Chapter 220: "Who’s The Least Intelligent Person In The Room?"

The auction hall never had a chance to understand what Jeremiah Castellano meant by a "game."

The moment his brief introduction ended, he snapped his fingers.

Snap!

From both sides of the stage, attendants immediately emerged, pushing enormous armored cases on reinforced wheels.

Every painting and sculpture auctioned throughout the evening still remained on display, and the attendants seemed to know exactly where each case belonged.

One by one, they maneuvered them into position, until an armored case stood beside every major work that had been sold that night.

Confusion spread through the audience almost immediately.

Perhaps the most confused person of all, however, was Lucilla Bellini herself.

Standing beside Jeremiah, she tried valiantly to preserve her smile as case after case rolled onto her stage.

Unfortunately, by the time the attendants began arranging them beside her family’s precious merchandise, that smile had developed a distinctly strained quality.

Graciously, she lowered her microphone and drifted closer to Jeremiah.

"Jeremiah, darling," she murmured through clenched teeth, "you see, I love games. But this particular game is starting to look a little strange. What exactly are you trying to do?"

Jeremiah merely flashed her a brilliant smile. He leaned down, cupping one hand beside her ear as though about to share some delightful little secret.

"Since it’s a game, Lucilla darling, I’d hate to spoil all the fun. Why don’t we actually play and find out?"

Before Lucilla could respond, Jeremiah turned away from her and faced the audience once more.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," he said into the microphone, "I’ve always been terribly curious about something. I’ve always wanted to know exactly how much money intelligent people can spend before they remember to ask an intelligent question."

Expressions across the audience began to change, confusion gradually giving way to frowns of growing displeasure.

Jeremiah’s smile widened at the sight.

"So tonight, I thought we’d finally satisfy my curiosity together. Shall we play a little game called... Who’s the Least Intelligent Person in the Room?"

The wealthy crowd barely had time to decide whether they’d just been insulted — or what sort of bizarre game could possibly carry such a name — before Jeremiah snapped his fingers again.

Snap!

Every attendant standing beside an armored case reached for the latches and released them.

CLACK.

The heavy armored panels dropped onto the stage almost simultaneously, striking hard enough to send a vibration through the floor.

THUD.

The sound itself was startling.

What the cases revealed, however, was considerably more shocking.

Inside each armored container sat another work of art.

Paintings.

Sculptures.

Antiquities.

Every one of them seemingly identical to the corresponding lot displayed beside it.

For several long seconds, the auction hall went completely silent. Hundreds of eyes stared at the stage as though everyone had collectively decided their vision had failed them.

Several guests blinked repeatedly.

One elderly man removed his glasses, polished them furiously, put them back on, then looked again.

Unfortunately, nothing changed.

The paintings remained identical.

So did the sculptures.

By then, Lucilla’s elegant composure had suffered a catastrophic failure.

"Jeremiah Castellano!"

Her voice carried across the hall without any need for a microphone.

"What the fuck is all this shit you’re bringing onto my stage?"

Jeremiah spun toward her.

"An excellent question!"

He snapped his fingers once more, and the attendants immediately withdrew thick provenance files from the cases and presented them to the audience.

Jeremiah, meanwhile, plucked the microphone from the podium and began strolling between the displayed works — as casually as a museum guide conducting a private tour.

"You see, ladies and gentlemen, all this shit I’ve so rudely brought onto our dear Lucilla’s stage wasn’t particularly easy to acquire. Several pieces came from other private collections of the criminal variety. Several more required truly obscene amounts of money to obtain."

He sighed dramatically.

"There were negotiations, transportation difficulties, verification expenses... A terrible ordeal, really. But because I love everyone in this room far too much, I went to extraordinary lengths to retrieve all of them for you tonight."

At that exact moment, the enormous displays flanking the stage flickered to life.

The footage showed a painstaking process involving Castellano men tracing the works back through their sources, securing them, moving them under guard, and subjecting them to examination.

