The Shadow of the Emperor: The Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Book 6 (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller) by Jane Thornley

Author:Jane Thornley [Thornley, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RiverFlow
Published: 2022-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

13

They dropped me off outside our hotel at approximately ten p.m., leaving me less than an hour to get ready for the night’s operation. Peaches had been pacing outside when she bounded up to me.

“Phoebe!” she called, throwing her arms around my shoulders. “Thank God you’re all right! Who the hell are those bastards? What’s going on?”

I told her, told them all in more detail later in the hotel room, explaining the torturous family dynamics of the family Baldi, and where that put us on our quest to find Evan.

“Did you get a sense of where they were holding the lad?” Rupert asked.

“No,” I told him, “only that he was being much better treated than when he was held hostage by Noel. Sonny told me that the bastard had kept him drugged and bound in some abandoned basement in Naples. Once she mobilized her takeover plan, she claimed that it was relatively easy to break Evan free and take him to this new location. He was in rough shape, though, she said, unconscious at that point. He was still groggy.”

“So Sonofabitchi Baldi acted on her takeover plan following her brother’s death and Noel’s incarceration?” Peaches asked.

“That’s it in a nutshell.” I then explained how Noel ended up on the senior Baldi’s succession plan against both siblings.

“Because a woman could not inherit the dynasty,” Nicolina said.

“Straight out of the history of the Roman empire,” Rupert remarked.

“Straight out of the history of mankind, which has always neglected women’s leadership. It is very much like my own family,” Nicolina remarked. “Your English term mankind says it all."

“Only in your case, dear Nicolina,” Rupert began, “you convinced your brother otherwise and regained your share of your inheritance, whereas, if my memory serves me correctly, the emperors and empresses of yore preferred poisoning their siblings in order to settle matters of inheritance.”

Nicolina smiled. “I might have shot my brother if he had not come to his senses. Even Cleopatra saw to her siblings’ demise.”

“But only to keep them from killing her first,” I commented. “Anyway, Sonny, as she insists I call her, prefers attrition by natural selection: let the strongest survive, in other words. Though Noel has not yet been removed permanently from the picture, when he shot Alessandro Baldi and ended up in jail, he essentially opened the path for Sonny’s takeover.”

“On that point,” said Rupert, clearing his throat, “I have made a few discreet phone calls to my Interpol sources but they assure me that they have no man fitting Noel’s description in Italian custody.”

“But he looks exactly like his old self and was caught red-handed in the Colosseum with a dead man,” I protested.

“Yes, but I could not very well disclose our knowledge of those events, and apparently the man in custody did not waver from his statement that three armed men and one woman chased him into the Colosseum to rob him and that one hapless male victim was killed after an argument erupted among his companion thieves as to who would claim the Rolex watch from Noel’s wrist.

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