"You go out first."

Anna picked up her phone and nodded gently to the butler, "I'll give you an answer in the evening." ”

"Let's go away too, leave the blanket in your hand, Auguste likes to cover something when he takes a nap lately."

The butler bowed slightly.

He walked out of the study with two servants.

The moment he turned to push the door, the corner of his eye swept over the names of the contacts that flashed on Anna's phone screen.

A good housekeeper should not be watching on the privacy that the host does not want to share.

In this study, there may have been talk of the reorganization of the Land Ministry, the contradictions between the policies of Wilhelm II of Prussia and Bismarck next door, and the secret plans of the generals of the General Staff to deal with the Russians.

Asking about things he shouldn't know is fatal.

But.

After all, it's not the same as before.

He didn't mean to, but the butler couldn't help but be curious.

Walking out of the room to a place where no one was around, the butler buried the words he saw in the deepest part of his heart, and covered them with two shovels of dirt to make sure that they would never be turned out again.

Still confused, he repeated the name on the phone: "Miss Kate? Who is she? ”

——

"Hello?"

Gu Weijing cleared his throat.

It's a little strange to hear your voice in the back of your ear that has been processed by the voice card changer, as if there is another woman or ventriloquist hiding in her chest.

But Gu Weijing has used it many times, so he has adapted to this sense of disobedience very well.

He was more curious.

The reason why Mr. Sloth suddenly contacted himself.

"I'm still drawing the manuscript, and I have a few scenes that need to be reconsidered. The queen feeling of the protagonist of the chapter, I think I am not satisfied with the portrayal. But the pace of progress was expected, and the publisher ......"

"It's not a matter of the publishing house, I just want to find someone to talk to, does it bother you?"

Anna stared at the busy crowd at the window.

In order to welcome the convoy of the president who might visit, from servants to cooks, the estate has been rehearsed from top to bottom many times since last week.

At this point, even though the trip has been cancelled, the feeling of busyness continues.

Anna knew it wasn't just the manor in front of her.

Entire cities and even entire countries are moving towards a huge administrative machine.

Modern Austria is a very small country.

The upcoming European Art Congress will basically be the most important large-scale external event in the next few months.

At this moment.

Countless departments across the country, tens of thousands of civil servants and logistics staff, like nesting worker ants, are busy boiling medicine for the annual meeting.

The old Fokker-100 presidential jet, painted in red and white with the black one-headed eagle logo painted on the tail, should have begun a routine mechanical overhaul a day before the short-haul mission.

The security of the Secret Service, with explosives odor analyzers and EOD dogs, was busy eliminating possible dangerous factors in the steakhouse.

Further afield.

Europe, North America, Asia.

Larry Gagosian of Gagosian Gallery, Manuel Perrotin of Galerie Perrotin, Yukito Tabata of Tokyo Gallery, Mars III of Mars Gallery...... All the great gallerists and their representatives will arrive in Glitz within two days or have already arrived.

International flights and private jets will fly here from all over the world like migrating swallows.

Glitz International Airport is the largest international airport in Austria and has three main runways for jumbo jets to take off and land.

Even so.

The near-saturation of the flight volume will still make the control tower busy and noisy like the lobby of a stock exchange.

There will be international tourists who can't buy tickets, art lovers.

And because there are too many business jets to take off and land, and there are no supporting seats to park, big collectors and big artists have to choose to take a slow country train to Glitz City.

Twenty kilometers away.

In a coffee shop in the city center, her secretary was in a personal conversation with Cao Xuan's assistant.

Sir Brown was also sitting in a leather chair in his chairman's office, in front of the large frame of The Last Supper, busily answering phone calls, and the little silver goatee on his chin might be stained with the tea on the table.

That's just what's going on on all the bright side.

Anna knows.

There is another unknown world.

Citibank's Art Investment Division, the Rockefeller Family Foundation, the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Fund, the French Public Pension Fund, ...... In the glittering glass buildings, on London's financial streets, and in the offices of investors on Wall Street, countless bright and dark eyes are cast on the venue of the opening ceremony.