Jeremiah never explicitly said what all of it meant. Everything onstage was screaming one very simple message.

’House Bellini sold you fake shit.’

’Mine is real.’

Below the stage, chairs began scraping backward as people rose from their seats.

Several buyers moved closer to the stage to inspect the provenance records held by Jeremiah’s attendants. Others craned their necks toward the duplicate works, arguing in increasingly urgent whispers.

"What the hell is going on? Are those supposed to be the originals?"

"Don’t be ridiculous. This is a Bellini auction! I spent twenty-two million here last year!"

"Then why does Castellano have provenance records?"

"Because Castellano is a fucking lunatic. He probably forged the provenance!"

"That doesn’t mean Bellini’s pieces are fake."

"Then why are there two of everything?"

"I don’t know! Maybe one of them has a twin!"

Onstage, Lucilla finally decided she’d tolerated enough. She couldn’t simply stand there and allow Jeremiah to control the narrative for another second.

"Excuse me, Jeremiah darling, but what sort of ridiculous shit are you trying to prove here?"

She gestured contemptuously toward the armored cases.

"Are you seriously standing on my stage, inside my family’s gallery, trying to tell everyone here that this trash you’ve dragged in is authentic, while my family — the Bellini family, which has spent generations dealing in authenticated fine art throughout Borgata — has been selling our esteemed guests forgeries?"

She laughed sharply, disbelief dripping from every syllable.

"Do you even hear yourself? You? A man whose expertise consists of running a casino and putting crude men inside cages to beat each other like animals?"

Jeremiah instantly pressed one hand over his heart, looking positively scandalized.

"My God! Lucilla, darling! How could you reduce my beautiful, prestigious Castellano Club to something that sounds like a chicken coop? Besides, if you’re so certain your merchandise is authentic..."

He tilted his head.

"...why don’t we give it a little test?"

Lucilla’s anger collapsed into confusion.

"What test?"

Jeremiah was already crossing the stage toward one of the sculptures sold earlier that evening.

The unfortunate piece he’d selected had been introduced as an authentic Renaissance sculpture — a beautifully preserved depiction of a goddess attributed to a prolific artist of the period.

Earlier, thanks in no small part to his aggressive participation in the bidding, the sculpture had eventually sold for sixty million dollars.

Down in the audience, its new owner watched Jeremiah approach his purchase, a faint sense of dread creeping over him.

’Why is he standing that close?’

Before the buyer could answer the question himself, Jeremiah slipped one hand inside his suit jacket and pulled something out. The object that emerged drained all color from the buyer’s face.

A hammer.

Across the room, dozens of people seemed to recognize the object at precisely the same moment.

Lucilla herself looked like a woman watching her own execution being prepared — although, at the moment, the statue seemed considerably more likely to die first.

"JEREMIAH CASTELLANO!"

Her scream tore across the stage.

"What the FUCK are you doing?!"

It was too late.

Jeremiah had already raised the hammer.

Below the stage, the man who had just paid sixty million dollars for the sculpture opened his mouth in absolute horror as he watched the hammer descend in one beautiful, merciless arc — straight toward the goddess’s head.

BANG!

The beautiful goddess’s face exploded.

Fragments of stone burst across the stage as the hammer smashed through her features, scattering chips and pale dust over the display beneath a chorus of horrified gasps.

Hands flew to mouths throughout the auction hall.

Someone screamed.

The buyer himself stared at the ruined head for approximately two seconds, then his eyes rolled backward and he fainted on the spot.

For one terrible moment, nobody seemed capable of doing anything except stare at the destruction — until the initial horror began to change.

Several guests who had risen in outrage slowly stopped shouting. They’d noticed something inside the broken section of the sculpture — something beneath the supposedly centuries-old stone that didn’t look remotely as ancient as the provenance claimed.

Amid the stunned silence and mounting confusion, Jeremiah was naturally the calmest person in the room.

