by CR Robertson
“You do realise that Zee is like a brother to me?” Lucrezia asked. “I’m trying to eat.” She held her plate with a slice of cake on it up.
“I can’t help it if my sexual prowess is so strong that I dickmatised a woman into marrying me.” Xavier was a typical older brother with his cousin, something I’d noticed at our wedding with the way he teased her.
“Aw!” Lucrezia held her hands up, and scrunched her face up in horror. “Make him stop!”
“So, what happens next?” I asked, trepidation churning my stomach.
“That’s simple,” Jordan replied, a creepy smile spreading over his face. “We find the pervert with an interest in photography and send a message to every asshole out there with an eye on your inheritance. That should eliminate part of our problem.”
I didn’t want to know what type of message they would send, but I’d agreed to stay safely on the side-lines.
“And the dragon brotherhood?” Ash queried. “They’re pissed that we made them look like fools.”
Jordan shrugged. “An establishment of that calibre should have had better security. They made themselves look like fools.”
Lucas held his hand up and silence spread around the room. “We shall regroup this evening and decide the best course of action. If anyone dares to touch what is ours then we will cut their hands off and return them as a warning. The next one is returned in a body bag until they finally get the message that we will not be messed with. I may even have to speak to my associate Nic. His body count is as impressive as Jordan’s.”
My eyes met Megan’s as she sat pale and silent. Violence scared her, and she’d suddenly found herself in the middle of criminals who didn’t think twice about killing their enemies.
Before Malcolm, I shared her feelings. Now, I just wanted those I loved to stay safe. If it took a gun to accomplish that, then I would have to buy some earplugs for when the bang sounded.
***
Chapter Nineteen
Xavier
Cassandra hummed to herself while she pottered around the kitchen. She was nest building, filling our house with all the things that made it a home. As much as I teased her about her cushions, I was getting used to being surrounded by them and sinking into them to watch TV. Over the years, I hated getting my photographs taken by the paparazzi, but Cassandra had selfies we’d taken with us both smiling. She had our wedding photographs made into canvases that were in the family room.
My phone pinged and I swiped the screen. It was an alarm activation at one of our offices. It was the one that was registered as our official business address. There was nothing there except empty offices with computers that contained no information on them. It was a front that made our business legitimate.
I sat watching the men in balaclavas storm through empty offices. Cassandra appeared beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. She’d become an expert on reading my body language.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Looks like the proprietors of Dragon’s Hoard are searching for the contents of that box,” I replied, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Is what was in it so bad?”
There were some secrets that a daughter didn’t need to know about her father. Looking through the documents, there was no doubt in my mind that her father had been a good man, but he was out of his depth in the discoveries he’d made. Him and Dante (or Danzer), as the documents proved, had agreed to tackle the problem from two different ends and try to meet in the middle.
The rest was confined to history. There were photographs and other documents in that box that I’d removed. Normally I shared everything with my two oldest friends, but secrets were evil little minions sent to destroy lives and make people miserable. Sometimes the dead were best left buried in the past. I needed to ask Uncle Lucas about the photographs. I had no doubt that Frank had died because of those deeds and access to the bank accounts.
I hadn’t answered Cassandra’s questions, so she poked me in the arm.
“Yeah, your dad and uncle had an uncanny ability to turn over stones that should have remained unturned.”
“Maybe I should take a look?”
Technically, the contents belonged to her, but some secrets could get you killed and I preferred her head still attached to her shoulders. “You can if you want, but some of it isn’t happy reading.”
She spun the barstool around so she could step between my legs. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, your father was a member of the Council. He died when you were young and he was still a hero to you.”
She blinked, and started to chew the inside of her mouth the way she did when she was thinking. “I kept Mum’s Bible with the keys in it hidden for years. I finally found the locations written close to the back and instructions on how to use them. The first time I visited the first box, I realised that my life hadn’t been what I thought. When I started to piece it all together, I realised that Mum and Kimberley died because of something connected with Dad. I made my peace a long time ago, Xavier. You can’t stay angry at the dead because it eats you inside and destroys your soul.”
“I just want to keep you safe.” I tucked her unruly hair behind her ear.
“I need to keep you safe too, Zee. This house means nothing without anyone to share it with.”
Taking her hand, I led her to the entrance to my safe room. The scanner bleeped when it read my fingerprint, granting us entry. All the paperwork was laid out on the table where we’d tried to put it in order to make sense of it. One thick file seemed to be complete nonsense.
Cassandra settled herself at the desk and returned to her role as a solicitor. Her superpower was organisation and she excelled at it. I watched her from the other side of the table. We’d pored over this particular file for hours last night with no success.
Her forehead creased and her back straightened. She began to reorganise the folder, pulling particular papers out and setting the rest to one side.
