Chap­ter 24 of The Art Thief explores the shift­ing dynam­ics between Anne-Cather­ine and Bre­itwieser, as they nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of their rela­tion­ship. Anne-Cather­ine, after gain­ing her driver’s license, buys a rasp­ber­ry-red Ford Ka, a small but mean­ing­ful pur­chase that sig­ni­fies her new­found inde­pen­dence. With her car, she starts com­mut­ing to work and grad­u­al­ly dis­tances her­self from the chaot­ic world of art theft, set­ting up a life in a mod­est stu­dio apart­ment on the out­skirts of Mul­house. This marks a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion as she moves away from her par­ents’ home and starts to build her own future. On the oth­er hand, Breitwieser’s life takes a down­turn as he is left to deal with the emo­tion­al fall­out from Anne-Catherine’s depar­ture. For four months, he refrains from steal­ing, his feel­ings of empti­ness grow­ing as he strug­gles with the iso­la­tion that fol­lows her absence. Dur­ing this time, he takes on menial jobs to occu­py his time, yet he can­not shake the over­whelm­ing sense of loss and aim­less­ness. This emo­tion­al void leads him to reach out to Anne-Cather­ine, hop­ing to recon­nect and per­haps repair their frac­tured rela­tion­ship.

When they final­ly speak again, Bre­itwieser reveals his remorse and regret, acknowl­edg­ing his past mis­takes and the dam­age his obses­sion with art and theft caused. He admits that he has learned from his past behav­ior, promis­ing to let go of his anger, espe­cial­ly regard­ing the abor­tion, and to move for­ward with a more gen­uine love for Anne-Cather­ine. He express­es that, despite every­thing, she is the only woman he tru­ly cares for, and her absence has helped him real­ize the depth of his addic­tion to art theft. Mean­while, Anne-Cather­ine, though lead­ing a sta­ble life, finds her­self unable to entire­ly shake off the thrill that she once shared with Bre­itwieser. She con­fess­es that the excite­ment of their heists, which had once brought them so close, still calls to her. How­ev­er, despite this crav­ing for adven­ture, she is no longer will­ing to ful­ly engage in the illic­it activ­i­ties that once defined their rela­tion­ship. Instead, she insists on keep­ing her space free of stolen art, but agrees to recon­nect with him in the attic, where their past crimes were stored, indi­cat­ing her will­ing­ness to take a step back into their shared his­to­ry.

Despite Anne-Catherine’s attempts to main­tain some bound­aries, Breitwieser’s crim­i­nal urges are reignit­ed. His desire for art and theft proves impos­si­ble to resist, and soon, he begins steal­ing once more, ini­tial­ly vis­it­ing local muse­ums to fuel his obses­sion. By late 1999, Bre­itwieser has accu­mu­lat­ed an impres­sive col­lec­tion of around 250 stolen items, though he makes an effort to avoid church­es due to Anne-Catherine’s ear­li­er objec­tions. How­ev­er, the temp­ta­tion of these eas­i­ly acces­si­ble and valu­able pieces proves too strong, and he even­tu­al­ly returns to tar­get­ing church­es, jus­ti­fy­ing it by the sim­plic­i­ty of the thefts. The once pris­tine attic, where their love of art had once been stored in a more inno­cent light, becomes a chaot­ic repos­i­to­ry for his grow­ing col­lec­tion. As the stolen pieces accu­mu­late, so does the strain on their rela­tion­ship, with Anne-Cather­ine grow­ing increas­ing­ly dis­sat­is­fied with the life they are lead­ing. Despite this, Bre­itwieser secures a high-pay­ing job in Switzer­land, try­ing to sta­bi­lize his life and divert Anne-Catherine’s atten­tion from his con­tin­ued thiev­ery. To keep her inter­est­ed and pro­vide an escape from the crim­i­nal world, he arranges a roman­tic trip to the Domini­can Repub­lic. Dur­ing the trip, Bre­itwieser refrains from steal­ing, try­ing to prove to her that he can con­trol his impuls­es. How­ev­er, despite his attempts to con­vince her that he has changed, Anne-Cather­ine remains skep­ti­cal, par­tic­u­lar­ly about his job in Switzer­land. She fears that he might be arrest­ed again, know­ing that their pre­vi­ous lucky escape from the law was an unlike­ly fluke. Bre­itwieser agrees to her cau­tion in prin­ci­ple but finds him­self bat­tling the temp­ta­tion every time he pass­es a muse­um on his way to work. The unre­solved ten­sion between his desires and Anne-Catherine’s con­cerns con­tin­ues to pull them in oppos­ing direc­tions, mak­ing their future togeth­er uncer­tain.