Treasured Lies (3 page)

Chapter 4

Archer helped Rosalina remove her tank and buoyancy vest. He then pushed it up towards the dive deck and Ginger reached for it. He wasn't surprised when she struggled with the weight. For a woman in her early twenties, she wasn't anywhere near as fit and sporty as Rosalina, despite the seven years between them. But as both Jimmy and Alessandro were banned from lifting anything heavy, Archer was grateful to have her around helping. Ginger was an interesting woman, often saying ridiculous things, but then, out of the blue, she'd come up with something brilliant. He had a feeling there was a whole lot more to her than she let on. With a groan, Ginger finally managed to launch the tank onto the dive platform.

‘Don't keep me in suspense, man, how'd you go?' Jimmy wasn't a beat-around-the-bush kind of guy.

‘We mapped out six squares and—'

‘I know you did some digging! Did ya find anythin'?'

‘Yes. Hopefully Alex won't pass out with excitement when he sees it.'

Archer had only known Alessandro for a couple of months, but he knew one thing about him for certain; anything even remotely related to ancient history had him acting like a kid in an ice-cream shop.

‘Alex!' Jimmy said with mock hurt in his voice. ‘What about me? Get your arse up here so I can see it.'

‘Hold your horses.' Archer and Rosalina shrugged out of their fins and masks and tossed them up to Ginger.

Ginger squinted against the sun. ‘You guys okay now? I'll go get Alex.'

‘We're fine, you go,' Rosalina said and Ginger quickly scurried away.

As Rosalina climbed the ladder out of the water, Archer admired her cheeky bottom. He'd never tire of that view. Rosalina wasn't all skin and bones. She embraced her curves and he loved that about her. She looked healthy, athletic and completely in proportion. Her height was perfect too. Perfect for her to nuzzle her face into his neck when he held her to his chest to inhale her delicate essence. Perfect also for buying her favourite maxi dresses, which he liked to do from time to time. And even better was easing her out of those flowing dresses and tossing them onto the floor.

They removed their masks and he helped her zip out of her shorty wetsuit.

‘Leave it here.' Archer referred to the equipment Rosalina was already gathering up. ‘Jimmy'll have a coronary if we don't get up there soon.'

‘He's an impatient bugger,' Rosalina agreed.

For his own selfish reasons, Archer allowed Rosalina to climb the stairs up from the dive deck first. Now that she was out of her wetsuit there was even more of her body to enjoy. He didn't mind that her bikini bottoms rode between her cheeks a tad either. So damn sexy.

Jimmy was at them as soon as they reached the top step. ‘Let me see.'

Archer placed his hand on his mate's shoulder. ‘Careful, Jimbo, you'll pop your stitches.'

‘I'll pop you with somethin' if you don't hurry up.'

Archer huffed out a laugh, though Jimmy probably meant it.

‘
Buongiorno
. Did you find something?' Alessandro arrived at the doorway with one arm over Ginger's shoulders and the other gripping his stomach. His olive skin still looked grey even though it had been over three weeks since his operation. He was trying very hard to conceal his pain from them all.

‘Yeah, did you find any treasure?' Ginger seemed more interested in what they found than helping Alessandro.

Between the two of them, Jimmy and Alessandro were sorry sights. Their injuries had been in similar places, but the bullet wound Jimmy suffered had done more damage than the knife wound inflicted on Alessandro. Not that you could tell from looking at them. Alessandro seemed to be in much more pain. But then again, although Jimmy had recently hit the fifty-year-old milestone, he was as tough as any twenty-year-old Archer had ever employed. So tough, in fact, the doctors opted to leave the bullet in him. Archer secretly believed Jimmy was pretty chuffed about that.

‘Alright you lot.
Mi scusi,
let me through.' Rosalina whisked past them all, no doubt heading towards the saloon. ‘Give me a minute or two,' she yelled over her shoulder as she strode away.

‘Give me a hand.' Jimmy clutched at Archer's arm, not waiting for an answer. Archer obliged by hooking his shoulder up under Jimmy's armpit and helping him hobble along. By the time Archer, Jimmy, Alessandro and Ginger met Rosalina in the saloon, she was waiting for them at the dining table. Archer's eyes were drawn to her breasts and how they heaved with her breathless excitement. The dampened bikini top helped. Clearly she was itching to show them what was now hidden beneath a white towel on the table.

