Chapter 13 - Building a Case Without Turning It Into a Spectacle
Mariana did not post accusations online.
She wanted to.
For three days she drafted statements and deleted them.
Rachel convinced her that public anger could make a complicated case harder, not easier.
So they worked.
Mariana’s former professors signed declarations identifying works from her student years.
A college photographer located high-resolution images from two exhibitions.
The provenance researcher matched Tomas’s photographs to the backs of three disputed canvases.
Devon provided ordinary registrar records showing when gold plaques were ordered and which works Alejandro handled personally.
Arthur Bell supplied his two-page copy of Rosa’s original studio-sale receipt.
The disputed third inventory page would require forensic examination before anyone called it fabricated.
Mariana’s newer works created another problem.
Several had unquestionably been produced while she was receiving studio-service payments.
Her attorney warned her that authorship, ownership, contractual rights, and fraud allegations were not interchangeable.
Some paintings might never return to her physically.
Mariana accepted that.
“I want my name back before I want the canvas back.”
That became the center of their position.
Correct attribution.
No further representation of Celeste as creator of works Mariana could prove she made.
Preservation and review of Tomas’s archive.
A financial accounting of sales involving disputed works.
Release from the studio agreement.
Separate handling of the mortgage debt.
No broad confidentiality provision preventing Mariana from truthfully describing her own work.
The strongest development came from an unexpected but established source.
Malcolm Davenport.
Celeste’s father.
Still alive, seventy-two, and increasingly furious that his family name had become attached to questions he believed had begun with Victor Vega years earlier.
Through counsel, Malcolm provided correspondence showing that he had hired Tomas to examine suspicious provenance alterations.
He had not known Alejandro later purchased Tomas’s archive.
Celeste looked increasingly isolated.
Then Alejandro made one final move.
He produced a new document.
A retroactive “creative collaboration acknowledgment.”
If Mariana signed, she would receive a substantial settlement and Rosa’s remaining second-lien balance would be forgiven.
In exchange, the disputed works would be described as collaborative studio productions released under Celeste’s artistic direction.
Mariana read it.
For years she had wanted money, safety, and peace.
Alejandro was offering all three.
The price was four words.
Celeste’s artistic direction.
May you like
Mariana put the agreement back into the envelope.
“No.”
