14. Venetia
Venetia
I stumble out of the opening, my lungs burning for air that doesn’t taste of dust and death.
The crown slips, and I shove it back into place, a cold, heavy circlet of impossibility.
The necklace is still clutched in my fist, its weight a tangible link to a past I don’t understand.
My mother’s necklace. A Roman fucking tomb.
A crown with my family crest etched into it.
Viper’s hands are on my shoulders, steadying me as I stagger into the ruined library. “Venetia,” he says, his voice a low rumble.
I shake my head, shrugging him off. I can’t process his comfort right now. I can’t process anything except the hot, molten fury building in my chest, burning away the fear and the grief.
My father went here. He is a… I shake my head at the word, graduate . I don’t think one of those, but still an alum who spent four years ruling the roost, like his father before him and his before him and blah blah blah.
This isn’t a coincidence. Blake can try and spin that one, but I know it’s not.
This necklace is identical to my mother’s.
I spent hours playing with it under her watchful eye, pretending to be an archaeologist like Sydney Fox in the early 2000s TV show Relic Hunter .
Oh, how that roleplay seems to have come about.
I know every nook and cranny of that necklace.
The way the heavy links rested against the skin, how the pendant gleamed in certain light, how the wolf heads were positioned to hold it tightly in place, how the feel of it felt old with experiences I couldn’t fathom.
My mother always said that sapphires represent intelligence, truth, wealth, and faith.
She said that necklace would be mine one day.
Looking at this one in my hand, I know my mother’s wasn’t a replica.
It was this one’s twin. Which means that my dad, or my grandfathers, et al.
, have either plundered Boney McBonesFace’s desk in the past, or someone else did, and my dad purchased black-market material.
I wouldn’t put either of these options past him.
“Call him,” Viper says.
“No,” I reply. “I can’t. Not yet. I apologise for running out.
We should go back down there and keep looking for whatever it is the secondary team are looking for.
” My voice is stiff, as is my back. I won’t let this consume me.
There are bigger things to deal with. So, my dad stole a necklace and an old Roman crest to use as our family crest…
I shake my head. No, that’s not right. It had to go back further than him.
Grandpa, or the fearful Great-Grandfather, who gives that austere glare every time I pass his portrait on the staircase at home.
Or even further back than that. It’s not that big of a deal compared to the people being trafficked, that we are still nowhere near shutting down yet. All of this is a distraction.
“How far back does your family go at St. Seb’s?” Blake asks, probably having already come to the same conclusions I have about the crest and the necklace.
“Dad, Grandpa, Great-Grandfather, Great-Great-Grandfather, and Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, as far as I know.”
“So, a few hundred years,” Blake muses. “There must be more. Your surname, Corbyn-Hale, when did it combine?”
“When Great-Great-Grandfather married into an extremely powerful family. It was part of the conditions, so I believe.”
“Which one was added?”
“Hale.”
He nods.
“So, we are looking at Corbyn going back more than five generations.”
“This isn’t the mission,” I say with a sigh.
“Maybe it is more than the mission.”
“Nothing is more important than shutting down the traffickers.”
“Maybe they are more connected than we first thought,” he murmurs, more to himself than us. “It’s not a distraction. It’s the entire fucking point.”
I turn to him, my eyebrows shooting up. “Explain.”
“Think about it,” he says, stepping closer, his eyes intense.
“Why go to all this trouble? The blast, the cover story about an asset, the cannon fodder like Corven. It’s all to get you down here.
To make you find this.” He gestures to the crown on my head, the necklace in my hand.
“This isn’t a heist situation. It’s an introduction. A welcome home.”
The blood drains from my face. “An introduction to what?”
“The Graduates,” Rafferty says quietly. “This is their recruitment drive.”
“They want to recruit me by blowing up the library and sending assassins after me?” I ask, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “They have a strange way of extending a job offer.”
Viper scoffs. “It’s a test. To see if you’re worthy. To see if you have what it takes to reclaim your birthright.”
The word hangs in the air, heavy and obscene. My birthright. A two-thousand-year-old tomb filled with stolen treasure and a family history steeped in lies. This is my legacy. Not a mafia empire, but a shadowy organisation that operates on a global scale.
