by Lila Dubois
“My God.”
“I ran to help him. He was so hot. I called 9-9-9 from the phone by the bed. I stayed with him, did what the operator said. I grabbed glasses of water and dumped them on him. I threw wet towels over him. When the paramedics came, I let them in.” Tristan shook his head at the memory. “I ended up going with him. They asked who I was but I didn’t answer. They thought I was his kid and in shock, so they loaded me up too. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed with him. I was scared out of my mind that if I tried to get away, they’d figure out I had been trying to rob the place and arrest me.”
Sophia slid around to his front. “Who was he?”
“The husband of England’s security minister. When the minister showed up, she and her wife didn’t start shouting or say ‘who is this kid?’ They acted like everything was normal. And when they left the hospital the next day, I went with them.”
“Did you tell them why you’d been in the house?”
“No. Not at first. I tried to play it cool. Like I was still in a book or movie.” He chuckled softly, playing with the ends of her hair. She let him. He had the right to touch her, and she had the right to touch him.
My wife.
“What did they say?”
“They just asked the same questions over and over, until I exploded and told them. I remember feeling annoyed and freaked out. I was with them for nearly a full day. They didn’t lock me in or anything, but I knew I couldn’t leave. They were rich and powerful, and I was nothing, so I stayed. They fed me dinner and asked me questions while I ate. They gave me a room and asked me more questions while I brushed my teeth.”
“And what did they do, once they knew?”
“They told me about the Masters’ Admiralty, and they said I was destined to be a knight. Their son—in his thirties when I met them—was already a knight. I stayed with them for a week, until the husband came home from the hospital. Being there was better than being at my mom’s boyfriend’s place—she’d lost her flat by then—and I told myself that before I left, I’d steal that gold.”
“Did you?”
“No. They were…amazing people. I still don’t know what they saw in me, but they gave me the opportunity to change, and I took it.”
Tristan smiled down at her. “When their son came to the house, walked in wearing a sword as if that was totally normal, I was done.”
“You’re a romantic at heart.” Her eyes searched his face, as if she could see into his mind, his soul.
“A romantic?” He scoffed. Well, he tried to scoff, but he couldn’t. He was self-aware enough to acknowledge that there was some truth to what she said.
What he wouldn’t admit was that without the influence of his mentors and his training to become a knight, he might have become a very different man. A man like his mother’s “boyfriends.” Or worse, given the burning desire he’d had to be someone, he probably would have become a mid- to upper-level drug dealer.
“The moment I turned eighteen, I joined and became a squire the next day.”
“You’re still trying to prove yourself,” James said from behind him.
Tristan had heard the door open a few minutes ago and recognized the sound of James’s unique, uneven footsteps. Sophia, who was facing the door but whose view was blocked by his body, jumped in surprise. Tristan stroked her hair in an instinctive, comforting gesture.
She looked up and whispered, “Thank you for telling me your story.” Then she slid away from him.
Tristan sheathed his sword and turned. “Yes, I am.” James hadn’t asked if he was still trying to prove himself. It had been a statement, but Tristan felt compelled to respond.
“The son, is he still a knight?”
Tristan nodded once. James crossed his arms. “And is he still a dick to you?”
“How do you know he was a dick?”
“I know how the legacies are.”
Tristan raised a brow. “You’re a legacy.”
James grinned. “I barely count. We skipped a generation, and I’m not pure English.” James tapped his cheek, indicating either his skin color, his features, or both.
“You have nothing to prove,” Sophia shouted from the closet. “You’re a knight.”
She stepped out wearing a white gown. It was a one-shoulder dress, with a fitted bodice. The material looked both heavy and shiny. It cinched in tightly at the waist. Tristan had seen her naked, and he knew exactly how narrow her waist was, but the dress made it look like he could wrap both hands around her. The skirt flared out, short enough in the front that her legs up to just below her knees were exposed, but it brushed the floor behind her. She stepped into strappy silver shoes, then beckoned them over.
Without asking, Tristan dropped to his knees and fastened the ankle straps of each shoe, stroking her foot and ankle as he did so.
James grunted. “Are you wearing a corset?”
“Yes. I have to with this dress. I’m not, how do you say…” She paused as if thinking of a word, then said, “Skinny.”
Tristan sat back on his heels, looking up at her. “You cannot be serious.”
Now that he was close, he could see that her chest wasn’t expanding out, but up with each breath.
“This is a vintage Eleanora Garnett dress from 1963.” She was pressing her hands against her waist. Tristan rose and went around to help James, who was trying to zip it up. The zipper was tiny and stiff. He could see the stiff flesh-colored garment Sophia wore beneath. Tristan held the fabric together and James zipped it up.
James tapped him on the shoulder, then gestured at both of them, one brow raised. Tristan looked down at what they were wearing—he had on jeans and a slightly wrinkled white dress shirt, open at the throat. It was clean, but not formal. James wore slacks and a polo.
“Uh,” Tristan cleared his throat. “We don’t have tuxedos or anything.”
