13. Blake
Blake
V enetia’s face is one of a stoic warrior queen mixed with a bit of fear when she lays eyes on the skeleton sitting at a desk, dressed in, I’m guessing, a red tunic that has seen better days, a red cloak, and a crown made from bronze.
The book laid out in front of him is crumbling and so ancient I’m dying to get my hands on it, but I know simply breathing on it will deteriorate what is left of it.
Venetia gulps. “Okay. Who is it?”
I pause before answering her with a caustic remark. Whatever spooks her about the bones of dead people is heavily rooted in her mother’s death. While she has never spoken about it, the whole of the mafia world knows about her death, and many paid their respects. My father was at her funeral.
“Who knows,” I say, approaching carefully, drawn by the ancient text despite the macabre setting.
The book’s pages are brittle as autumn leaves, the ink faded to a ghost of its former self.
Centuries of secrets, preserved in this underground tomb.
“Whatever this is, it’s not what they’re looking for. It’s too fragile to be moved.”
Viper steps forward, his gaze sweeping the chamber. “There has to be more.”
“It’s guarding something,” I murmur. “First the catacomb and now this. It’s theatrical.”
“It’s tragic,” Venetia mutters.
“That too. But there is more. We just need to find it.”
“Is there another passageway other than the one we came down?” Viper asks, looking around.
We spread out, each looking along the walls, but come up empty-handed.
Casting my gaze over the skeleton again, I narrow my eyes at it.
“What are you guarding? Or hiding?” Moving over to it again, I peer over its shoulder to see what it can see.
The glint of the crown catches my eye. It’s pretty in a basic sort of way.
Close up, I can see small gems, rubies, embedded in the bronze.
It’s not worth all the effort this sideshow team are going to. “Not the crown.”
“Huh?” Venetia asks, looking over.
I ignore her, not out of ignorance, but because I’m too focused to break my concentration. “The slab,” I mutter.
Raff looks over and moves closer. “You think there’s something underneath it?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Only one way to find out.”
“You will disturb the… thing…” Venetia says.
“The book? Yes, but that is already lost to time.”
“Not the fucking book,” she hisses, gesturing wildly.
“Oh, him?” I say, looking at the skeleton.
“How do you know it’s not a her?” she spits out, her unease making her feisty.
“Unlikely, given the times. Also, this fellow was quite tall.”
She rolls her eyes as Viper and Raff move into place to dislodge the slab.
I watch as Viper and Rafferty position themselves on either side of the stone slab.
There’s a grudging respect in the way they work together, a shared language of violence and force that I can appreciate but never truly speak.
They heave, muscles straining against the ancient stone.
It groans, a deep, resonant sound that vibrates through the floor, but it doesn’t shift.
“Again,” Viper grunts, and they reset, planting their feet.
On a silent count, they push. The slab scrapes against its base, the sound deafening in the small chamber. Dust and grit rain down as they slide the heavy stone just far enough to reveal a dark, rectangular cavity beneath.
My torchlight falls into the hollowed-out space.
“Wow,” Venetia says, peering into the hole. “Fucking, wow.”
“That’s some treasure chest.” Raff blows out a whistle.
“Quite,” I say, staring at the gold and jewels, trying to appraise the value but coming up woefully short.
The gold glitters obscenely in our torchlight, a river of coins, necklaces, and raw gemstones. It’s a king’s ransom. But wealth of this magnitude is a siren’s call, drawing every shark in the water. This isn’t the asset. It’s the bait.
“This isn’t it,” I state, my voice cutting through their awe.
“The fuck it isn’t,” Rafferty scoffs, his eyes glued to a ruby the size of his fist. “This is a fucking kingdom.”
“It’s a distraction,” I correct him.
“A very pretty one,” Venetia murmurs, reaching in to pull out a gold crown that is encrusted with rubies, diamonds and emeralds. She examines it in the torchlight of her phone and then freezes.
“What is it?” I ask, feeling the irony of tables turned.
“This symbol,” she says, shining the torch directly onto a curve on the inside of the crown. “Look familiar?”