“They want you to be their new queen. If I were to go out on a limb, I’d say that the Hales are neck deep in this shit or at least were. We need to investigate.”
I grimace at him. “You think these situations are connected? Seriously?”
“I’m deadly serious,” Blake says, his gaze unwavering.
“The Graduates are not just traffickers. They’re kingmakers.
They control territories, governments, and they protect their own.
The Hale family’s power could very well have come from an organisation like this, which would be the perfect foundation for their empire. ”
The world tilts on its axis. My family. The name I was born with, the legacy I was raised to uphold, is built on a foundation of human trafficking and secret societies.
The necklace in my hand suddenly feels heavier, tainted.
It’s not a link to my mother; it’s a shackle to a past I never knew existed.
“So, they want me to take over?” I scoff, the sound harsh in the ruined library. “They want me to lead their disgusting enterprise?”
“Pretty much. If Blake is right, you’re the jewel in their crown, pardon the pun.
If you are a hundred per cent sure your dad isn’t involved in this, then it goes back.
Possibly to Great-Great Gramps, who shut it down.
They want you. They want that power back.
Maybe they have tried before… maybe your dad and grandfather, and so on, went through this exact same thing.
But, and this is the kicker, you’ve got something they never had. ”
“A shorter life span,” I mutter, ignoring the dark glare Viper shoots me.
“Viper,” Blake picks up where Rafferty left off. “The man who single-handedly dismantled their biggest UK operation. You’re not just a candidate, Venetia. You’re a fucking symbol.”
A symbol. A pawn in their centuries-old game. The fury that was simmering boils over. I rip the crown from my head, the weight of it suddenly unbearable.
“You are the asset.”
“Then the text makes no sense. It said, VCH is a distraction,” Viper points out.
“And what have we called Corven all along?” Blake asks.
“Cannon fodder,” I say automatically.
“Precisely. The message wasn’t for him. It was for Rafferty to pass on to us.
They were watching the entire time. They wanted to misdirect us, make us think exactly what we did, that this was a separate operation; instead, they led us by the dicks straight into their plan.
” He slams his fist into the nearby wall, cursing loudly. “How did I miss this?”
The rare crack in Blake’s composure sends a chill down my spine that has nothing to do with the Roman tomb below.
He sees the world as a chessboard, and someone just flipped the board on him.
On all of us. “They played on our strengths,” Viper says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
“They knew you’d look for logic, Blake. They knew Raff would be drawn to the fight.
And they knew I’d be focused on her.” His gaze lands on me, hot and possessive.
“And while we were running around being distracted by shiny things, the real play was happening up above.”
My blood runs cold. “Something went down while we were underground.”
I’m moving before the guys can catch up.
Racing through the burnt-out library, my boots skidding on wet stone.
The necklace is a cold, hard knot in my fist. Behind me, I can hear their footsteps crunching on debris as they follow, but I don’t slow down.
My lungs burn, and my heart hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
We were played. While we were in the dark, chasing ghosts and gold, they were making their move.
The quad is deserted. The students who were milling about earlier, talking in hushed, nervous groups, are gone. An unnatural silence hangs in the air, broken only by the drip of rainwater from the ancient gargoyles.
My gaze sweeps the grounds, frantically searching for the wrongness I can feel coiling in the pit of my stomach. Aiming for the dining hall, following my instinct, I take the stairs two at a time and race down the hallway.
Painted across the massive oak doors, a single, perfect lily, rendered in glistening, still-wet paint. Beneath it, two words are scrawled in the same crimson medium: Regnum Vestra.
Your Kingdom.
Viper reaches me first, his hand landing on my shoulder, spinning me to face him. “What the fuck, Venetia? Don’t run off like that.”
I don’t answer.
I shove the doors open and take in the scene. Blake and Rafferty come to a halt beside us, their gazes following mine.
“Fuck,” I croak, staring at the massacre.
All of the remaining students are down in this room, their bodies lying dead on the floor. On the opposite wall, another gory message has been painted in red.
And then there were 4.