‘Show me!' Jimmy was puffing now and Archer couldn't wait to get him seated. The man was solid muscle and his weight reflected it too.

‘When you're all seated, I'll show you,' Rosalina said it like a teacher reacting to an unruly bunch of children. That was a good description of Jimmy and Alessandro at the moment. Both of them had to be constantly reminded of their doctor's orders to rest. The only reason they were out of hospital and on Archer's yacht in the first place was because of the assurances both Rosalina and Archer had made to the hospital staff that they'd be well looked after. A doctor flew in every second day to change their bandages, administer medications and check on their wounds. Although it was costing him a fortune, Archer wouldn't baulk at paying ten times the amount if he had to.

Jimmy would've kept a nurse on board too, if the one that turned up hadn't resembled more of a prison guard than someone he wanted to play doctors and nurses with. Jimmy had been royally pissed off when she first rocked up. Not only did she look like she'd break his balls with the flick of her hand if he misbehaved, she didn't smell too crash hot either. The poor woman only put up with his schoolboy antics for a week and Jimmy wasted no time in sweet talking Rosalina into taking over the nursing duties. Archer knew Rosalina didn't mind. Looking after people was in her blood. She'd grown up looking after her grandmother, and vice versa. It was one of the things he loved about her.

Ginger remained standing and jiggled from foot to foot as she waited for the men to sit. Once they were seated, Rosalina splayed her fingers on the table and cleared her throat. ‘Archer and I started digging in the same spot as last time, Jimmy.'

‘Ah, for God's sake, will you just show us?'

She smiled a cheeky knowing smile, then she gradually peeled back the towel, revealing first the chain then the golden bust.

Alessandro gasped. ‘
Dio mio
. It's the statue of Achelous. The patron deity of the Silver Swirling or Achelous River … Like, ummm, what you call, River God, I understand.'

‘Is it gold?' Ginger's already high-pitched voice soared with that comment.

‘Of course it's gold, honey.' Jimmy was quickly the expert. ‘It would've wasted away to nothin' if it was anything else.'

‘Not exactly.' Alessandro was quick to defend his new love interest. ‘Those nails Archer and Rosalina brought up last time are testament to that.' He thrust his chin in defiance.

Archer's mind bounced to the moment he'd discovered those nails. He'd been beyond excited when he'd dug the giant shipping nails from the sand but it wasn't until he'd indicated what they were that Rosalina understood enough to share in his celebration too.

But now that Alessandro mentioned it, he had a good point. In many other locations those nails would've crumbled away in the current. He reached for the gold chain and glided the relatively smooth links between his fingers. This dive spot performed its own natural preservation techniques, and hopefully that meant there was a whole bounty just sitting there, waiting to be discovered. It was a sobering thought. Just twenty or so metres below where he was standing were a hoard of items that'd been stolen from an Italian church seven hundred years ago. Hopefully they were the lucky bastards set to bring them back to life.

Moments like these, and he'd had a couple of them in his life, made him wish his father was still alive to share the joy.

Chapter 5

Nox was tortured, not just physically, but mentally. Not knowing what happened, where he was, or why he was all alone caused as much agony as his injuries. But the thing that drove him to both delirium and nausea with equal intensity was as shocking as it was brutal. At first, when he found the spear sticking out of his stomach, he thought he was hallucinating, but when he touched it, barbs of pain shot from his lower back and down his legs. In that instant he knew every centimetre of that smooth rod, from the twenty or so that he could see in front of him to however much of it stuck out his back, was very, very real.

Movement out the corner of his eye caught his attention. But no matter how much he wanted to see what it was, he couldn't move or turn around enough to see it.

‘Who's there?'

The sweeping silence had his mind playing tricks on him. The damn wind alternated between howling gusts, like forced whispers rippling through the cracks in the building walls, to protracted quiet, like now. But even that remained as a hollow whistle in his ears. He'd had endless silence before; in fact, he usually cherished being alone and devoid of any incessant noise. But now, as the whistling winds paused in its freakish onslaught, and he lay on his side, all alone in this strange room, fear engulfed him like he was drowning in sewerage.

