in, his kitchen, 11 at night, Sophie asleep, the familiar low hum of the refrigerator, seemed to take on a different quality. B-4, that was the workshop designation for the 1968 commission, the one in the archive records, the one that matched the chassis number on the car in her storage building.
“Your father knew what he had,” Ethan said quietly. a long silence on the other end. He knew, she said. Her voice was different now. Something had come loose in it. Not dramatically, but in the small cracking way of someone who has just understood something that changes the shape of what they thought they knew. He just didn’t know how to prove it, Ethan said.
And then he ran out of time. Neither of them spoke for a moment. He talked about it, she said finally. about that car. He said he’d bought it because it had a feeling. His exact word, feeling. I thought he was being sentimental. I thought she stopped, started again. I told him once that he should just have it scrapped, that it was taking up space and it was never going to happen.
Ethan didn’t say anything. He didn’t argue with me about it. He just said, he said, “Some things are worth keeping even when you don’t know why yet.” The silence that followed that was the kind that didn’t need filling. “He was right,” Ethan said eventually. “Yes,” she said in a voice that was doing quiet work to stay level.
“He was 12 days after the leak, Dr. Voss received the full commission file from the Stellarini archive. She called Ethan directly, which she hadn’t done before. It had always been emails, formal and thorough. The fact that she called told him something. The commission file is complete, she said. Original intake documentation, workshop photographs, delivery records.
The vehicle commissioned in 1968 under designation B-04, was delivered to a private buyer in January 1969. The buyer’s name, the archive has it as a company name, Meridian Trading Group, registered in Luxembourg, which is consistent with how wealthy buyers of that era structured private purchases. Tracing it further is going to require separate research, but the vehicle is documented completely. A pause.
Ethan, the workshop photographs. Yes, there’s one taken during the body forming process. The SE-pillar, the same technique I identified in the car at the estate. Another pause. It’s the same hands. The marks are identical. He sat down in his office chair, which creaked because it always creaked. Okay. He said, “I want to be precise about what I can say formally at this stage.” Dr.
Voss said in the voice of someone who needed to be precise and was being precise. But informally, informally, informally, I have been in this field for 31 years, and this is the moment where I would bet my career. That was Renatavos. That was what that meant. I need to call Isabella Sterling. He said yes and James and we need to arrange the formal announcement.
This needs to be done properly in a controlled setting with all the documentation present and the authentication team present. When as soon as we can coordinate the information is already circulating and every day we wait the narrative gets harder to control. She paused and Ethan you should be there at the announcement. I’m not.
He started, “You identified this car. You initiated the process. Your role in this needs to be part of the record.” Her voice was firm. This is not negotiable. He looked around his office, the desk covered in invoices, the cracked corner of the wall where Marcus had backed a truck too close once, the pine air freshener on its last legs. “I’ll be there,” he said.
He told Sophie that night. not everything. She was six, and the full complexity of international authentication and coach building history and the economics of rare automobile discovery was several years beyond where she was. But he told her the broad shape of it, sitting on the edge of her bed while Gerald the elephant waited between them.