Still holding the hammer, he blew lightly across the damage, sending a small cloud of dust drifting away, then widened his eyes as though he’d just made an astonishing archaeological discovery.

"My God."

He gave an impressed whistle.

"The Renaissance people somehow discovered polymers before we did."

At that precise moment, Lucilla looked more than ready to pull out a gun and shoot Jeremiah directly between the eyes.

Whatever fascination she’d ever possessed for the man had finally lost its battle against the more immediate desire to murder him.

Unfortunately, Lucilla had no gun.

All she could do was stand there, staring at the exposed interior of the sculpture, and arrive at one very important conclusion.

’I’m fucked.’

Below the stage, the collectors were reaching the same realization from an entirely different direction.

They had spent the entire evening competing against one another, throwing millions upon millions of dollars at what now appeared to be exactly what Jeremiah had implied.

Fakes.

Among them, Mister Acosta somehow recovered from the shock before most.

He shot out of his chair so violently it nearly toppled backward, one trembling finger stabbing toward Jeremiah.

"Castellano! You fucking knew?! You fucking knew, and you made me bid forty million dollars for that fucking fake painting?"

Jeremiah immediately turned toward him and flashed a blinding smile.

"No, darling. I merely raised my paddle several times. You are the one who bid forty million."

Acosta’s mouth fell open.

Before anything could come out, Jeremiah had already turned back toward the rest of the audience, surveying their horrified expressions with immense satisfaction.

"Now, everyone, wasn’t that tremendous fun?" he asked brightly. "Have we figured out which one of you is the biggest idiot in the room?"

Nobody answered him.

Every single person in the audience was too busy losing their minds. Within seconds, phones appeared everywhere as collectors started shouting over one another like traders watching the market collapse.

"Freeze every outstanding payment to Bellini right fucking now!"

"Get Legal on the phone!"

"Pull every Bellini purchase we’ve made in the last fifteen years!"

"ALL OF THEM!"

"We have a Bellini sculpture in the fucking lobby!"

"Then don’t hit it with a hammer!"

"I wasn’t planning to!"

At the back of the hall, amid the pandemonium, Massio Moretti remained remarkably composed.

The elderly Don neither demanded answers nor joined the frantic rush toward the stage. He simply planted his cane against the floor and pushed himself upright.

"There’s no longer any reason to stay," he told his sons. "Schedule a meeting with Enrico Bellini. We speak with him first thing tomorrow morning."

Damiano and Emiliano responded almost simultaneously.

"Yes, Father."

Damiano was already reaching for his phone while Emiliano moved to support his father, and within moments, the Moretti entourage had begun making its way toward the exit.

Bernardo Leone, seated nearby, apparently reached the same conclusion. He rose without ceremony, his son following, and soon the Leone men were joining the Morettis in leaving the auction hall.

Onstage, Lucilla couldn’t hear a single word Massio had said to his sons, but she didn’t need to.

Massio Moretti wasn’t merely one of House Bellini’s largest clients. He also wasn’t a man one could afford to offend.

Quite literally, the man ran a business that disposed of corpses through Borgata’s drainage system for a living.

Watching him calmly walk away was enough to tell Lucilla exactly what sort of consequences might be waiting for House Bellini, once tonight’s revelation spread.

"No! Don Massio!" Her voice rang desperately across the hall. "Please, wait! You can’t simply believe Jeremiah Castellano because of one ridiculous stunt! Stop! Don Massio, stop!"

Lucilla hurried off the stage after him, but she barely made it three steps before several collectors lunged at her from the crowd.

"You bitch!" A female celebrity seized a fistful of Lucilla’s hair and yanked. "Do you have any fucking idea how much money I’ve put into the shit your family sells?!"

Lucilla’s head snapped backward.

"AH!"

Before she could wrench herself free, another furious collector grabbed the fabric of her gown.

"Seventeen years!" the man roared. "We’ve purchased from Bellini for seventeen fucking years! How much of it is fake?"