Chapter 7
Tore's files were years of impeccable work from heists all around the world. Leather-bound ledgers, acquisition logs sorted by year, client correspondence filed in chronological order with an attention to detail that would have made any accountant weep.
The only chaos was the sheer variety of objects that emerged when it was all laid out. Transactions were from across the globe, with everything ranging from a Bronze Age fertility figurine to a sixteenth-century Venetian manuscript that had no business being in private hands.
What a busy boy you have been, Signor Alesci. Dario set the manuscript details aside and reached for the next ledger.
They had simply started working after breakfast, and within twenty minutes, it was clear they were covering different ground without having agreed to do so.
"This one," Frederica said, without looking up. She slid a page across the table. "2017. Foscari pays double the asking price for a Roman-era lead tablet. No negotiation. Tore notes it as unusual because the seller was asking under market value to begin with."
Dario looked at it. "What's a lead tablet?"
"Defixiones. Curse tablets. The Greeks and Romans used them to bind enemies, spirits, and outcomes." She turned a page. "Serapis wasn't just collecting while he play-acted being Foscari. He seemed to be sourcing things needed for something."
Dario added the lead tablets to the pile he had started mentally labeling: things that stopped, contained, or sealed. It had been a small pile at the start of the morning, but it just kept growing.
Despina appeared in the doorway with a tray carrying a pot of coffee, two cups, and a plate of baklava. She set it on the table beside Dario and studied the spread of documents.
She pointed at one Polaroid of a diamond and sapphire necklace and grinned wickedly. "I remember that job in Monaco. Tore and I crashed a party on an arms dealer's yacht. We had sex in one of the lifeboats. Great night."
Frederica glared at her. "Really, Mama? Dario doesn't need to hear about you and Tore's old sexcapades."
"I might," Dario interrupted.
"Old? That job was two months ago."
Dario whistled. "Nice one."
"See? He doesn't care because he's not a prude like you," Despina said with an approving grin at him before she disappeared back out the door again.
"Thank you for the coffee," Dario called after her.
"What did I say about flirting with my mother?" Frederica growled.
"I can't remember, and I wasn't flirting with her. If I were, I'm sure Tore would shoot me faster than she would." He picked up the coffee. It was strong enough to strip his stomach lining, and when he mixed it with a super sweet bite of the baklava, he groaned with happiness.
"I would flirt with her if she were single. Your mother is incredible," he said, licking the sticky sweetness off his fingers.
"No shit. You're not the first to notice," she replied, opening another file from her stack. "Get her talking about her and my father's sex stories, and I swear, I will kill you."
"Don't worry, I'll do it when you aren't around." Dario wagged his brows at her. "You know, in case they are ever up for a third."
"They have better taste," Frederica replied, turning back to her ledgers.
They worked in silence for another hour. Outside the dining room window, the afternoon had turned gold and flat, the harbor in the distance a stripe of deep blue.
Dario was dimly aware of sounds from elsewhere in the house—Tore's study door opening and closing, something on the radio in the kitchen—and the awareness of it was strange. Not unpleasant. Just unfamiliar.
Dario cleared his throat, and Frederica looked up from her reading.
"Find something?" she asked.
"Maybe. Nine of the acquisitions Serapis bought under his Foscari alias are known to be some kind of binding or containment object.
Tablets, knot-work relics, three separate items described as 'sealed vessels of unknown origin.
' One Byzantine reliquary that, Tore noted, Foscari was very excited about and insisted had to be intact, no cracks, the seal unbroken," he mused out loud and tapped the relevant pages.
"He's not collecting history that takes his fancy.
There is a plan to this. I just can't see what it is beyond the similarities. "
Frederica put down her pen. "Maybe cross-reference with dates?"
Dario pulled the timeline he had started mapping. She came around the table to look at it over his shoulder.
"There." She pointed. "2019, 2021, 2023. The binding acquisitions cluster every eighteen months to two years. Then a gap, and another cluster."
"Maybe whatever magic these objects have loses its charge after a while?" Dario guessed.
Frederica straightened. "He's not planning on building something. He's holding something together."
