“He bumped into one of the people at a function the day before yesterday.”

I flash back to that day and remember I spent most of it in bed with Carolina.

“Daddy met one of the men he believes to be behind the threats?” Carolina’s face pales.

“Yes.” Marcus sips at his tea. “By accident, obviously. Your father wasn’t scared, and he followed the man when he went to the gents restroom and confronted him. Asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing. The guy seemed to genuinely have no idea what your father was talking about. Your father showed him some of the threats on his phone, and this dude was livid. Went ballistic. Phoned around the others who were allegedly involved, and none of them were behind it. Of course, your father thinks they might simply be denying it so as not to face the consequences, but that hardly jibes with them being incredibly powerful, and in many ways, dangerous people.”

“This is so weird,” Carolina says. “There were strong hints in those messages to let Daddy know exactly where they were from without making it obvious to the police.”

“Yes, well, it gets weirder.” Marcus pauses to eat one of the biscuits arranged on a plate on the table by him.

Seriously? I get the urge to ram it down his throat.

“Jesus fuck, get on with it; you can eat later.”

“I’m hungry. Reaperman, chill out. You’re going to give yourself high blood pressure.”

He finishes chewing, sips some tea, then carries on talking.

“Then your father gets a new message, and this one raised the stakes by threatening more, crazier stuff, if the book wasn’t pulled. So he sent this to our guys on Corfu, who forwarded it to a man we work with sometimes. This man is a genius at hacking and figuring out encryption and other issues.”

I realize he’s talking about Damen.

“Turns out, that message had a very weird origin.”

“Go on,” I press.

“The message came from the publishing company’s head office.”

Carolina stares at him, her mouth slack. I can understand her expression because what the fuck?

“Hang on, you mean someone in Daddy’s firm was sending the threats?”

“This is where it gets sensitive. The publishing part of the company has been making a loss recently, and there’s been a lot of pressure from two of the board members on the media side to sell the publishing arm. They want to focus more on the things that are lucrative; games, mostly. Your father has doggedly refused to sell off the publishing wing because he, rightly in my humble opinion, views it as providing the company with a certain level of kudos. Gravitas if you will.”

“What the fuck do you know about business?” I ask Marcus.