Los Angeles · Underground Gem Market · VIP Lounge
November 17, 2023 · 2:30 PM
By the time Elizabeth appeared at Stall No. 47 for the third time, Bob already had her coffee ready.
"Americano. Light ice. Triple espresso."
She pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead and took the paper cup without saying thank you. Bob didn't mind. He retreated to the corner of the stall and continued polishing the Patek Philippe he had sold and bought back more times than he could remember, while keeping his peripheral vision fixed on the distance between the two of them.
One meter and thirty centimeters.
Two inches closer than yesterday.
Eli was examining a silver coin from the reign of George III. The mist fed him clean data:
1817 · Sheffield mint · Condition 7/10 · Estimated value: $4,400.
The vendor was asking sixty dollars. Eli still hadn't countered.
"Are you free today?"
Elizabeth stood directly in front of the stall. Her camel coat had been replaced by black cashmere. Her lipstick had shifted from rose-brown to matte red. She didn't mention salary, shares, or yesterday's conversation about how he "hadn't lost enough yet."
"Not free."
Eli placed the coin back onto the tray.
"Then I'll wait."
She really did. She stepped to the side of the stall, leaning against a stack of old books. Her coffee rested on a cardboard box.
Bob's jaw nearly dislocated.
Three minutes later, Eli stood up and slipped the silver coin into his pocket.
"Let's go."
Elizabeth set down her coffee. "Where?"
"To the place where you still haven't lost enough."
The underground gem market was hidden beneath an unremarkable office building in downtown Los Angeles.
The entrance masqueraded as a fire exit. The elevator required a keycard. The keycard required membership.
Elizabeth produced a black-and-gold card. The scanner flashed green. The doors slid open.
The elevator interior was wrapped in dark gray velvet. In the corner stood a living orchid—its bloom timed perfectly, every petal fully open.
"You come here often?" Eli asked.
"I used to." Elizabeth pressed B1. "Not since I lost seven rounds in a row."
"Why today?"
She didn't answer.
The doors opened. Noise rushed in.
The market covered nearly two thousand square meters, with an eight-meter-high ceiling. In the central exhibition zone stood seventy-three raw stones for the month. Each block sat beneath a spotlight with a price tag below.
Cheapest: $180,000.
Most expensive: $5.5 million—the same stone that had been declared 'worth no more than two million' yesterday.
Eli walked past it without stopping.
"What are you looking for?" Elizabeth followed him, heels clicking against concrete in an unhurried rhythm.
"Nothing."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Watching people lose money."
He stopped at the edge of the exhibition hall.
There stood a lonely steel table in shadow. On it lay seven rough stones—not this month's selection. A handwritten label read:
Previous tail stock · Clearance sale · Bundle price: $120,000.
No spotlight reached them. The table sat like an abandoned child.
Eli crouched and placed his palm on the first stone.
The mist surged in.
Imperial Green Jadeite · High Ice Grade · Integrity 95%
Estimated value: $17 million.
Into the cart.
Second stone.
Royal Blue Sapphire · Untreated · 32 carats · Clarity VVS1
Estimated value: $29 million.
Into the cart.
Third stone.
He paused.
It was fist-sized, its surface stained with rust-colored scars like a meteor's burnt shell.
The mist's first line was ordinary:
Internal diamond · 23 carats · Fancy Vivid Pink.
The second line froze his fingers for three seconds:
Handled on March 14, 1972 by Samuel Blackwood.
Note: Blackwood's appraisal — "For Eli."
Eli showed no expression. He placed the third stone into the cart and pushed it toward the cashier.
Elizabeth followed without speaking.
But she had seen it.
Those three seconds.
That wasn't the look of a buyer.
It was the look of someone returning something.
"Three clearance stones. One bundle. $120,000," the cashier said without looking up.
Eli paid, signed, and pushed the cart to the cutting area.
Elizabeth finally spoke. "Are you sure?"
"Not at all."
He lifted the first stone onto the cutting platform. "That's why I only bought three."
The cutter was an old man in his sixties. He turned the stone under the light and frowned.
"Cracks here, here, and here. They run deep."
"Cut here."
Eli pressed his finger against the side and drew a line.
"Three centimeters."
The old man hesitated.
"If it's ruined, it's on me."
The blade descended. Stone dust burst under the spotlight.
Three centimeters.