"Or keeping it locked up. Like that djinn that was in the fire opal ring. That was a prison. Maybe he's trying to bind another one?"
The room was quiet for a long moment. Tore came through the door and pulled out a chair without being invited. He sat with his reading glasses on and picked up the ledger from 2018. "You found the pattern with the lead tablets, huh?"
"You knew about it?" Frederica asked.
"I noticed it. I didn't ask questions. Foscari was a good client, reliable, prompt payment, and no trouble.
He told me once the objects were for ongoing research into ancient necromancy practices.
" Tore set the ledger down. "I assumed it was an academic thing.
Old families have strange hobbies and too much money. "
"Did he ever tell you what else he was researching?" Dario asked.
"Not directly. He once mentioned a 'problem of great age'. He said it the way people say things they don't expect you to follow up on, so I didn't." Tore shrugged. "He always seemed…tired. On the inside."
Dario looked at the timeline. A 'problem of great age,' held together with binding tablets and sealed vessels, requiring reinforcement every two years.
"What about this other client?" Frederica said. "Morosini. He seems to be after similar things. How many acquisitions?"
Tore's expression shifted. "Fewer. Eleven, over nine years. Why do you care? I thought you were only interested in Foscari?"
"Now I'm interested in him too. Can you pull the rest of his files for me?"
"Sure." Tore went back to the study. Dario and Frederica looked at each other across the table.
"Who is Morosini?" Dario asked.
"Another name that keeps popping up. Same kind of interests in magical and old spooky shit like Foscari is."
"You think they are friends? Like another Aurora member?" Dario really fucking hoped not.
Lucius Foscari had not only masqueraded as a member of their family for years, but he also led the occult group for decades under his other name, Serapis, before he decided he wanted them dead.
No one, not even Altun, knew how old he really was. He could have had another occult group working for him this entire time.
"I don't know what Morosini's connection to Serapis is, if there is any at all. Something about this guy's purchases is annoying me. Like a scratch on the roof of my mouth," Frederica replied and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Dario didn't point out that they were only meant to be looking for Serapis to find him and kill him.
Who Tore's other regular clients were wasn't why they were here, but Dario liked the strange kind of peace they had going on for the moment, and if she wanted to look into another collector, he didn't care.
Tore came back with a separate leather folder, thinner than the others. He set it on the table and opened it.
Frederica took the first page, and Dario took the second, and they read in silence.
The Morosini acquisitions were different in every way. Where Serapis's requests had been specific to curses, necromancy, or containment, Morosini's were power-storing objects, anything bound to an energy source, and amplification relics.
"Different client, but just as regular. Like clockwork," Frederica said, frowning at the page. "Both hunting magical objects that are real and not bullshit fakes. They know the difference, which means they know how to use them."
Dario laid both pages on the table side by side. Serapis/Foscari's requests in one column and Morosini's in the other.
"If we are right about what all these things do, then one of them is building defenses," Frederica said thoughtfully.
"And one of them is building an arsenal," Dario replied.
Tore studied the two columns for a long moment. He set his coffee down very carefully. "Please tell me they're not connected to each other."
"I don't know. It's just…weird," Frederica said.
Tore took his glasses off and cleaned them with the corner of his shirt. "Well, what's your gut telling you? You've always had a good one."
Frederica looked back at the pages. "Maybe it's nothing. You really don't know who this guy Morosini is?"
"I didn't ask." Tore put his glasses back on. "There is a difference between not knowing and not asking. I know which one keeps the bills paid. He was just a guy with an interest in unique things. He didn't seem any weirder than anyone else I've acquired things for."
Nobody argued with that. Dario thought about Serapis telling them through Vincenzo's mouth that he wasn't the real enemy. He had dismissed it at the time. Dario had been certain that he was just talking bullshit to throw them off. He was less certain now.
"We need to know what these objects actually do," he said finally. "Not just our guesswork and the history we can find online, but the magical shit they do."
"Kon or Altun?" Frederica asked, guessing where his mind was already heading.
"Kon." He was already reaching for his phone. "He'll know the magical properties, and Athena will if he doesn't. They might even know who this guy is. Both of them moved in collector circles for years."