Treachery’s Devotion_Masters’ Admiralty Read online

  Treachery’s Devotion

  Masters’ Admiralty, book 1

  Mari Carr

  Lila Dubois

  Copyright 2017 by Mari Carr and Lila Dubois

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book, with the exception of brief quotations for book reviews or critical articles, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Editor: Kelli Collins

  Cover artist: Lila Dubois

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Treachery’s Devotion

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  See where it all began…

  Other books by Mari Carr

  Other books by Lila Dubois

  Treachery’s Devotion

  Masters’ Admiralty, book 1

  A warrior with everything to prove.

  Tristan Knight has served the Admiral of England since he was a teenager. As a knight he has pledged his life to protect the Masters’ Admiralty, and when he’s assigned to escort an archaeologist on a research trip he knows the menial task is punishment for the failure of his last mission.

  A woman in a gilded cage.

  Sophia Starabba is a brilliant scholar and accomplished law enforcement officer, working for Italy’s cultural heritage protection department. But none of that matters to her family or the other members of the territory of Rome. To them she’s the “Principessa”- daughter of the Admiral.

  The man who holds the key.

  James Rathmann lives for mysteries. In another life he would have been a detective, but a love for digging in the dirt made him an archaeologist. Now one of the world’s leading experts on coins, and curator at the British Museum, he’s been called to Rome to examine a recent discovery.

  An old enemy back from the dead.

  Among the coins they find something alarming—a message from a villain everyone had assumed was long dead. Tristan leads them on the trail to identify and protect the next potential target and possibly discover the identity of the Domino, a killer and anarchist who plagued the Masters’ Admiralty in the past.

  But the Domino isn’t dead, and together James, Sophia and Tristan will fight to stay alive and one step ahead of a killer who will do anything to destroy the Masters’ Admiralty.

  Prologue

  The scent of death lay over every surface and permeated the air. Three bodies, three different methods of murder, but the reek lay over, in, and on every molecule in the cave, binding the horrifying tableau together.

  “Don’t look at them.” Her brother, Antonio Starabba, cupped her elbow, turning her away from the bodies. The cave had once been natural, but humans had lived, loved, and died on these lands for thousands of years, and the cave bore the scars of human use—the floor had been leveled, niches carved out of the walls, and steps cut into the crevasse that served as entryway into the cave.

  Antonio steered her past two people who were quietly photographing and processing the scene. One looked up in time to see her face—or what there was to see of it between the mask and the hood of the all-white disposable coveralls she’d put on before entering.

  It should have rendered her anonymous, but the woman recognized her.

  “Principessa,” she murmured quietly, bowing her head.

  Antonio led his sister to the far side of the cave, where rough shelves had been cut into the walls. The shelves were filled with what a lay person would have called a treasure-box decorated with rough-cut jewels that indicated they had been made long before the refined tools jewelers used today were available. A stone bust from ancient Greece, as well as two paintings on the floor, leaning against the walls, both impressionist-style paintings of the Italian countryside, all burnt orange and shades of yellow and citrine.

  As lovely and interesting as all those things were, the vast majority of the treasure on display—and despite her training, she couldn’t help but think of this as treasure—was coinage. Gold and silver coins, most with the rough, thinned edges of ancient currency.

  For the most part, the coins were simply loose on the stone shelves, except for three stacks on the right-hand side of the top shelf. Each stack had nine coins.

  Three bodies. Three stacks. Nine coins. All multiples of three.

  She stepped back to look at the paintings. One had three oaks in the foreground, the other had three plump sheep in a field.

  “Whoever this is, they know,” she said.

  Antonio nodded. “Yes. You will handle the art?”

  “The art, the jeweled box, yes. But I’m not a coin expert.”

  “Get one.”

  “There’s someone in England.”

  Antonio frowned, his dark brows drawn down over his gold eyes. “The country or the territory?”

  “The territory. He’s one of us.”

  “Merda. I don’t want this spreading outside of Rome.”

  “Now is not the time to play games.” She had very little patience for the political games the territories played. She understood them, but that understanding didn’t mean she shared her brother’s—or father’s—suspicious and secretive policies. The boundaries of the nine territories had been drawn and redrawn, existing entirely separately from the national boundaries of the countries of modern-day Europe.

  “Do you really think a stranger would have found this place, on this land?”

  Antonio shook his head, but he said, “It is possible.”

