The Obsession (Darkest Obsession #1)

Chapter 1 Violet

VIOLET

Three and a half weeks into my Sicilian adventure, and I’ve developed an intimate relationship with limestone dust.

It’s in my hair, my lungs, the creases of my knuckles…

I’m pretty sure I’ve inhaled enough of this cathedral to qualify as part of the architecture.

Which, honestly? There are worse fates than becoming one with a four-hundred-year-old baroque masterpiece that’s slowly crumbling into the Mediterranean.

Running my fingers along the cornice I’ve been documenting all morning, the plaster gives under my touch where it’s separated from the stone beneath.

The whole east wall has this problem. A slow divorce between surface and structure unfolding for decades, maybe centuries.

Nobody noticed until the gold leaf started flaking off in sheets, raining down on the pews like the world’s most expensive confetti.

That’s the thing about decay. It’s patient. It waits until you’re not looking.

My back pocket vibrates. Ignoring it, I pull my camera out to photograph the damage pattern before I lose the light.

The afternoon sun streams through what’s left of the rose window, casting fractured rainbows across the altar.

Half the glass is original, hand-blown in the 1600s by some Venetian master whose name is lost to history.

The other half is a bad Victorian replacement that doesn’t quite match the color palette.

From across the nave, I know which panes are which. It’s a useless superpower, really. Like knowing every shade of gold leaf by manufacturer.

The phone buzzes in my pocket again.

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, wiping my hands on my jeans before fishing out my phone and seeing “Mom” on the screen. Third call today.

I let it ring two more times before answering, because I’m twenty-eight years old and still petty enough to make my mother wait.

“I’m alive.”

“Well, hello to you too.” Her Boston accent cuts through the Mediterranean static. “Would it kill you to lead with something besides reassuring me you haven’t been murdered?”

“Maybe I like keeping you on your toes.”

She makes that sound, half laugh, half disappointment, that all Murphy women perfect by age thirty. I’m ahead of schedule.

“You eating?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“Real food? Not just those tiny coffees and bread?”

“They’re called espressos, and the bread here would make you weep. It’s got this crust—”

“Violet.”

I smile despite myself, tilting the phone against my shoulder as I pack up my camera. “I had pasta last night. Ate the whole plate. Ask Danny to look up the caloric content of pasta alla Norma if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Your brother doesn’t need to be involved in your eating habits.”

“But he loves being involved in my eating habits. It’s his favorite hobby besides unsolicited opinions about my love life.”

A pigeon lands on the scaffolding above me, sending a small avalanche of dust onto my documentation binder. Great. Fantastic. I’ll be picking limestone out of my field notes for hours.

“Speaking of which—”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Violet Quinn Murphy—”

“Love you. Call you Sunday. Say hi to the boys.”

I end the call before she can circle back to the topic of why I’m spending my late twenties alone in European churches instead of producing grandchildren like my brothers. It’s a conversation we’ve had so many times I could script both parts. She worries. I deflect. Nobody wins.

Santa Maria della Luce cathedral settles around me with a type of silence old buildings have, like the walls remember everything that happened inside them and haven’t decided whether to tell you. I used to think it was creepy when I first started this work. Now I don’t mind the company.

The Marchetti Foundation grant covers six months here, documenting damage and developing a restoration plan for the interior frescoes.

It’s the kind of job I’ve spent my whole career working toward.

Sacred architecture. Baroque period. A building so neglected by the diocese that I have basically free rein.

Most restorers would kill for this. Actual murder. Bodies in the crypt.

And I’m… here, covered in dust, and not wishing I were anywhere else.

My only social interaction in the last few weeks has been café transactions and calls home, and that registers as fine.

More than fine. Which probably says something unflattering about my personality, but whatever.

I’ve always preferred the company of broken things to most people.

People are complicated. Buildings just need structural reinforcement.

I gather my supplies and make my way down the scaffolding, boots finding the rungs by memory now. Weeks of climbing up and down this death trap have at least given me thighs of steel. Silver linings.

The caretaker, Tommaso, an old man who seems as much a fixture of this place as the stone itself, sweeps the entry when I reach ground level. He nods without breaking rhythm, his broom scratching against the worn marble in a pattern that probably hasn’t changed in fifty years.

“Buonasera,” I offer, my accent still atrocious despite daily practice.

He winces almost imperceptibly. “Buonasera, Signorina.”

Yeah, my Italian is that bad. Three years of high school Spanish and a semester of Art History Latin do not, it turns out, prepare you for Sicilian dialect.

But Tommaso tolerates my butchering of his language with the resigned patience of a man who has seen empires rise and fall from these same steps.

We have a comfortable arrangement. He leaves me alone to work, and I don’t ask questions about the bullet holes in the confessional. Some things you just don’t need to know.

Outside, the evening air hits me with the scent of jasmine and diesel, and the deep brine of a city that’s been kissing the sea for thousands of years.

The cathedral sits in a small piazza just off the main tourist drag, far enough to feel forgotten, close enough to hear the Vespas screaming past on their way to somewhere more important.