I blink once and then stare harder. “Is this a coincidence? Part of the puzzle, or simply a red herring?”
“It’s fucking mine, is what it is,” she hisses, brandishing the crown. “That is my family’s coat of arms. Two snakes, coiled around a sword, just like this one.”
“Okay, clearly that crown isn’t yours,” Raff says wryly. “However, there is a larger picture that we aren’t seeing. Is your family Roman old?”
“Who the fuck knows? That’s a long fucking way to go back. I don’t think Ancestry dot com has that kind of information.”
I snicker at her sass. “No, I highly doubt it. Time to call ACH?”
Venetia stares at me, her green eyes wide with disbelief and dawning fury. “We don’t need him.”
“He’s the only one who might have an answer to how a two-thousand-year-old Roman crown bears your family crest,” I counter, my voice calm. “If this isn’t a coincidence, Venetia, it is a legacy. A dangerous one, it seems.”
“A legacy of what? Grave robbing?” Rafferty mutters, eyeing a gold chalice studded with sapphires.
“We don’t have time for this,” Viper cuts in, his voice a low growl. His gaze isn’t on the treasure; it’s on the dark maw of the tunnel we came from. “They’ll be sending someone else. More competent than Corven.”
He’s right, of course. The immediate threat takes precedence.
But my mind is already racing, connecting dots that are centuries apart.
The Corbyn-Hale crest. This hidden vault.
The systematic erasure of this place from the academy’s history.
It’s a tapestry of secrets, and we’re only just starting to pull at the threads.
“The asset isn’t the gold,” I say, my gaze sweeping over the glittering hoard. “It’s too ostentatious. It’s meant to distract, to overwhelm. We’ve been sidetracked already, knowing this. Look for something that doesn’t belong.”
Venetia’s grip on the crown tightens, but as she turns to keep looking for something, anything else, she stops again and frowns.
Again, she reaches into the treasure and pulls out a necklace.
It is gold with a sapphire pendant the size of a plum.
But it’s the intricate setting of the jewel that really catches the eye.
It is made from four wolf heads, their mouths gripping the stone, and holding it in place.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I mutter.
“I think maybe I have.” She shoves the crown on her head and flips her phone over to tap the screen. “Look.”
She turns it towards me, and I stare at the photo. “Okay, this is looking less like a coincidence and more like ACH has way more to do with this than simply sending you here to eliminate the trafficking gangs.”
“You think?” she growls and lets Viper take the phone from her as her eyes go back to the necklace.
“Your mum?” he asks quietly.
“Yep.”
“And she is wearing that necklace,” Rafferty says, also staring at the phone.
“A replica, more than likely,” I point out. “Where did she get it?”
“My dad gave it to her for her thirtieth birthday.”
“This is a very unique design. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in historical pictures.”
“And yet.”
“If I may ask, where is your mother’s necklace now?”
She looks at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “As far as I know, in the vault at home.” She turns the pendant over in her hand and shakes her head. “What is happening?”
Her voice cracks, and she steps back, snatching her phone from Raff and running towards the passageway.
I look at Raff and Viper.
“We need to abandon this search right now,” Viper says.
I nod. “That gives me time to think about what we’re missing. But we need to keep this guarded. No one else can come down here. They will loot it and ruin its sanctity.”
“Like we didn’t just do that already,” Raff remarks, but it doesn’t have his usual bite.
He’s right, though. The trouble is, we are still at square one with more questions than answers.
It frustrates me more than I care to admit, but I push it aside because this expedition has taken its toll on Venetia, and she needs to process so we can move forward.
Viper is already through the passageway when Raff and I fall into single file.
“This is bugging the shit out of you, isn’t it?” he asks, again not in his usual casual way.
“What could possibly be the asset?” I reply with a question. “What did we miss?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he says confidently. “You never met a conundrum you didn’t like.”
“Hmm, I think this one doesn’t like me.”
We fall into silence as we make our way back to the surface. I’m missing something big. I just don’t know what.
Yet.