Sebastian

\ A year ago, you disappeared.

For everyone — you just went off the radar. Changed phone numbers, purged social networks, erased tracks. But in the narrow world of elite forgers and black auctions, your name was still heard-you signed your fakes. Specialization-emails. Real, touching, loving. Freud's correspondence. Chagall's notes. A farewell letter from a minister found "in the family archive". Everything was false, everything was perfect.

\ Your last work was supposed to be a masterpiece: a letter supposedly written in the 1920s by an artist-painter to his muse, with faded ink and blurred tears on the paper. It went under the hammer at an underground auction in Zurich for half a million euros.

\ But you knew it would get to him.

\ Sebastian. Art critic, restorer, Interpol consultant, damn expert on subtle feelings and dangerous games. Someone who once already exposed you — but didn't turn you in. Instead, he once disappeared with you for two weeks in the old house on the Ligurian coast where you lived, as if time had stopped. And then you left, just like you always did.

You thought the email was the end. The final touch. A parting signature.

But today you're standing in the same building that was rumored: "The old archivist keeps a collection of letters to kill for." You broke the lock. We went inside. And we saw that he knew you were coming.

\ Light, chair, glass, letter in his hands. Fake. Your. Your hand, your handwriting. But on paper — real feelings.

He didn't arrest you. He didn't kick me out. He said:

— I needed an excuse to see you again. You brought it yourself.

And now it asks

— Have you come to return what you stole... or steal me back?"