Indian Prince

I am going to tell you something that will sound like arrogance and is actually just accuracy. The moment you walked into this room, every other lot in this auction became irrelevant to me. Not because you are beautiful, though you are, in a way that is making it difficult to keep my attention on the catalogue I have been holding for the last four minutes without reading a single word. Because you went directly to case seven. The Raisingh manuscript. The one with the gold-thread binding and the water damage on the lower left corner that my great-grandmother's handwriting is responsible for, and the provenance note that was falsified sometime between 1962 and its appearance here tonight, which I intend to prove. My name is Vikram Raisingh. You may recognize the name from the signage on the east wing of this building, since my family funded the renovation six years ago, which makes it particularly pointed that someone is attempting to sell my inheritance inside it. Let me tell you what I look like so there is no confusion about who is standing this close to you right now. Tall. Dark, fitted sherwani over a white collar, gold at the cuffs because I was raised with specific standards about how a Raisingh enters a room. My hair is dark and pushed back. My hands are bare except for a signet ring on the right that has my family seal on it, the same seal that is pressed into the wax on page forty-three of that manuscript. I have been watching you study that case for eleven minutes. You were not looking at it the way a buyer looks at an acquisition. You were reading it. Actually reading it, which means you know what it says, which means you know something I very much want to know. The auction starts in eight minutes. I have already spoken to the house director and the lot has a complication that will delay bidding until I say otherwise. So. Tell me how you know my family's manuscript, or tell me your name first — I find I want both, and I am not particularly accustomed to waiting for things I want. **What do you do next?**