Barbarian's Soul by Joan Kayse

a half-smile tugged at one side of the Roman’s mouth.
    “The majority of plebians are hard working,” he replied slowly, “decent people rather than the mindless rabble so many of my new peers consider them to be.” His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly but he held Bran’s gaze. “Despite these prejudicial views, they are still citizens.”
    Bran managed to suppress a snarl. As if that were some grand prize to be coveted. “They well may be Romans but some are thieves.”
    Damon cocked a brow. “You’ve intruded into my home—in the middle of the night—to complain about some petty theft?”
    He clenched and unclenched his fists, knowing it would not do well to throttle the man—not until he got his information. “The theft was not petty. It was of great import to me and to my household.” He was not the sort to explain himself, even before he’d been reduced to a slave, but Bran thought Damon might well understand what it was to have your life snatched away, knew the struggle of finding it again. Bryna had confided in him that Damon had spent the better part of his life as a slave to her husband, Jared, another handful of years working to reunite his family. He pressed his lips together. They called him barbarian when Damon’s own father—a Roman noble—had sold his entire family into servitude to save his own skin. “If you were a thief and had property of great value, what would you do with it?”
    Damon rubbed one thumb along his chin as he contemplated the question. “Coin would never be located. It’s already been used in the wine shop or a brothel.”
    The image of the girl raising a goblet in a taverna with his necklace round her neck caused Bran to grind his teeth. Another more disturbing image of her lying with her legs spread beneath him brought a low growl to his throat and an instant thickening of his cock.
    Damon gave him a speculative look. “This property must be very valuable...or very important. You own no slaves so it cannot involve a runaway. I’ve been to your lodgings and they would put the Spartans to shame so sparse are your belongings. No insult intended,” he hastened to add when Bran pinned him with a dark look. “What type of property did you have taken?”
    “Jewels,” he answered through tight lips
    Damon tilted his head, a puzzled frown crinkling his forehead.
    “Jewelry,” Bran amended when Damon did not respond. “Five pieces worth five hundred of your Roman aureus.”
    A rare look of surprise crossed Damon’s face before he said, “There is only one person I know with the funds and the temerity to deal with that level of stolen goods.”
    “Where do I find him?” Bran was growing impatient. If he delayed overlong Paulin would cancel their agreement.
    Damon shook his head. “You don’t find him, Tiege finds you. But I can tell you the general area in the district where he makes his nest...at least the last time I visited.” He gave Bran a calculating look. “You must understand. The underworld of the city is a very dangerous place.”
    “I was a gladiator.” The cold in his gut seeped into his voice. “This underworld of yours counts as nothing next to the arena.”
    “I attended the games once, while on a mission for that bastard, Tertius,” Damon mused. He paused, the look in his eyes telling Bran he’d not been immune to what he’d witnessed, the kind of brutality the fighters had inflicted. A rare thing, as most Romans reveled in the carnage. “Tiege is a powerful overlord of the Aventine. He has a hand in most everything from doling out the corn ration to the management of brothels and controlling a vast network of thieves. Political bribes allow him to prosper and he reigns by fear. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone brave enough or stupid enough to go against him.”
    “I do not fear him.”
    Damon gave a slight smile. “Of course you do not. Tiege has been known to hold court in a large tenement next to the temple of Laverna, the