  “Who is going to handle…” She couldn’t stop herself from looking over toward the bodies. Her gaze fell first on a severed limb. With a shudder, she forced herself to turn back to the little cache of art and coins.

  “We will.”

  “Antonio,” she protested. “You cannot.”

  “We can, we will.”

  “We do not have what the Polizia di Stato do—the labs, the tests.”

  “The Carabinieri do.”

  “We do not—”

  “Not your division.”

  The Carabinieri, one of Italy’s two police forces, were technically members of the military and older than the modern country of Italy. But they didn’t deal with homicides the way the polizia did, and were better known for responding and providing support after major events like earthquakes than for taking on barbaric killers.

  “We will not involve the polizia.” Antonio squeezed her shoulder.

  “You are a fool.” Her brother surely had to see that this was not something they could hide from the normal
authorities.

  “Tell me the name of the coin expert you need. I will contact England.”

  “Antonio.”

  He turned away.

  “Coglione,” she muttered under her breath. Her brother was a moron. She cast one last look at the three stacks of coins. She would make sure they weren’t moved, not until the coin expert got there. If this was meant as a clue, then everything about the coins could be a clue, not just where they were from or their value, but their condition—which side was faceup—and even their relation to each other.

  Taking a moment to push down her anger, she walked toward her brother, avoiding looking at the bodies. She was careful on the rough-hewn floor. She’d been at a gala when she was called out. She’d left her stilettos and ball gown in the back of a black van pulled up near the entrance and wore only thin slippers inside protective plastic booties. She could feel damp cold leaching up into the balls and heels of her feet. She told herself the dampness wasn’t blood, but she started to gag, her skin crawling.

  Her brother cast her a hard glance, and she forced down the need to retch and straightened, walking through the room as if she were still at the gala.

  There were now four people photographing and measuring the cave. Murmurs of “Principessa” followed her as she walked to the foot of the rough stairs.

  Her brother walked up with her, and when they got to the top, he motioned to some trees off to the left. She checked to make sure no one could see, then stumbled over and vomited up the canapés and prosecco she’d consumed.

  She used her mask to wipe her face, then walked back to the van. Her brother held the side door open for her. She climbed in and started stripping off the coveralls. She could still smell the death. Good God, was the smell in her hair?

  “Name?” Antonio demanded.

  She shimmied out of her coveralls, debated making the drive home in nothing but her shoes, thong and the half corset she’d worn under the ball gown, then decided that was asking for trouble and pulled the champagne taffeta designer gown off the floor of the van, where she’d carelessly discarded it.

  “Rathmann at the British Museum,” she told her brother.

  “Grazie.”

  “Ah, no no no, Antonio.” She gathered her skirts and backed up while still in the van. “Zip.”

  Antonio Starabba, a man many feared—and rightly so—grumbled as he zipped up his sister’s dress.

  She turned, still holding her skirts up off the forest floor. “Be careful, Antonio.”

  “I will.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “And you, Princess.”

  Sophia Starabba rolled her eyes. Only with her brother would she dare mock the title. “Don’t move the coins. The paintings can come up. If you wait a few hours, I will be back, and I’ll do it.” It was after midnight, but it would still take her at least forty-five minutes to get back into Rome, half an hour to shower, change, grab her kit, and another forty-five minutes back to the villa. The cave entrance was within the villa’s expansive walled grounds.

  A villa that on paper was owned by her father, but in reality, was owned by the Masters’ Admiralty, and the territory of Rome

  Chapter One

  He was being punished. It hadn’t been explicitly stated, but Tristan Knight knew that his latest assignment was meant as punishment. As a knight of the Masters’ Admiralty, he should be above playing nanny and chauffeur.

  But that’s what this new assignment was. He was going to play nanny.

  His boots hit the stone steps a bit harder than was strictly necessary, and he had to hold back a curse as he dodged a camera-wielding tourist.

  Damn Weston Anderson, this was his fault. Tristan had stuck his neck out for Wes, who’d been his friend for years. The reward for doing what Tristan had thought was the noble, right thing to do—the knightly thing to do—had been a rather spectacular bolloxing and this shite assignment.

  He slipped through the heavy wooden doors of one of London’s most visited attractions and stopped for a moment to let his eyes adjust. Blue light lay softly over the creamy-white stone in the atrium of the British Museum, filtered in by the curved, circular glass ceiling. On a Tuesday morning, it was packed with school groups and a smattering of tourists. He oriented himself, plotted a course through the throngs of people, and started walking.