Imperial green light spilled out—like a summer rainforest sealed inside ancient rock.
The cutter's hands began to shake.
"This… this is…"
"High Ice. Imperial Green." Eli rotated the stone toward the second-floor lounge. "Integrity ninety-five percent."
An appraiser pushed in, loupe pressed to the surface. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
"Seventeen million dollars."
Behind the glass upstairs, someone knocked over a glass of whiskey.
Second stone.
"Two centimeters. Cut here."
Royal blue. Thirty-two carats. VVS1.
"Twenty-nine million."
The cutter removed his glasses, wiped them, put them back on, and wiped them again.
"I've done this for forty-two years… never seen anything like this."
Eli said nothing.
He lifted the third stone onto the platform.
"No line," he said. "I'll cut it myself."
The old man stepped back.
Eli gripped the handle. The blade hovered three centimeters above the stone. His shadow stretched across the concrete like an ancient execution ritual.
He didn't need a guide line.
The mist had already mapped every lattice, every hue, every fracture inside the stone.
The blade fell.
Stone peeled away like cicada skin.
First layer. Second layer. Third.
Pink.
Not pale pink. Not champagne. Not ambiguous.
Fancy Vivid Pink.
The pinnacle of diamond color grading. One carat in every hundred thousand could earn that name.
Silence swallowed the hall.
The appraiser's loupe slipped against his chest. He crouched closer, breathing like he'd run three miles.
"This… this can't be…"
"Twenty-three carats."
Eli turned the stone into the spotlight. "Fancy Vivid Pink. IF clarity."
He said "IF" as casually as stating the weather.
"Estimated value: twenty-three to twenty-eight million."
Behind the upstairs glass, no one refilled their whiskey.
Elizabeth stood one meter away.
She hadn't spoken much all day.
But the way she looked at the pink diamond was different.
Not like a jeweler.
Like a collector.
Eli placed the stone—only window-cut, the full diamond still sleeping inside—onto a velvet tray and slid it toward her.
"Yours."
She looked down. "How much?"
"The twelve million you won in round nine. I never touched it." He nudged the tray closer. "Principal plus profit."
"This is worth over twenty million."
"Only after it's fully cut. Right now it's just a stone."
She was silent for three seconds.
"I won't sell it."
Eli met her gaze.
"I'll keep it," she said, placing the tray into her portable safe. "When you want it, I'll give it to you."
No one else understood that exchange.
Not Bob.
Not the aristocrats upstairs.
But Eli did.
She wasn't buying a diamond.
She was storing a chip.
Betting on whether he would come to claim it.
The elevator ride out was silent.
Velvet walls. Orchid. Two people.
Her safe sat five centimeters from his shoe.
"1972," she said softly. "The year your grandfather died."
Eli didn't answer.
"That was the year the Nine Crowns monopolized global rough diamond pricing."
"I know."
"How much did you find?"
"Enough."
Sunlight poured in as the doors opened.
"I'm going to Antwerp next week," she said. "Nine Crowns auction. Will you come?"
"Yes."
"Not because they invited me," she added. "Because I'm taking back what's mine."
She didn't ask what that was.
She just nodded and walked into the afternoon sun.
Late night. Workshop.
Eli lit the 1927 brass desk lamp. Green glass spilled light over the workbench. He placed the cigar box beneath it and opened the lid.
Six empty compartments.
Today, not empty-handed.
He drew a tiny shard from his pocket—not a fragment, but a sliver of stone skin that had chipped off during cutting.
Grain-sized. Sharp edges. Still marked with the grease of a fingerprint from March 14, 1972.
It wasn't information.
It was touch.
Across fifty-one years, he felt his grandfather's warmth.
He placed the shard into the first compartment.
The velvet sank slightly, like a promise.
"First piece," he whispered. "Five more to go."
The lamp burned in silence.
Outside, Los Angeles slept as usual.
But he knew—this box would slowly be filled.
End of Chapter 3
Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 4: Fragment – The Second Memory
Late at night, Eli touches the fragment once more.
This time, the vision does not show stone or fire—but a study inside the Van der Meer estate, March 14, 1972.
His grandfather stands before a contract.
The pen pauses in midair.
For one single second.
That pause becomes the final choice of his life.
And the last words he leaves behind:
"For Eli. He can see."
Seven words.
The last message Samuel Blackwood ever gave to the world.