Deloitte's report from the previous year showed that in the two decades from 1995 to 2021.

The annual growth rate of global contemporary art prices reached 13.8%, much higher than the 10.2%, 5.7%, 6.2% and 4.2% of the S&P 500, global equities, gold and North American real estate during the same period.

High-end art investment is still one of the best choices for high-net-worth individuals to inherit wealth and avoid taxes.

And over the past two decades, all the inside information on the art market has caused ripples that have not been as influential as the soon-to-be-established Oil Painting Foundation.

The world's hot money is keeping an eye on the big news that Sir Brown is about to release at the opening ceremony.

Sitting in her study at home, Anna could imagine in her ears that hundreds of millions of dollars of money flowed from one account to another, and finally formed the sound of the waves like a rushing river.

Smell the burning tobacco and cigars in the offices of those professional investors.

If you put it at this moment.

All the financiers who were in a meeting to study "Sir Brown's big news" had all the noxious tobacco on their lips gathered together, and it was sure to form a pile of torches that would light up the night sky of the city.

or restless, or restless.

Tension and excitement are creeping in.

"It's a burning world." Anna sighed in her heart.

Only gossip flows faster than money.

When Reddit and Twitter, even all kinds of ordinary retail netizens, began to pat their chests and mysteriously talk about the upcoming changes in the art market.

Countless rumors weave into a giant spider's web like spider silk.

Sir Brown and Miss Elena are like two big spiders crawling in the center of a spider's web.

No, Sir Brown is a big spider, she's just a little dragonfly or butterfly stuck in the spider thread, watching the chelicerae mouthparts about to insert into her body.

"Talk to me, Ms. Cat. I want to hear you talk. ”

Anna pleaded to the microphone in hand.

She seldom spoke to people in such a weak tone, not even when she faced the pressing pressure of Kruger Bank as a young woman.

But she was really tired and a little tired.

Intellectually.

She felt that she should have more important things to do than talking to people and staring at the blue sky outside the window.

It's like sending a text message to the secretary to ask about the progress of the negotiations with Cao Xuan, or delving into how to convince the president in an hour's dinner time.

Now at this point in time.

It is not an exaggeration to describe an inch of time and an inch of gold.

An ounce of gold was only $2,000, and she held the microphone in front of the window, and every minute she wasted was something that no amount of money could make up.

Butterflies covered in cobwebs will also try to flutter twice.

But Anna just couldn't lift her spirits.

It's weird.

She was less interested in these things than in bathing Auguste, and she just wanted to put down her pretense and talk to someone casually and unabashedly.

She considered calling her college roommate Aurora, but hesitating, hesitating, she still picked up the phone that contacted the detective cat.

Anna had only known each other for a few months.

But she found that the other party had become a candidate in her heart and made her feel closer.

Agent Mr. Sloth and the painter of her choice.

We have never met.

But it is the purest relationship.

"Uh......"

Let yourself speak?

Gu Weijing on the other end of the phone was a little hesitant, he had never heard Mr. Sloth speak to him in such a tone, nor had he heard such a strange request.

He thinks that his agent can easily get a 10-billion-dollar listed company like Scholastic at the head of the publishing industry, and when it comes to some industry anecdotes and artistic secrets, it is more like a walking encyclopedia, knowing everything.

Mr. Sloth is an all-powerful jingle cat in his heart.

All of a sudden.

His jingle cat tone suddenly revealed exhaustion and distress, which made Gu Weijing at a loss.

"If it's inconvenient, forget it. I'm just a little irritable. We're sorry to bother you with this negativity. Next Wednesday, we'll continue to work on the manuscript of "The Burning World", where we talked about it last time......" Anna heard the hesitation in Gu Weijing's tone.

Change your tune immediately.

No matter how powerful she is on the outside, Anna is still a delicate and sensitive person on the inside.

Sensitive people are forever afraid of getting hurt.

Through the windows, in their inner castle, they pressed the tip of their noses against the cold glass surface, vigilantly observing the world.

