Broken

16. Andrea

CHAPTER 16

Andrea

Thinking About You - Edwin Raphael

T he taxi pulled up outside the church just as he was closing the doors and locking them.

Fortuitous.

Or maybe serendipitous.

As I sit there, watching him leave the church entrance and walk over to a narrow building at the side of the street, which he subsequently unlocks, I learn where he lives.

Fortuitous, indeed.

Paying the taxi driver, I climb out of the car, wincing a little when my head aches as I stand too fast.

A sigh rumbles from me because I’m so beyond tired of my body not behaving as it should. Pre-surgery, I was fine. Now, mentally, I’m strong, but physically, I’m frail.

And I hate that.

I’m Nephilim, dammit. Watchers aren’t weak.

But there’s nothing I can do. Only time will heal me, only time will take some of my issues away. Maybe a few will always hover around, but I can deal with that so long as I return to a semblance of ‘normal’ working order at some point.

Impatience and drive got me out of rehab ahead of the doctor’s schedule by months, but my obstinacy can only do so much, and that’s clear as I hobble across the street.

For a second, I stand outside, watching as lights flicker on through the windows on the second floor.

I feel...

My hand shakes as I rub my eyes.

I didn’t expect to be so unconfident in my next steps, but seeing him in the flesh, learning of his darkness, and sensing how on edge he is, is so much more than I expected.

Am I ‘good’ enough for Savio?

My brow puckers at the thought of all my failings, all my scars, and if they’ll serve him. Save him.

My zealous need to be with him, to cement the connection I’ve felt since I was seventeen as his life brushed up against mine, even only on the tattered edges, is what pushed me through my recovery.

But nothing has happened how I imagined it would.

I thought our eyes would meet and he’d feel the sparks.

That those sparks would trigger a connection, and he’d want to speak with me. Would want to be with me too.

Maybe I’m crazy without the cyst doing anything to help me.

Maybe I really am insane.

And if I am, should I be here? Should I just leave him alone?

The thought whispers through my mind at the same time as I hear a slight grunt.

After dark, I’ve noticed how quiet Rome is. Especially on certain streets.

I think it’s because it’s wintertime. In the summer, I could imagine the streets always bustling with life, but at this time of the year, it’s quiet. Only a few cars rumble along the streets, and only tourist spots like Borgo where my Airbnb is, and where there are plenty of restaurants, have more people gathering, but even then, nothing like through the day.

It’s that peace that helps me hear the grunt.

A slapping sound.

Faint.

Like a murmur in my ears.

I strain to hear it again, wondering what it is, then the grunt is louder.

And the whistle is louder still.

It’s rhythmic. A blunt thwack culminating in a high-pitched hiss.

When the source of it registers, I almost retch. Then, shoving my fatigue aside, I rush forward on shaky legs. I tried to walk across the river, back to Borgo Pio on foot, but my body wouldn’t let me. And even now, after the drive, I still feel weak, but for him, I’ll push myself to the limits, because this has to stop.

He has to stop.

I slam my hand on the doorbell, not letting go, my heartbeat back to roaring, the sound whooshing in my ears as I wait for him to answer.

I refuse to let him ignore me.

There’s a dull thudding sound from behind the door, and I think he’s running down the stairs. Then I receive confirmation when he yanks it open. I see he’s wearing a shirt that looks like it was just pulled on with only a few buttons fastened.

The sneak peek at his chest, of his defined pecs, has me momentarily diverted before I cast him a look and see his face is pale, white even. Sweat beads on his forehead, and there’s a strange light in his eyes.

A fever.

God, I want that fever breaking over me.

I stare at him, and he stares back.

From my position on the doorstep, he could slam the door in my face, but I shove myself forward, pushing past him and walking into the building.

As he closes the door, I see his back, the black shirt soaked in places, and though I know , seeing is believing.

I push forward, grab the hem of his shirt, and lift it, exposing raw gouges along his spine. Thick train-track lines of flesh.

Blood has pumped to the surface of his skin, revealing all the scars from previous mistreatment.

I can’t stop myself.

I push my hand against his spine, even though I know I shouldn’t, and when he hisses, I whip my fingers away as he twists around to glare at me.

He froze at my touch, but that was nothing compared to my reaction as I stare at my blood-covered fingers.

So much of it.

So much blood.

My throat grows thick, and I flash him a glance, studying him and seeing for myself the very moment when the fever in his eyes dies.

I’m not sure what replaces it, but unlike before, there’s nothing ice-cold about the link between us.

He Sees Me.

At last.

I raise my hand, and let my tongue flicker along my finger, watching as his pupils turn into tiny pinpricks.