“When I was little, Dad taught me how to leave coded messages for him so that no one else could read them. It was our little secret. Look at these pages.” She passed them across to me.
My eyebrows rose in silent question.
“Every one of these pages is marked in some way—a bent corner, a nick from the page, a tear somewhere. These are the pages that have information on them. The rest are a decoy.”
She had my full attention.
“These pages should reveal what he was hiding if you apply heat to them. He showed me how to use something acidic like vinegar or lemon juice to write with that couldn’t be seen when it dried. The heat should turn it brown.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Jordan had appeared at the door with Ash beside him. “Secret messages in acid? That’s like something from a children’s mystery book.”
“It had us stumped last night,” Ash pointed out. “We spent hours trying to work out what that folder was about.”
“Come on!” Cassandra lifted a piece of paper and wandered back into the kitchen. She held it over the heat of the aga cover until brown writing appeared. The message left me even more confused.
“I have no idea what that means.”
Her grin was filled with mischief. “These are book locations for his library. It was one of the reasons I never touched his books, once you start moving them, then any message he left me would be lost.” She held the page up. “This book will have the information you’re looking for.”
It was a set of coordinates.
I heated another page, and more writing appeared.
“Our business address had visitors,” I informed Jordan while we gathered pages and revealed the cryptic messages held in them.
“I noticed,” he replied dryly. “I hope they wiped their feet on the way out.”
Ash laughed darkly. “I would have been more impressed if they had found one of our unregistered addresses.”
Cassandra continued working her way through folders and the other messages h
er uncle had left in the boxes. Every new piece of information added another layer of complexity to our situation. We were trying to play catch-up on an investigation from twenty years ago.
“This one has a date and location on it,” Ash said. “Oh…”
Jordan threw him an exasperated look and plucked it from his hands. His expression grew stony cold and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up in warning. “That’s the date and location of my parents’ death. Why is this in the folder without context?”
“Your parents had Council connections,” I pointed out.
“There’s something else on the page,” Jordan said, his voice laced with a foreign emotion. He held it back over the oven. “It’s one of the book references.”
Jordan studied the piece of paper, his brow furrowed. “Do you think my parents were assassinated because of this fucking mess?” It looked like we were going on a road trip because there was no way that Jordan was going to let that drop. Since I didn’t know, I didn’t answer. He was already hunting through the contents of the box again in search of information.
That folder revealed that our investigation was no longer about Cassandra and her family. Everything now focused on the Council and the men who ran it.
We were in more danger than we first realised. We’d been intent on protecting Cassandra, and with every piece of knowledge we gleaned from every scrap of paper we found, our own lives now hung in the balance.
When we returned to the room, Cassandra had put the pieces of paper and items that Dante had left in the centre of the table, each of them in a specific location, with items beside them.
“What’s this?” I asked, stepping behind her to view it from her position.
“Every page is a slightly different size. The markings on them tell me where they fit together. This nick matches the nick on this page, so it fits here, a bit like a jigsaw.” She pointed to another two marks which lined up.
“So we have a collection of blank pages. Do we need to heat these as well?” I asked, leaning over to lift one.
“I don’t think so,” Cassandra replied. “When Dad did this, he tended to use Mum’s baking soda to make a paste that he wrote with. I’ll need some juice.”
We watched her wander out of the room and return with cranberry juice. She dabbed it on and words began to appear. We’d all become so accustomed to high-tech messages that the basic stuff that kids used had foiled us.
A message slowly appeared over the pages:
Cassandra,
For the past 20 years, I believed Frank and his family to be alive and happy. Now I find that they have been dead for years. Everything I’ve done has been to protect my family. After my wife died, I vowed to destroy the Council and everyone in it. They are a cancer that has spread deep into society. I’ve spent years plotting moves on this macabre chessboard and soon I will be ready to bring my plan into play. If I had known what happened, I would have come home in an instant and ensured you were kept safe.
I will be in touch soon with a way to contact me. The location lies in the items I left behind. I know Frank taught you our methods of communication. All I hope is that you remember them after all this time.
Nothing is as it seems, and soon you will realise that friends are enemies and those accused of being villains are actually the heroes. Trust no one and remember everything your dad told you. I will do everything in my power to save what little remains of my family and now that I know where you are, I will always be watching.
Uncle Dan.
“Is he seriously trying to imply that he is the hero in this story and the Council is the evil empire?” Jordan demanded.
“They ordered the execution of Michael without Dad blinking twice,” Ash replied. “He was an asshole and admittedly deserved what he got in the end, but I can’t help but think that he would do the same to me if I opposed him.”
“They know we have this information, so they’ll be guarded now,” I said. “They probably have all our security access changed.”
That creepy smile that sent shivers down my spine appeared on Jordan’s face. “Over the years, I created back doors into the systems and have alternative access codes.”