  A little girl in a bright blue jacket bearing a school logo on the arm caught sight of him and then pointed, speaking excitedly in German. “Teacher, teacher, that man has a sword!”

  The teacher, a man with salt-and-pepper hair, a bulging knapsack, and a jacket to match that of the little girl’s—and those worn by a clump of probably fifteen other children—frowned at Tristan. His gaze lingered longer than was polite before he looked down and flipped through his program, probably checking for information on whatever living history display or education program he’d decided Tristan must be a part of.

  Tristan had been a knight for England for nearly fifteen years, and in the past five years he’d given up on hiding his sword. He’d gone through phases of carrying a gym bag, wearing a long coat, and even trying to make it look like a cane. Then one day, he’d simply strapped on the sword and headed out. People had looked at him oddly but no one said anything. No one stopped him. Not even police.

  If they knew that the sword wasn’t just some odd quirk—that he had the right, as a knight, to use the blade to defend and protect the members and interests of the Masters’ Admiralty—they probably wouldn’t let him pass with nothing more than a sideways glance.

  Then again, they wouldn’t know who the Masters’ Admiralty were.

  There were plenty of conspiracy theorists who ranted and raved about secret groups who controlled the world—the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, and the Trinity Masters.

  They weren’t wrong. They just didn’t have the right name.

  The Masters’ Admiralty was a highly selective and secret organization that had been operating in and controlling Europe since the Black Plague. At one point, members had controlled most of the governments, but now they no longer had such overt political control. They were no less powerful, but that power was channeled differently than it had once been.

  It was another reason Tristan could wander around wearing a sword. If he were stopped or arrested, he would be out in a matter of hours and there would be no record of what had happened. For that matter, if anyone looked too closely, they’d find that Tristan Knight seemed to appear out of thin air at the age of sixteen, with no significant records before that age.

  One of the things Tristan had given up to become a knight was his name.

  He moved out of sight of the German school group, and no one else paid any particular attention to him. It would be the same if he were walking down the footpath in the financial district or through Covent Garden.

  People, especially Londoners, were passionately dedicated to not getting involved, and so he went about his business in slacks, a button-down shirt and a utilitarian sword belt.

  On the far side of the atrium, he stopped to consult a map, then wound his way through a gallery filled with delicate pottery to a heavy wooden door with a small plaque that read “staff only.”

  He tapped in the code his vice admiral had given him, and then slipped out of the public areas of the museum. Behind the scenes, the building was no less beautiful, but there were signs of day-to-day use—industrial gray carpet covering the wood and stone floors, cubicles in several of the more open areas. In one instance of particularly bad decisions, one room had acoustic tile and fluorescent lights hiding the arched stone ceiling.

  The offices and cubicle farms he passed were sparsely populated by people. Some desks were covered in papers, other were bare. There were posters commemorating past exhibits interspersed with lovely paintings in heavy gilt frames. In another museum, the art that hung in the offices and halls would have been featured pieces, but given the depth and breadth of the British Museum’s collection, these ranked display space in cluttered offic
es.

  Tristan had to stop and ask for directions twice before he found the door labeled “Numismatics” on one of the upper floors. He was so deep in the labyrinth of the museum that he’d had to actively track the turns, twists, and stairs he’d taken. It was habit—always know the point of regress. Check the defensible positions.

  The numismatics office was located in a small room off a large gallery on one of the upper floors. Tall windows let light fill the gallery, turning the gray stone of the walls and columns silvery-gold. Half of the gallery had cubicles, which seemed as out of place against the tall windows and stone floor as a plastic party hat at the Kentucky Derby. The other half of the gallery housed rows of chest-high filing cabinets. A rectangle of sunlight stretched across the floor from a window to the door of the numismatics office, as if lighting his way.

  Tristan knocked. There was no response. Aware that it had taken him more time to get here than he’d planned, he knocked again, and then swung the door open.

  The office beyond would have been large if it had been for one person, but there were three desks crowded in the place, and a long white counter ran the length of the wall on his left. Bright white lights shone down on the counter, and there were magnifying lenses mounted at even intervals along the wall. There was only one occupant, a man who sat hunched over the counter. He was big and broad, out of proportion with the room. The stool under him seemed too small for his large frame.