Café Prima is on the corner, its outdoor tables spilling into the street with cheerful disregard for traffic laws.

I’ve become a regular in the worst way. The owner, Rosa, already knows my order before I say it.

She also knows exactly three English words: American, sad, and beautiful, which she deploys in various combinations depending on her mood.

Today she takes one look at me and shakes her head.

“Americana triste.”

“I’m not sad,” I protest, sliding into my usual chair. “I’m just dusty.”

She ignores me, disappearing inside. I don’t bother looking at a menu. Rosa brings what Rosa thinks I need, and arguing with her takes more Italian than I possess.

The piazza fills slowly as the evening stretches out. Old men on benches, young couples walking too close together, a group of kids kicking a soccer ball against a wall that’s been absorbing the impact of children’s games since before Columbus sailed west.

I pull out my notebook and start sketching, hand moving automatically while my brain processes the day’s findings.

The east wall is worse than I thought. Water damage from a leak that went unrepaired for at least a decade.

But there’s a small section near the apse, protected by an overhang, where the original pigments are still intact.

Angel faces with cheeks like peaches. Gold leaf halos that catch fire in the right light.

Someone painted those four centuries ago, and they’re still here, still beautiful, still waiting for someone to notice.

That’s the job, really. Noticing. Bearing witness to things that would otherwise disappear.

Rosa returns with my espresso, bitter enough to strip paint, and a plate of something fried and stuffed with ricotta that’s so good I actually close my eyes.

“Mangia.” She points at my midsection. “Troppo magra.”

Too thin. My mother would love her.

Food here isn’t sustenance, it’s religion.

Every meal is a prayer, and I’ve been converting one bite at a time.

And by the time I finish my second espresso, the light has gone full golden hour, painting the buildings in shades of amber and rose.

The cathedral’s shadow stretches across the piazza like a reaching hand.

I leave too much money on the table—Rosa refuses tips, so I’ve taken to hiding them under plates—and start the walk back to my apartment.

The route takes me through a tangle of narrow streets where the buildings lean toward each other at angles that shouldn’t be structurally sound.

Laundry hangs between balconies, blocking out patches of sky.

A dog barks from somewhere above as a woman calls to her children in rapid Sicilian, her voice bouncing off the stone.

This walk is the best part of the day. The anonymity of it. In Boston, I’m Danny Murphy’s sister, or Kevin Murphy’s daughter, or the girl who got out but keeps coming back. Here, I’m nobody. Just another stranger moving through ancient streets. Unremarkable, invisible.

Safe.

It’s a strange thought. This neighborhood isn’t safe, not by American standards, anyway. But there’s a different kind of safety in being unknown. In passing through the world without leaving a mark.

I round the corner onto Via Maqueda, and there’s a change. Nothing visible. Nothing concrete. Just…

The back of my neck prickles.

I keep walking, pace unchanged, but my brain goes on alert in that instinctive animal way. A girl doesn’t grow up in Southie without developing certain reflexes. Knowing when she’s being watched is one of them.

My eyes move across the street without my head turning. An old man reading a newspaper at a café. Two women arguing over a vegetable stall. A cluster of tourists photographing a church facade. A dark sedan parked at the corner, tinted windows catching the last of the light.

Nothing unusual. Nothing that should trip my internal alarm.

You’re being paranoid, Murphy. Too many espressos.

I force my shoulders to relax, but my stride quickens anyway, just a little. The building where I’m staying is four blocks away. I count the steps like I used to count steps from church back home, measuring the distance to my door.

The prickling sensation fades as I turn onto my street.

I’m probably being paranoid. But I walk faster anyway.

My apartment key sticks in the lock, it always does, and I have to jiggle it while pushing with my shoulder before the door gives way.

The narrow stairwell smells like garlic and my neighbor’s cigarettes.

By the third floor, I’m slightly winded, because stairs built by people with no concept of standard riser height will do that.

The building has been here longer than my country has existed.

The plumbing is temperamental, my neighbor plays accordion at odd hours, and the stairs are actively trying to kill me.

But I’ve made it home in the way I make everywhere home.

Inside, I lock the door behind me and breathe in the quiet.

My narrow bed is covered with a secondhand knitted blanket, my grandmother’s rosary hanging from the lamp, and on the windowsill—bright ceramic tiles, a tiny painting of the harbor, a bowl of blood oranges I’m working through one a day.

Home.

For now, anyway. Six months, and then back to the States. Back to the next project, the next broken beautiful thing that needs saving. It’s a good life. It’s the life I chose.

And if sometimes, late at night, the quiet turns hollow… well, that’s the price of admission. You can’t have both. Connection and freedom. And I made my choice a long time ago.

The blood oranges glow on the windowsill, catching the last purple light of dusk. I pick one up, dig my thumb into the peel, and let the juice run down my wrist in a thin red line.

Outside, the city settles into evening, Vespas giving way to dinner conversations, church bells marking the hour, the eternal rhythm of a place that has outlasted everyone who ever walked its streets.