Chapter 1 #2
The title should slide off me. The collar is what I wear. I chose this life. I should hear Father a thousand times and feel nothing.
But from her?
It lands like a dare. A challenge pressed straight into the part of me I keep locked behind bone and discipline.
“Yes,” I say, my voice low.
“And…” She pauses. I hear it—the faint drag of her fingertips across the screen, like she’s tracing the outline of my shadow. “Do you know what it’s like to want something you should never touch?”
Adrenaline punches through my system—fast, cold, invasive.
She knows exactly what she’s doing.
She knows that question doesn’t belong inside these walls, under this roof, in this booth.
She knows it’s the line people don’t cross unless they have a reason—a dangerous one.
My jaw tightens. I stare at the dim shape of her through the lattice. The forward lean is slight. Breaths that are measured. Like tangible sin, the heat of her presence bled through the wood.
“Speak,” I say.
It comes out rough. Too rough. It betrays more than I want her to hear.
She exhales—slow, deliberate — like she’s considering every shade of truth she wants to show me.
“I can’t,” she whispers.
I don’t believe that for a second.
But the way she says it—
calm, certain, not a hint of shame—
presses into me harder than the words themselves.
“Why?” The question snaps out of me.
“Because saying it outright would put both of us in danger.”
Everything inside me goes still.
This isn't seduction.
Isn’t provocation.
Isn’t a lost soul playing with fire.
Someone calculates this.
Measured.
A message without a signature.
My mind moves fast—too fast.
Giovanni’s enemies.
He broke the deal.
He bled the families dry.
Rumors involve the church's purpose and secrets hidden beneath stone.
Ledger pages that never saw the light of day.
We were the only ones meant to have access to the secrets.
And this woman…
walks into my booth at midnight during a storm
and asks me if I know what it’s like to crave the forbidden?
No one does unless they want something.
Danger rolls through me in an icy wave.
“Who sent you?” I ask.
She doesn’t flinch.
“I told you,” she murmurs, leaning so close her breath slips through the lattice and grazes my skin.
“I came to take something back.”
Every instinct in me—priest, son, heir, weapon—blazes red.
This woman isn’t here for salvation.
She isn’t here for forgiveness.
She isn’t afraid of me at all.
And the truth slams into place like a lock clicking shut:
She’s here for something my father hid.
There is something lying underneath.
It's something worth killing for.
It's worth walking through a storm to claim it.
And she came prepared.
Santino’s Cracking Restraint
I didn't rise at first.
I jerk to my feet.
It’s not a choice. It’s a reaction—violent, instinctive, the movement someone makes when danger walks too close or a memory hits too hard.
My hand slams against the confessional door, throwing it open.
The wood cracks against the stone wall with a sharp echo that ricochets through the entire church.
My breath isn’t steady.
My thoughts aren’t clean.
Something about what she said—how she said it—slipped under my skin and detonated the restraint I rely on like oxygen.
I step into the narrow hallway behind the booth, chest tight, jaw locked.
Her door opens at the same time.
For a moment, she’s only a shape carved out of shadow—a small, compact silhouette framed in the dim candlelight. The storm’s glow bleeds through the stained glass behind her, outlining her like something summoned from the night itself.
Then she steps forward.
Her hair is rain-damp, strands clinging to her jaw and the slope of her throat. Water beads along the ends and trails down the collar of her shirt. Her clothes also revealed how tightly wound she was beneath the surface as they were soaked through and molded to her figure like a second skin.
Not fragile.
Not lost.
Coiled.
Ready.
She bows her head just enough to seem penitent—but only until she lifts her face.
Amber-brown eyes lock onto mine.
Sharp. Steady. Calculating.
And unafraid.
A warning shoots down my spine, but it’s not the holy kind. It’s the kind that comes from recognizing something familiar in a stranger—purpose, danger, intent.
She isn’t here for God.
She’s here for something else.
“Who are you?” My voice comes out rougher than it should. Priest or not, I can’t hide the edge scraping along every word.
She takes one slow step toward me.
Then another.
The narrow corridor forces proximity, closing the air between us to a dangerous sliver. I feel the warmth coming off her despite her soaked clothes. Feel her presence like a hand pressing into my chest.
Like temptation dressed as a request.
Her gaze flicks to my collar. It’s quick—too quick for anyone untrained to notice. But I do. And what flashes in her eyes isn’t reverence.
It's an assessment.
And beneath that? Something darker. Something I don’t have a name for yet.
When she speaks, her voice slips under my ribs like a blade sheathed in silk.
“Someone who needs your help.”