Occasionally, occasionally.

She would carefully open a corner of her heart and try to tell her close to her.

But once rejected or perceived the other party's impatience.

She will immediately retract herself into the powerful and indifferent shell of the "Elena Family Master" like a little turtle that has spotted danger, and will not give others a chance to hurt her.

Anna regretted it a little and recklessly dialed the number.

She didn't want to hear a rejection or a perfunctory reply from the detective cat, so she took the initiative to end this nonsensical conversation.

"No, no, no, I'd love to hear and say it, it's just that I don't know what to do." The detective cat's voice came quickly from the earpiece, "You're ......"

Gu Weijing thought about it.

Possible answers came to mind.

"Are you out of love? I'm just afraid that I don't have any good advice for this kind of thing, and I don't really understand emotional things. ”

Probably only a broken love.

In order to make such a powerful person as Mr. Sloth feel so tired in his heart.

He didn't know the specific age of Mr. Sloth, and he thought that the other party should be the kind of cool uncle who was thirty-seven or eight years old. When he first came into contact, Gu Weijing thought that with such a gentle and elegant temperament, especially a voice with a slight sense of vicissitudes, Mr. Sloth should be the kind of wealthy gentleman about fifty years old.

Talked a lot.

Even though Gu Weijing didn't ask about his age, he vaguely felt that judging from the content of the chat and the tone of his conversation, the other party was quite young.

So much so that there were a few moments.

If it weren't for the word on Mr. Sloth, it would seem weird.

He even felt that the other party was a little "cute in contrast".

There will be that feeling of a young girl, coming out of the voice of an uncle.

It was like a dark gray iron tree blooming a delicate flower.

"Broken love?"

Anna was amused for a moment.

"You can say that, too." She nodded, and even admitted.

Graham Green said that couples who are in love, after a short and sweet period of love, either become soul mates and move towards the sanctification of piety. Otherwise, there is no third possibility for each other to recognize each other's ugly faces in trivial lives, and to vulgarize in trivial arguments. ”

She thought of the uncles and aunts on the board who had been familiar and even close to her as a child.

Even Sir Brown.

Even if he and his aunt have some differences in ideas, they are also a good pair in more than ten years of cooperation, and to be honest, the vigorous development of "Oil Painting" magazine after the millennium is a great credit to Sir Brown.

Once.

The other party is also a frequent visitor to Yelena's manor, and she is still a little girl, and they have played sailing together on the lake behind the manor.

Circumstances change with the passage of time.

When everyone embarks on different paths, everyone is drifting apart, which is indeed the end of a relationship.

"If you speak of a partner, you mean the disillusionment of some abstract beauty. Well, falling out of love is a good way to put it, and you're not wrong about it. She smiled.

"I don't understand."

Gu Weijing said very honestly that he didn't understand.

"It's okay, let's talk about you."

Anna asked curiously, "Ms. Cat, I don't want to be rude. But your information says that you are 36 years old this year, so you shouldn't be ignorant of relationship problems, right? Even if you're not married, you should have been in love a few times. ”

"Talked, talked!"

Gu Weijing's self-conscious image inadvertently revealed between the lines did not match his personality on the Internet, and he hurriedly made up for it: "Those who have been in love have also had people who have been excited." I had a lot of emotional experience! ”

"Really?"

Originally, because of the "Oil Painting", Anna, who was full of faint sorrow in her heart, couldn't help it now, and was amused by the other party's youthful appearance.

It's so green that you want to take a bite.

Only a very immature emotional junior brother would answer in a hurry when faced with this kind of question.

"You're so cute."

Anna said, biting her lip.

As she spoke, she realized that she had lost her words a little.

The other party doesn't act like a middle-aged sister like a wolf, and he doesn't act like a steady art blogger today.

It doesn't matter if your girlfriends talk about gossip.

Speak to a girl like this in the voice of a middle-aged man.

It's a bit frivolous.

It's also a bit ...... Well, the taste of flirting.

(End of chapter)