Sophia sat at a delicate vanity. “Don’t worry. It’s just me.”
“Just you what?”
Sophia twisted her hair up into a high bun and started pinning it in place. “My father named me Principessa. He likes me to look the part. It is easier to get him to listen when I am dressed the way he likes.”
James grunted. “I already hate this fucker.”
“This fucker is our father-in-law and the admiral of Rome,” Tristan reminded him.
James started cursing, a bit of Kiwi inflection creeping into the words.
Tristan checked his watch. “We’re running late. It’s twelve twenty.”
Anxiety balled in his stomach. In twenty-five minutes, he would call the admiral of England and tell him that the fleet admiral was dead, and that he’d been there when it had happened—the fleet admiral had died on his watch.
He knew it wasn’t his job to protect the fleet admiral, but he felt guilty for not doing more.
Before they left the Isle of Man, Greta said they could give their respective admirals—Rome and England—fifteen minutes of advanced notice as to what had happened. Any more than that and the other seven admirals would be upset. Normally, Greta wouldn’t have allowed them to say anything, and they would have been bound by the rules of their society to stay silent, but this was a concession to the fact that they’d been right about the Domino and his plans.
Twenty-five minutes until he spoke to his admiral. But first he had to face the admiral of Rome. Rome was historically one of the most powerful territories, and its admiral one of the most powerful among the nine.
And he’d just married that man’s daughter without his knowledge or consent. From what Sophia had said, Tristan was guessing the admiral of Rome was a bit of a control freak. As the admiral, he arranged the marriages among all the members of Rome. Like a feudal lord of old, he had the power to give his daughter, the principessa, in marriage to the people of his choosing.
Instead, the fleet admiral had usurped the admiral of Rome’s power, placed her in a trinity with men from a different territory, and then died.
So
phia rose smoothly, her back ramrod straight. Probably because she couldn’t bend at the waist.
Her dark hair was up, leaving the creamy expanse of her neck naked. Her shoulders and one arm were similarly naked.
She held out one hand, wrist soft, palm down. Tristan nodded to James, indicating he should go to Sophia. James bowed over her hand, kissing it.
“Principessa,” James murmured.
Tristan let James escort Sophia, while he opened doors and checked the hallway for potential threats. They didn’t see anyone on their brief walk from Sophia’s room. Together they started down the stairs, prepared to face the admiral of Rome.
Chapter Fifteen
Giovanni Starabba wore his age well. Though he was nearing seventy, he was fit and trim. No gray dared to mark his hair, though his beard and mustache both grew in snowy white. That was a secret only his family knew.
Giovanni had married at forty to beautiful women half his age. Maybe if she’d been born when he was younger, she would feel differently about him, but he’d been the admiral of Rome since before she was born. He wasn’t a parent she went to when she needed love. For that, she had her mothers.
She and her brother were both born to the same mother, but Sophia had always been close with their biological mother, while Antonio was closer with their other mother, who was imposing and dangerous in her own way, though also fiercely maternal. She had no memories of playing with her father.
He wouldn’t see it that way, if she ever dared voice those thoughts. He’d taught her to play chess, and on most Thursday nights between the ages of ten and eighteen, she would join him in his study for a game. That hadn’t been play. It had been a lesson, a chance to teach her strategy. A chance for her father to learn about and assess one of his most valuable assets.
She hadn’t seen her father since last month, at a birthday celebration for Sophia’s mother, who had just turned fifty. The party had been lavish and decadent, even by Italian standards, and her father had been every inch the ruler holding court, while those lesser than he danced for his amusement and vied for his favor.
And now she had to tell this intense, powerful man that the fleet admiral, the only person who had greater power than he did, had stolen one of his prized assets and given her to men of lower status in another territory.
Sophia made sure her face remained pleasant and neutral, with none of her fear about his reaction or the true source of her anger—she was his daughter, not his property or asset—showing on her face.
“Father.” She spoke Italian, knowing James and Tristan wouldn’t be able to understand, but hoping they could follow along based on their reactions. “I have just returned from the Isle of Man.”
Giovanni frowned. “Why were you there? You should not have gone without speaking to me.”
Sophia knew Antonio would have informed him. He just wanted to reprimand her.
“Our investigation—”
“Your investigation? Your brother is investigating. You are involved because he insisted you needed to look at the art.”
Sophia raised her chin. “I am a member of the Carabinieri—”
He waved that away. “Why were you on the Isle of Man? Who did you speak to? What did you say?”
She needed to try another approach. Gesturing to her right, where James stood, she said, “This is James Rathmann, a coin expert from London. He helped us understand the message the killer left on the coins.”
“The church,” Giovanni growled. “An old enemy I am more than ready to face.”
“It is not the church.”
Her father’s dark eyes focused on her. “What do you mean?”
“There were Vatican coins, yes, but they were meant to represent something else.”
Giovanni shrugged that off. “Your faith will make you a good and caring wife, but it blinds you to the evil within the church. I warned your mother not to teach you that Catholic nonsense.”