It's her motives I should question. I should put distance between us. I should crush whatever this is before it becomes something I can’t control.
But the way she says it…
the quiet certainty…
the undertones of a truth she hasn’t revealed yet…
It hits somewhere I don’t want to acknowledge.
I force myself to step back.
Not because I fear her.
But because I fear what my body does when she stands too close.
What thoughts flicker in the dark corners of my mind?
I hate it.
I dislike the retreat.
I despise weakness.
I don't like how quickly she reads it.
Her lips curve—not fully, not sweetly. A knowing cur. A crackled spark of amusement. She sees the shift in me, the fracture, the moment where my discipline slipped.
She inhales. The slow rise of her chest. A bead of water sliding down her throat. My gaze tracks it before I can stop myself.
Fuck.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I manage, voice low and strained.
“But I am.” Her tone is soft, steady, sharpened with purpose. “And you opened the door for me.”
The air tightens around us. Her eyes burn with intent—focused, unyielding, dangerous.
And for the first time tonight, I feel it clear and brutal:
I’m not the one in control.
The Secret She Should Not Know
For a breath, neither of us moves.
The corridor between us feels too narrow, too charged—like the storm outside has crawled into the church and is clinging to the air.
She stands there in front of me, soaked and unbothered, watching every twitch of a muscle in my face, every shift in my breathing, every flicker of conflict I cannot hide fast enough.
She is studying me.
Waiting.
Building toward something.
And I feel it coming like the moment before a confession turns into a threat.
I break first.
“What the hell did you mean,” I say, voice low, barely controlled, “when you said you came to take something back?”
Her eyes spark.
Not with fear.
With victory.
She steps closer—one measured step, deliberate as a blade sliding deeper between ribs. My heartbeat stutters, then spikes, reacting before logic can catch up. She rises onto her toes with the grace of someone who knows exactly how to breach a man’s defenses.
Before I can retreat, her mouth nears my jaw.
Not touching.
Hovering.
Her breath drags across my skin, slow and warm, and it knocks the air straight out of me. My fingers curl at my sides, every nerve standing on edge, every instinct trying—and failing—to reassert control.
Then her whisper comes.
A whisper meant only for me.
“Your father hid things in this church. Dark things. Things I intend to find.”
My world stops.
My pulse slams against my throat. My body locks so hard I feel the strain in every tendon. The surrounding church—the flickering candles, the moaning storm, the cold stone—disappears.
There is only her voice, and the truth she should not fucking know.
No one outside the family knows this.
Not the priests.
Not Giovanni’s men.
Not the enemies who hunted him.
Not even the cops, who spent a decade trying to bury the Rivas name.
No one.
Until her.
My hand snaps out before I think—fast, fierce, instinctive. My fingers close around her wrist. Easy enough to hurt, but hard enough to warn.
“Who told you that?” The words rip out of me, gravel and fire. “Who the hell gave you that kind of information?”
She doesn’t flinch.
She doesn’t pull back.
She doesn’t even blink.
She watches my grip instead. She sees the tension in my forearm. She sees my tightened breath. She sees the fracture in my composure. Her expression changes subtly, intrigued, almost hungry.
Her lips are slightly parted.
Her heartbeat doesn’t change.
Mine fucking does.
“Giovanni didn’t just have secrets,” she murmurs.
A pause thickens the air.
A suspended second where everything in me coils tight enough to snap.
Then:
“He had sins that were never confessed.”
The words land like a strike—clean, precise, devastating.
My grip loosens.
She slips free of my hand like smoke pulled by a draft.
Thunder cracks above the rafters, loud enough to shake dust from the beams. The stained glass trembles. Candle flames bow low. The entire church feels like it’s reacting with me.
She turns toward the long stone corridor that leads deeper into the cathedral’s underbelly.
The crypt.
The foundations.
The tunnels Giovanni guarded like a dragon over its hoard.
And she walks.
Fast.
Sure.
Silent.
Like she’s been here before.
“Stop,” I order, the command tearing out of me sharper, harsher, more desperate than I intend.
She doesn’t stop.
I take one step.
She’s already past the first archway.
Two.
Her silhouette fades into shadow.
Three.
Gone.
She disappears into the same darkness my father used to haunt, the same corridors he warned me never to enter, the same places where the line between sacred and sinful blurs until there’s no difference at all.
The storm outside howls.
The church creaks under its weight.
My pulse hammers a violent rhythm inside my chest as I stare into the black hallway she vanished into.
My voice escapes in a rough whisper, meant for no one but the stone and the storm:
“Who the hell are you?”
Thunder answers.
And the darkness swallows the echo.