Maybe she could find a way to say goodbye to Harold after all.
It was before opening hours, but Andreas swiped a badge to let them in. He casually strode over to speak with the security guard, telling him they were his prearranged guests, then motioned for them to continue following him to the elevators.
Ding!
The elevator doors opened, letting them out into the basement.
“This is where we keep some of our archives and storage,” Andreas explained, leading the way once again.
The basement was cold and dry—probably temperaturecontrolled—but Dani’s body was still on fire from her and Theo’s little rendezvous that morning. Things had heated up fast. One second they were kissing, and the next, well, if they hadn’t been interrupted, who knew what would have happened. She couldn’t wait to be alone together again.
Finally they made it to a locked room, and Andreas swiped his badge again. At the front of the room were a few large tables. He told them to wait there for a moment, and then he finally returned with a box.
“Here, put these on,” he said, handing white gloves to each of them.
As they put on the gloves, he pulled out some old documents, sealed in plastic sleeves.
“These are pages from Papantonis’s journal,” Andreas said as he lined them up in front of Theo and Dani. “They were discovered over one hundred years ago at some ruins on the west side of Crete.”
Dani bent over to read the documents, but she couldn’t understand a thing since they were written in Greek. But Theo quickly became engrossed in the pages.
“May I?” Theo asked Andreas, motioning toward the small notebook in his satchel, asking for permission to take notes.
“Please,” Andreas said, nodding for him to proceed. While Theo scoured the documents, Dani turned toward Andreas.
“Why aren’t these on display in the museum?” she asked.
“For many reasons,” Andreas said, folding his arms and resting against a counter behind him, “primarily that we only exhibit a fraction of the museum’s collection at one time. But for this item in particular—the journal? Because its authenticity has been questioned,” he explained.
“By who?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know. But I suspect it has something to do with Τα Παιδι? του Μιν?ταυρου.”
“What’s that?” Dani asked, furrowing her brow.
“The Minotaur’s Children. A cult that protects the secrets of the Minotaur.”
The hairs raised on Dani’s arms. Cult? She didn’t like the sound of that. Seriously, what were they getting themselves into?
“Are they dangerous?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t found any evidence of their existence. Just rumors, whispers, and dead ends.”
“Did your papou ever talk about this cult, Theo?” Dani asked.
He looked up from the pages, glancing around as if he hadn’t heard a thing they’d been talking about. She loved when he got so focused on something that the rest of the world almost seemed to stop around him.
She loved it because that’s how she felt whenever they were together.
“I’m sorry, what were you saying?” he asked.
“The cult. Did Papou Zeno ever talk about it?” she repeated.
He shook his head. “Never. First I’d heard of it was yesterday when Andreas showed me this.” Theo reached into his satchel and pulled out a small leather-bound book with clippings and other papers sticking out of it. He handed it across the table to Andreas, who then flipped through the pages and stopped on a drawing of the eye and μ symbol.
Dani wrinkled her brow. “This is your family’s crest,” she said.
“Yes, we changed it many years ago, trying to draw attention to the Minotaur’s Children.”