Of course he did. I resisted rolling my eyes at him.
“But this presents us with a unique opportunity,” Jordan continued.
“How?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “We take this to the Council, minus the paper with the coded messages, and ask for their help. They have no idea that we suspect any of them. The best way to flush out a mole is to flood their hole and watch them emerge.”
“And if they kill you?” Cassandra asked, her fingertips finding mine.
“The Council is lazy and expects others to get rid of their problems,” I reassured her. “They’re greedy and want to know what was in that box, even though it looks like the answers are in that house you kept preserved all these years.”
“Do you think that’s why Dad left instructions that the house could not be touched or sold for fifty years or until a relative claimed it?”
“Maybe,” I conceded. He must have known that his brother was alive out there and could decipher all his codes. What else was hiding in that house all these years?
“Reach out to your dad,” Jordan instructed. “Ash, you do the same. It will make them feel important and will give you a layer of protection.”
“Who will protect you?” I asked.
“Grandfather is old and reclusive, but he still holds a lot of power, even if I sit in his seat on the Council. He will visit the wrath of God down on anyone who threatens his only heir.” Jordan’s face darkened. “He was the one who taught me the art of persuasion.”
What he really meant was torture. His grandfather had terrified me even as a child. Their home was devoid of memories or colour. Mum had family pictures up in our home, and every room was a different colour. She kept my ancient teddy bears that were still in a box in my old nursery, my baby books in another.
From the moment his parents were assassinated, Jordan lived a strict life governed by his grandfather. He never spoke of his parents, no matter how many times Jordan begged, even beating him occasionally when he mentioned them. Their photographs and every memory of them were removed until all Jordan knew was his grandfather. I had no doubt that cantankerous old man would destroy anyone who came near Jordan, because he’d spent years honing him into his image.
“We need a distraction so we can get to Cassandra’s family home without alerting anyone,” I said, still studying the letter. “He went to a lot of trouble to contact Cassandra.”
“I’ll have to go with you,” Cassandra interrupted my thoughts. “Just in case there is something else that you need me to interpret.”
My entire body stiffened in rejection. The need to keep her here and safe pulsed through me with a violent intent. I opened my mouth to object, when she spun around to face me, her eyes imploring.
“My dad was the last person to touch those books.” Her hands clasped my waist and my emotions warred deep in my chest.
“She has a point,” Jordan stated. “We can get Lucas to come with us.”
“I would gladly join your expedition.” Uncle Lucas stood watching us from the door, the handful of papers in his hand. “All this drama is why you sit on my Council seat, Xavier. I am too old for their petty ways. But I am willing to join Jordan’s grandpapa in invoking the wrath of the gods.”
A smile touched my lips. We both knew that I was his eyes and ears on that Council, and it irked some of them that there were two Bartholomew men present. Women did not sit on the Council and their positions fell to a male relative. Ash held a position from his mother’s side of the family.
Looking at it from an outsider’s point of view, it seemed quite incestuous, and now they were trying to plan our marriages to keep their precious Council pure.
We disbanded to organise the different parts of our next move. In the conservatory, I lifted my phone to my ear while I stared at the p
ond. Cassandra settled herself on a sofa with her legs tucked under her and a cushion on her lap.
“Dad?” I said when he answered. “I know you’re still away on business, but we need to talk when you get home.”
There was silence for a few beats. I imagined him trying to get his story straight, since he told me he was in America.
“I finished business early and arrived home last night,” he replied slowly.
“Great. We have a situation that I need your advice on.”
“Oh, and what’s that?”
My eyes moved to my wife sitting watching me. “Cassandra had keys to an old safety deposit box at Dragon’s Hoard. We went to collect it and the security went crazy. Jordan was at his apartment close by when I texted him, but I dread to think what would have happened.”
“When was this?” I could almost visualise the smile on his face since I came to him with my problems.
“A few days ago. She wanted to see if her mother’s engagement ring was in the box since it had never been found.” It was as good an excuse as any, and considering we had it, the ring added credibility to our visit.
“They normally just bring the box to the viewing room,” he stated.
“Yeah, I know because I have a few boxes there. We were just going to see if the ring was there and leave. Because of their reaction, we took the contents and ran.” I deliberately paused. “I need you to look at the contents, Dad.”
“Normally, you get Jordan and Ash to help out.” He was being evasive.
“They’ve already checked them out, and we’re at a loss. I need your help, Dad, because I no longer know what is going on.”
“Where are you?” he snapped. “Did you take precautions not to be followed?”
“Yeah, I’m in one of the family safe houses at the moment with Cassandra. I didn’t want to worry her because of the baby.”
“Good. I will need to reach out to some of the other Council members. Frank Jenkins belonged to a bygone era and we may need their help to understand his ramblings. Are the contents safe?”
“Yeah, I have them in a box.”