The call came just after midnight.
Lucien had just excused himself from a conversation about rare Sicilian wine when his earpiece buzzed thrice.
That meant a vault breach.
He didn't rush. He didn't need to.
By the time he arrived at the back corridor of the gallery, three guards were already waiting, pale and stiff. The vault door stood open. Perfectly intact. No forced entry. Just… open.
When Lucien looked into the case, he discovered it was empty. The coin was missing.
Lucien stood at the threshold, gaze narrowing as he scanned the pedestal. Not a single fingerprint. Not a misaligned sensor. Not even a scratch on the velvet.
"Get me every angle from security," he said coolly.
"But sir," one of the guards swallowed. "There's nothing on the footage. No one went near the case. It's like—like it never happened."
Lucien found it almost amusing. Two million dollars' worth of custom detection layers. The best surveillance in Europe. Guards are trained to spot a blink out of place. And still, someone had played them.
Whoever had the audacity to attempt this wouldn't get far. He would find them.
But this was exactly why he'd prepared a Plan B.
He patted the inside of his coat, fingers brushing the weight in his pocket, a silent confirmation that the real coin had never left him. A habit he'd repeated all night without thinking.
But this time, his hand froze.
There was something else.
His fingers closed around a slim, unfamiliar edge. Cold. Smooth.
He drew it out slowly.
A black card. Unmarked, except for a single silver symbol etched into the center.
Lucien had never seen it in person—but he knew exactly what it was.
The calling card of a ghost.
The thief no one could catch, no one could trace. Most swore they weren't real—only stories born from flawless jobs and empty cases. If it weren't for the card left behind each time, the world would assume the missing artifacts were just… gone.
But the ghost only ever left the card at the scene.
So if the card was in his pocket…
Lucien yanked out the coin, flipped it over in his palm, and muttered, "Fuck."
It was the exact one he had kept in the Vault.
The ghost had not just stolen the fake coin from the vault, she had used it to replace the real one in his pocket.
Right under his nose.
He looked down at the coin and card on his palm, expression hardening. "I need to see who it is."
"Boss?" his personal assistant Matteo asked.
Lucien didn't answer. He walked to the nearest console and keyed in a six-digit code. A sleek black case was brought to him minutes later.
Inside: a flat, high-res receiver.
The real coin, now missing, hadn't just been kept in his pocket. It had been fitted with a camera so discreet it could pass through customs and retinal scans without detection. A wafer-thin, transparent lens bonded to the coin's surface, completely invisible unless you knew exactly what to look for.
Lucien activated the feed.
Nothing came to sight at first. Just a blank screen pulsing softly like a dead heartbeat.
He waited.
Minutes passed. Still blank. But then, the feed stuttered. A faint glitch, a tremor in the smooth black like something had nudged the recording back to life.
Lucien leaned forward, eyes locked on the screen.
The frame jumped for half a second, and he watched as the coin got lifted by steady fingers.
He paused it and checked the timestamp.
He couldn't confirm the time stamp because the gallery's external CCTV footage and the one he had installed inside the vault had been looped.
He clicked play again.
A few more seconds of static. Then another jolt in the footage this time from a different angle. The coin was being slipped out from a small leather pouch, and then, for just a breath of a second, it happened.
A face came to light and Lucien immediately paused the feed and zoomed in.
A girl.
Not a team. Not a masked figure in gloves. Just… her.
He hadn't seen this face near him at all. Not during the gala. Not in passing. It wasn't the wide-eyed escort who'd clung to a millionaire's arm and stumbled into him earlier.
Except…
His gaze sharpened.
Except it was.
He zoomed again.
No glasses. No wig. Different hair. But the same eyes. Same mouth. Same girl.
She had touched him for less than a second.
And stolen from him.
Lucien stared at the frozen frame.
His expression didn't change, but he slowly sank into the nearest chair, never once breaking eye contact with the screen.
Matteo stepped up behind him. "Want me to track down the man she came with?"
Lucien didn't look away. "He was a decoy. Didn't even know who he brought in."
"So what do we do?"
Lucien's voice stayed quiet, and when he finally spoke, he asked. "Did you find the girl with the glasses on any backup angles? The one who tripped into me?"
"No, sir. Not a single angle."
"Figured," Lucien murmured. "It was her."
Matteo straightened. "Then we unveil her to the public. Run facial scans, plaster her image across every agency we've got. I'll get the men on it. We'll have her in a week."
Lucien's gaze darkened, but his voice stayed level. "No."
Matteo hesitated. "Sir?"
"We'll take it from her."
"What—the coin?"
Lucien didn't answer, he had already pressed play and was watching the latest feed that aligned with the current time.
In the feed, she was seated on the floor, the stolen coin gliding effortlessly across her knuckles. A golden retriever pawed at her side, tail wagging, and she smiled—then casually rolled the coin toward the dog. As if the artifact she'd just risked everything to steal was nothing more than a toy.
As if the dog was the more priceless thing in the room.
Matteo leaned in slightly, watching the screen. His brows pulled together. "It's a dog."
Lucien's lips curled.
"That's what we are going to steal from her."
Matteo frowned. "It's a dog. She could get another one. She wouldn't care if—"
"She will," Lucien interrupted, his tone sharp but quiet. "Because she's a thief, Matteo."
He leaned closer to the screen, his eyes gleaming now with something darker.
"And thieves don't let anyone else steal from them."
He said with a small grin, still watching… watching her.