He froze at a new noise and jerked his head backwards, desperate to see who was there. His breath caught in his throat at the agony piercing his lower back.

‘What do you want?'

The sound continued in a strange repetitive motion. It was like someone shuffling in slippers. But as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

Father Benedici often wandered the halls of their church in his slippers, and Nox had lost count of the amount of times he had to literally clench his jaw closed to stop himself from yelling at the father to pick up his feet. The damn old fool would trudge to the toilet several times during the night. It was a wonder Nox hadn't killed him many years earlier than he did.

Nox clenched his teeth now, focusing solely on the shuffling. It stopped again.

‘Talk to me, damn you.' He slammed his fist on the wood he was lying on. Searing pain ripped down his legs and he howled at the agony. And then for the hell of it, he screamed as loud as his tortured throat would allow.

‘Help. Help me!'

His screaming reduced to tears and soon deteriorated into sobbing … something he hadn't done since he was a child. It was inexplicable that he couldn't remember how he ended in the state he was in right now, and yet he could remember the last time he'd cried his eyes dry. He was only ten years old at the time, locked in a cupboard, sitting on the floor with his knees tucked up to his chest. It was a vivid memory.

He went back there now, taking in the cold stone floor and the cramped space that seemed to nudge in that little bit more with every breath he took. Without any natural light as a reference, or any light at all, he'd lost all sense of time. Minutes ticked by, hours dragged on. For seven hours he was trapped in that cupboard. It had felt like a week. But he'd do every second of it over again, as it turned out to be his most important life lesson. He'd ridden all the emotions while hugging his knees in the darkness: fear, disbelief, embarrassment, complete uselessness. But one emotion grew like a festering wound: anger. By the time Father Benedici found him, he was no longer a snivelling little boy. He was driven. Driven by anger like a pride of lions are driven by hunger.

He'd allowed his anger to charge his revenge. And when he got it, that little boy who locked him in the cupboard, a fellow orphan who was supposedly his friend, had been begging for his forgiveness.

He'd never forget his name, Shyain. Until the day he killed him, Nox repeated his name all day long. Shyain would whisper off his tongue with his first breath of the day and it would be the last word he spoke before he succumbed to sleep at night. When Nox wrapped his fingers around Shyain's scrawny neck and squeezed until his eyes bulged red, he'd repeated that name over and over like a medieval chant. Once the deed was done, there was no need to utter that ridiculous name ever again.

That was the first time Nox had ever killed a person. And the ease with which he did it surprised him. There was no emotion, just pure analysis of the situation and outright satisfaction of retribution once it was done. Even the dilemma of getting rid of the body unfolded with ease. The hardest part had been lifting the lid off the stone crypt. He did it though. Driven. That's what he was. Even as a child he knew how to harness the power of determination.

To this day, some twenty-nine years later, no-one knew Shyain's body, though most likely nothing more than dust by now, shared an ancient crypt with Robert The Wise. It was an ironic resting place for a stupid little boy. But so be it.

The bulky ring on Nox's finger caught his attention, drawing him decades forward to his current crisis. He knew what the ring contained. Poison. Poisonous mushroom powder to be exact. He'd made it himself. The ring was a clever design. A passing inspection would miss the little hinge that served to raise the jewelled lid on a hidden compartment. The ring was at least seven hundred years old. It had been personally designed for Crisofora della Revere, a thirteenth century Italian aristocrat who apparently had as many enemies as he had children.

Nox wondered if just a mere taste of the powder, maybe a small spattering on the tip of his tongue, wound take the edge off his pain. All it would take was to pop the lid and dip his finger in. The magic potion may be his saviour. He licked his cracked lips, weighing up the idea.

But as much as he wanted to, a niggling command in the back of his mind told him to save it. He had no idea what he was up against, and it may be very likely his poison would come in handy soon. He'd been in worse situations before, granted he'd never been in so much pain before, but he was a survivor.