Sophia shoved the side of her tongue between her back teeth. She wanted to clench her jaw in rage, but her father would notice—bitter experience had taught her that making sure she couldn’t grind her teeth without biting through her own tongue kept her from clamping her teeth together. The tongue-in-teeth trick worked, and she was able to keep her face passive and continue speaking. “You want the church to be the enemy, so you will ignore the truth. As I knew you would.”
Her father smacked his knuckles against the top of his desk. “You speak to me this way?”
Sophia hid the little thrill of triumph. He’d gotten angry first. She’d won, he’d lost.
“I traveled to the Isle of Man with Mr. Rathmann and Tristan Knight.” She motioned to her left. Tristan inclined his head in a slight nod, the heel of his left hand on the flat disk-like pommel of his sword.
“The admiral of England sanctioned this?”
“The admiral of England was aware of what we were doing.”
“And what is it you thought you were doing?”
“We went to warn the fleet admiral that he was in danger from the Domino.”
Her father, who’d been standing behind his big desk, sat down. He threw back his head and laughed.
Both James and Tristan shifted restlessly. Sophia caught each of their gazes, giving her head a little shake, and they subsided.
“You think the Domino killed our people? The Domino is dead, and even if he wasn’t, he always leaves a domino piece.” Giovanni held up his fingers indicating the size of a domino. “Surely you would have found that among the coins. It should be easy to distinguish a rectangular domino from a circular coin, unless your coin expert is not so good. There wasn’t someone in Rome who could help you?”
Though they weren’t able to follow the Italian, the word for domino was the same in both languages, and James must have understood. He cleared his throat. “The Domino doesn’t leave the same calling card each time.” He looked back and forth between Sophia and the admiral. “You’re talking about the Domino, right?”
“And how do you know what the Domino did?” Giovanni focused on him for the first time, asking his question in English.
“There are historians in my family,” James replied simply.
“We’re running out of time,” Tristan warned Sophia quietly. “I have to call my admiral in two minutes.”
Sophia wanted to scream in frustration. This conversation was getting nowhere.
“Father.” She switched back to Italian. “The coins were a message, a threat. We…ah, translated them.” She waved her hand in the air, the time pressure making her less precise than she would have preferred. “The masked man will kill the Shadow Pope.”
Giovanni chuckled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. When none of them reacted to his laughter, he sat forward in his chair, leaning his elbows on the top of the desk. “The masked man?”
“In English, there’s a type of mask that is called the Domino.”
Giovanni merely stared at her.
“The Shadow Pope—”
Her father cut her off, his gaze now in the middle distance. “An old name for the leader of our society.” He rapped his knuckles on his desk in thought. “All this was communicated via coins? What about the other pieces of art?”
Sophia spoke quickly, watching Tristan out of the corner of her eye. “The other pieces corroborate the message in the coins—they link Italy and the Isle of Man, all have trinities represented in them. The paintings were on the floor, the jeweled box on the shelf below the coins. The coins were in a place of importance.”
“It is not clean or simple. There are too many possible interpretations.”
Sophia relaxed—this was the man who really ruled the territory of Rome. A brilliant, thoughtful man. It was times like this, when he forgot to act like the all-powerful emperor he fancied himself, that Sophia understood why her mothers, who both acknowledged that he could be difficult, also loved him.
Sophia rounded his desk and dropped to her knees beside his chair. She laid a hand
over his. He frowned down at her.
“Father. There is more I have to tell you.” Now that the moment was here, she wasn’t quite sure how to say what was needed. She blew out a breath. “We went to deliver this message. If we were wrong, it would be only us who looked foolish.” She gestured to Tristan and James, who both looked grim.
Her father patted her cheek. “My princess, protecting the people of Rome.”
“Father, listen, please.” She took a deep breath. “We spoke to the fleet admiral, and he was impressed with the work we’d done. He believed us, believed the threat was real. And he…”
She let the words trail off, wanting to make sure her father was listening.
“What is it?” Giovanni demanded.
“He placed me in a trinity with James and Tristan. I’m married.”
Giovanni’s eyes went wide and he exploded out of his chair.
Sophia pushed to her feet, taking an awkward step back. Tristan was there, supporting her.
The admiral of Rome looked over, his gaze focusing on where Tristan’s arm was looped around Sophia’s waist, drawing her back against his body and away from her father.
“No! I will not have you married to them.”
“It is done,” Sophia told him.
“Time’s up,” Tristan murmured in her ear.
“Father!” Sophia shouted the word, interrupting his tirade. Tristan released her, and for a moment she was cold and alone. Then James was there, taking Tristan’s place at her back.
“Father, listen to me.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tristan sliding out of her father’s study, his cell phone in hand.
“I will speak with the fleet admiral,” Giovanni assured her.
Sophia shook her head. “You can’t, Father.”
“I will—”
“You can’t. The fleet admiral is dead.”
Giovanni Starabba sank into his chair. Expression flickered across his face—the rage that had suffused him when she’d announced she was married draining away to leave him looking pale and shocked. Then anger started to return, and he looked like he was about to yell at her.