Free The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) by Alana White

him, he says: his wayward servant humbled before the world. That crazy man takes me for a fool. What he really wants is to whack off my head. Meanwhile, some rival here in our own city is wreaking havoc against me.”
    Beyond the grated windows, the bells of San Lorenzo tolled, accompanied by church bells all across the city and in the neighboring hills. Closer by, Guid'Antonio caught the sweet peal of Ognissanti. Home. Maria. He strode to the windows and latched the shutters, muting the bells, and whirled back around, his boots firmly set in the heart of the Golden Lion district of his city.
    “Who profits most from the discord in our streets? To the point they would risk their necks to set people against you? Surely, whoever it is has a hand in the weeping painting. God's wrath, damning miracles—”
    “Against
us
, you mean,” Lorenzo said. “Our families, our circle. My spies tell me the Pope's nephew has been whispering in his ear again.”
    Girolamo Riario
. If evil walked among men, Girolamo was the devil personified.
    For ten years now, Girolamo Riario had fanned the flames of the Pope's hatred for Lorenzo. Girolamo, dead set on using the papacy to acquire land and titles and create a principality for himself in Italy. So far, he had done well.
    “Do you know Girolamo's whereabouts?” Guid'Antonio said.
    “Sì, Roma.”
At the hearth, Lorenzo knelt and handed Leporarius a bit of
salame
. “In Rome, Girolamo can keep his tongue stuck in the Pope's ear. Though by now, who knows? The bastard may have gone to Imola for a turn at terrorizing that unfortunate town.”
    “God Almighty,” Guid'Antonio said. “Our troubles with those two began with Imola seven years ago. Seven,” he repeated, shaking his head.
    “Yes, and they've made the place a viper's nest.” They regarded one another, one face mirroring the other's exasperation, and then what could they do but share a sour laugh?
    A gruff, toothless man from a poor fishing village in Liguria, on his election as Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco della Rovere had begun advancing his half dozen or so nephews with a bent for nepotism theretofore unequaled, even in Rome. For his pet, Girolamo Riario, Sixtus had set his sights on a lordship in the Papal State, a sprawling province in northern Italy whose cities and towns were part of the Church State but had over time come to be governed by dukes and lords who gave the Church lip service, while ignoring its demands for money and military support.
    A toehold there would give Girolamo Riario a base to build up estates and tighten his family's control over the province's rebellious households. His first chance had come when Imola, a small town on the thoroughfare between Florence and the Adriatic Sea on Italy's eastern coast, had come up for sale by its Milanese lord, Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Sixtus, fifty-seven in 1471 and the newly elected Pope, had decided he would buy the town and present it to Girolamo. Lorenzo, twenty-two and ascendant in Florence, had made up his mind Sixtus would do no such thing. From Rome, the Papal State curled around Florence and her environs like a claw. Control this area and you had a good chance of controlling Florence.
    In the end, despite wickedly clever maneuverings by Lorenzo, Imola had fallen to the Pope, who had immediately appointed Girolamo its lord and master. All this had come to a head in 1473, and today Lorenzo still battled Sixtus, who spied Lorenzo's dark, shifting shape behind his every failed attempt to make his relatives dominant in Italy. Seven years ago, Lorenzo had unmasked Sixtus IV and Girolamo Riario as major political players in the Italian peninsula. He had challenged the Pope's right to take control of the Papal State and insulted the Pope's family. Worse, Lorenzo had performed these acts in public with the entire peninsula watching the Pope and his nephew made foolish on stage.
    For this, Giuliano had died.
    For this, there had been war.
    For this, Florence still