In Chap­ter 26 of The Art Thief, the ten­sion height­ens as Bre­itwieser returns home, car­ry­ing with him a rare and price­less treasure—a four-hun­dred-year-old bugle that he has suc­cess­ful­ly stolen. He eager­ly recounts the details of the dar­ing heist to Anne-Cather­ine, his excite­ment undi­min­ished as he describes his actions in retriev­ing the stolen item. In his retelling, Bre­itwieser paints a pic­ture of a well-cal­cu­lat­ed oper­a­tion: climb­ing onto a radi­a­tor to reach the sealed dis­play box con­tain­ing the bugle, using his Swiss Army knife to unscrew the front pan­el, and tak­ing delib­er­ate steps to avoid detec­tion. To fur­ther throw off sus­pi­cion, he hopped down sev­er­al times, cre­at­ing the appear­ance of casu­al dis­trac­tion, before tri­umphant­ly secur­ing the instru­ment. For Bre­itwieser, the suc­cess of this theft fur­ther fuels his belief in his supe­ri­or­i­ty, and he feels an over­whelm­ing sense of pride in his cun­ning.

How­ev­er, Anne-Cather­ine’s response is far from what he had hoped for. She quick­ly reminds him that they already own a more valu­able bugle, one that they had stolen togeth­er in Ger­many. Her focus shifts to the fact that this new heist, which he had been so eager to share, doesn’t mea­sure up to their past exploits. In a tense moment, she ques­tions whether he had adhered to the rules they had set for their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, specif­i­cal­ly ask­ing whether he had worn gloves dur­ing the theft. This moment of account­abil­i­ty cuts through Breitwieser’s ini­tial excite­ment, as he sud­den­ly real­izes that he has bro­ken one of their most sacred rules—stealing from the very city where they had been caught before. With the dis­cov­ery that his fin­ger­prints are now con­nect­ed to anoth­er crime scene, he begins to feel the weight of impend­ing trou­ble, and Anne-Catherine’s fear for their future becomes pal­pa­ble. The ten­sion between them ris­es as her anger, fueled by both his care­less­ness and the new dan­gers they face, becomes unde­ni­able.

Des­per­ate to make things right, Bre­itwieser sug­gests an auda­cious plan: he offers to erase his fin­ger­prints from the scene, but Anne-Cather­ine quick­ly rejects the idea, deem­ing it too risky. She decides that she will han­dle it the fol­low­ing morn­ing, and he reluc­tant­ly agrees, trust­ing in her abil­i­ty to con­trol the sit­u­a­tion. As the day pro­gress­es, Bre­itwieser finds him­self in a state of unease, feel­ing the iso­la­tion of his actions and real­iz­ing the depth of the rift they now face. Anne-Cather­ine, in her usu­al calm, metic­u­lous man­ner, assures him that she can take care of the sit­u­a­tion, but the dam­age to their bond is already evi­dent. He is left to grap­ple with his grow­ing sense of guilt, while she silent­ly bears the respon­si­bil­i­ty of clean­ing up his mess. Their rela­tion­ship, once filled with the thrill of their shared exploits, now seems to be on the brink of unrav­el­ing.

The next morn­ing, they dri­ve to the Wag­n­er Muse­um, and the atmos­phere between them is heavy with unspo­ken ten­sion. As they approach the muse­um, Anne-Cather­ine tells him to stay in the car while she han­dles the sit­u­a­tion. The still­ness between them grows, and Bre­itwieser, seek­ing some form of dis­trac­tion, steps out of the car and takes a brief walk around the pic­turesque grounds. In these fleet­ing moments, he tries to regain some emo­tion­al ground­ing, though his thoughts are cloud­ed with uncer­tain­ty about the future. As he walks, he can’t help but watch Anne-Cather­ine through the win­dows of the muse­um, hop­ing for some sign that things will return to the way they were before the chaos of their crim­i­nal actions caught up with them.

His sense of fleet­ing hope is shat­tered when Anne-Cather­ine sud­den­ly rush­es toward him, her face full of anx­i­ety and urgency. The sight of her dis­tress sends a chill through him, and before he can under­stand what is hap­pen­ing, two police offi­cers approach him. Despite hav­ing no stolen goods on him, Bre­itwieser is hand­cuffed and tak­en into cus­tody, his worst fears now real­ized. As he is escort­ed away, Anne-Cather­ine stands help­less­ly at a dis­tance, her expres­sion one of shock and dis­be­lief. The weight of the sit­u­a­tion hits Bre­itwieser hard: his once care­ful­ly con­struct­ed world of crime, art theft, and manip­u­la­tion has now fall­en apart. Their rela­tion­ship, built on shared secrets and ille­gal deeds, is now hang­ing by a frag­ile thread. The arrest marks a dra­mat­ic turn­ing point in Bre­itwieser’s life, one where the con­se­quences of his actions final­ly catch up with him, forc­ing him to face the real­i­ty of his choic­es.