Venice. 1515. A time of political intrigue. A time of internecine war, upheaval and deadly deals.
What history knows of this time and place is on the brink of monumental change. Change that could thrust the post-apocalyptic future into another Dark Age.
Two operatives from the future—Veluria, a trained courtesan from the Sisterhood and Andreas, an assassin from the rival Council of the Brotherhood—breach the shadows linking past and future. Tasked with identifying and derailing events that threaten both worlds, the operatives turn to the most influential powermongers of the age, the Medici family.
Three brothers, three men with secrets and unusual powers. Only one is approachable. Only one is susceptible to Veluria’s unique charms.
Meet Stefano de’ Medici.
Stefano is the youngest of the Medici brood, considered the handsomest, the most adept at courtly manners and an irresistible charmer for women of all social stations. The pater familias, Cosimo, turns a blind eye to the many inappropriate liaisons that threaten to drain the family purse, the price never too high to smooth over outrage from cockholded husbands. Cosimo is a patient and indulgent father for he knows his youngest will service the family’s interests when the time is right.
When Veluria targets the young man as her entrée into the seats of power in Venice and Florence, even her sophisticated training cannot prepare her for the delights she’s about to experience.
Cosimo is no fool and he suspects Veluria is more than the vapid French courtesan beguiling his youngest. To learn more about this potential threat to the family interests, he dispatches his eldest son, his enforcer, to bring the woman in for interrogation.
Meet Antonio de’ Medici, known to all as the Demon de’ Medici, the man without a soul, his father’s closest confidant, his youngest brother’s staunchest supporter.
Antonio de’ Medici, known as Tonio but only to his family, is a man of unusual and deadly talents, talents that make him the ideal interrogator and the ideal assassin. Tonio enforces his father’s wishes without question, a killing machine in the service of his family and his city-state of Florence. His loyalty, his resolve are unquestioned—except when it comes to matters of his youngest brother and the future their father has planned for the young man.
Dispatched to secure what might be a political prize of inestimable value, Tonio gradually falls under Veluria’s spell, but not so far that he cannot impose his own powerful will and extraordinary gifts in what becomes a tug of war: a war of spirit, determination and resolve. And a war of the heart.
Tonio will see to his brother’s happiness, even if that means setting aside his desires and feelings for the strange woman enrapturing his soul-less existence. But an act of violence unleashes a side of young Stefano that will change the shape of all they know and understand. And it will set into motion a set of tragic events that no one, not even the Sisterhood, could have predicted.
RSS Feed