Claws tears into the cylinders, unfurling the scrolls just enough to glimpse their titles. With each one, her eyes widen.
“Here’s the second book of Aristotle’sPoetics, and this is one of Cato’s lost books on the history of Rome. And if I’m right and this is a page from the Emperor Claudius’ Etruscan dictionary, then… holy shit.” She looks up at me, her eyes wide. I’m surprised to see them brimming with tears. “Of course. Of course. Daddy’s most precious treasure. These are lost scrolls – works of literature that have never been seen before. He must’ve found them in that cache in Alexandria.”
“Alexandria?” George perks up. “You mean, like the place with the library?”
“I mean exactly the place with the library.” Claudia stares at the object in her hands. “And I don’t know, but a cache of work this valuable… perhaps the librarians hid these scrolls when Julius Caesar entered the city in 48BC, to keep them safe. The dates are right. We could be holding some of the lost knowledge of the Library of Alexandria.”
All this time, the treasure was here with us.
Julian August was right – his daughter, my love, is worth the greatest treasure of all time.
38
Claudia
By the time we’ve torn off the heads and smashed open the porcelain stomachs of every doll, we have a total of eighty-six cylinders stacked on a towering pyramid in the middle of the room.
Eighty-six ancient manuscripts, each one a lost treasure from the Classical world. Each with the potential to answer questions scholars have debated for centuries.
My father’s greatest treasure – until me.
Constantine was right – these scrolls would be impossible to sell. They’re priceless beyond belief, and any private collector would have to be so careful not to alert authorities that they wouldn’t want to touch them. Once a collection like this enters the underworld, it stays there – no museum displays, no scholars furiously translating and writing papers on the remarkable find, no earnestly enthusiasticDiscovery Channeldocumentaries to make this remarkable find accessible from the living room of every house in America.
These cylinders have been back and forth across the world, never opened except to check their authenticity, prized not for their cultural and historical value but because they could facilitate Howard Malloy’s shady pharmaceutical deals. They likely facilitated the trade of the deer antler velvet that killed Noah’s brother.
The only person who might have seen this treasure for what it truly is, is Julian August. And now, me.
The daughter of the two men who stole this gift from the world, and the woman who hid it away.
This is my legacy.
“What do we do with them all?” Noah peers over the pyramid of cylinders.
I stare at the stack, the exact question buzzing through my head. This treasure is the key to securing my empire, to making certain I have the resources to topple Nero from his throne. But it also makes me a target. I have to be careful with my next move. No one can know about this treasure until we’re ready.
“These should be in a museum,” Eli breathes. He stares at the stack, eyes wide with awe. “I know some people at Berkeley. They have a world-renowned Classical archaeology department. I can call them to assess the collection and—”
I shake my head. “No. These scrolls are the key to our power. Brutus burned through my father’s money, then Eli made me buy a ton of loud wild animals, and with Grace’s article, Malloy Pharmaceuticals’ assets are frozen, so I can’t get access to that either. We need money to hold onto our empire and get the shipping routes working again, and this treasure will give us the collateral we need to make powerful alliances—”
Eli looks at me like I’ve sprouted two heads. “Hang on, you’ve only just found these documents again. You honestly want to send them back onto the black market? What about its historical value? What about the fact this is your father’s legacy? What if you at least had them translated, or scanned? That way they could be studied—”
I shake my head. “We don’t have time, and I can’t trust a bunch of scholars to stay silent. Not to mention the fact that I’m not the only one searching for this treasure right now. The sooner we get these scrolls out of this house, the safer they will be from Mackenzie.”
“If you give them to a museum, the treasure will be lost to Mackenzie forever.” Eli holds out his hands. “It sounds like the perfect plan to me.”
“Exactly – if we give the treasure away, we lose our ticket to my sister.” I grin. “I don’t want her to think there’s no hope. I’d like to draw her into a trap.”
Eli’s jaw clenches. “I can’t believe after all the trouble this treasure has caused, you want to send it right out into the chaos again.”
“How many times do we have to go through this? It’s not a matter of what I want.” I throw my hands up in the air. “It’s a matter of what’s best for our family. We have to make sacrifices. I don’t think you understand that.”
“I understand perfectly,” he says through gritted teeth.
An awkward silence descends over the room. I glare at Eli. After everything I said in the car, how can he not understand?
“We don’t have to make any decisions about this now,” George says quickly. “The most important thing is that we store the cylinders where they won’t get damaged and Mackenzie can’t find them. Then we can hash out our next move.”
39