His nostrils flare in response, almost like I’d flicked my tongue along the length of his cock.

The taste of his blood comes as no surprise. Metal. Iron. Flat. Dry.

But it sings inside me as my body and his collide in the simplest way imaginable.

I watch as he gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and for a second, I know I’ve robbed him of words.

I’m glad.

I want him to be affected.

I need him to feel this as much as I do.

This madness can’t affect only me. He needs to be infected with it too.

My heart, for the first time since I saw him, is finally on an even keel. As if, because he’s been stunned, because he’s in shock, I can be calm.

And I am.

“Dirk Benson. Maria Santiago. Lucas Reisling. Sara Cinnabar. Jose Gutierrez. Paolo Lorenzo… almost.”

He flinches at each name.

“I’m a writer,” I tell him. “I had nothing but time on my hands this year. You’re lucky no one else connected the dots. Especially if you’d added Paolo to the list.”

His mouth tightens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His stony reply has me smiling. “Don’t you? Each one was a parishioner in your church. Each one died from an unusual suicide. Is that why you moved so often? I wondered but didn’t have confirmation until tonight. Does the Church know and they cover it up?

“It’s the makings of a mystery novel. Or an angel of death...”

“I don’t prey on the innocent,” he snaps, before he brakes to a halt, teeth grinding as he realizes the imprudence of what he just admitted.

I’m not sure why he thinks he can deny it. After all, I saw him with a knife in his hand and Paolo’s wrist vulnerable to the blade he wielded. There’s simply no avoiding what he was doing. No ignoring it.

“What did they do?” I question. “What makes you do this to yourself? Do you self-flagellate after each one? To atone?”

I don’t say ‘after each murder,’ even though that’s what it is.

Instead, because I know something deeper is happening here, because I know I wouldn’t have been led to him if he didn’t need my help, if he wasn’t on a righteous path, I wait for him to answer.

When he doesn’t, I muse, “Let me see. Paolo abused his niece.”

“You heard his confession?”

Our conversation had taken place in English thus far. But at his sharp reply, I murmur, “ Si . Ogni parola. ” Every word.

“You speak Italian?”

“I do.” And I carry on in that same language. “He confessed to?—”

“‘Taking’ her,” he scoffs. “Rape is the right word for it. He won’t stop?—”

“I know he won’t. Unless you help him.”

“How can I help him? He’s perverted. Wicked,” he snaps, tone seething, eyes dancing with a light that exposes the chasm in his sanity. “He needs to be stopped.”

“There are other ways.” I nuzzle the edge of his shirt aside, exposing his pec, and press my finger to his chest. Blood stains his flesh with the whorls and loops of my fingerprint.

Staring at it, then looking into his eyes, I see them dilate as he rasps, “What do you want?”

My answer is simple. “You.”

He rears back, but with the door behind him, he can’t go far.

“What do you mean?”

“I want you.”

“I’m a priest.”

“Aren’t you also a man?” I counter instantly, pressing my palm to his chest where I can feel his heart pounding. “A man with weaknesses. A man who sees weaknesses. What did they do?”

My urging, the reply I gave him, astounds him—his heart tells me the truth.

The darkness in him recedes somewhat only to surge forward. Onward, onward. Like a tidal wave that— “They were murderers. Rapists,” he hisses. “Evil that needed scourging because the police never even looked in their direction. Children were murdered, and hurt , women butchered. Men killed and violated?—”

“And all of your victims were beyond redemption?”

My question confuses him enough for him to whisper, “Of course. I wouldn’t have taken their lives otherwise. A life for a life. And they weren’t victims?—”

“I’m ex-Catholic—you don’t have to go all Old Testament on me for me to know what you’re talking about.”

“Ex?”

“I lost faith in the Church. As much as you have.” My head tips to the side. “You’re not a priest anymore. You wear the collar, you go through the motions, but your heart’s not in it.”

“And how would you know that? After watching me for one service?—”

His sneer doesn’t hurt my feelings. “Priests don’t kill their parishioners.” Christ, do I need to spell it out?

“Some parishioners are beyond redemption.”

“And are you?” I query, hurting at his wooden tone.

“I’ve been beyond redemption for a long time.” His eyes are stark before he shutters them with his lashes. “Call the carabinieri if you must?—”

“I have no desire to call the police. You did no wrong?—”

“I took lives. Whether or not it is Old Testament, that isn’t the law of the land.”

“No, it isn’t, and thank God for that,” I say dryly. “Still, I see no need to call the police. I’m not here for that. I didn’t track you down for that.”

“Then why did you?” His eyes opened again when I uttered ‘track you,’ his curiosity clear, but what he reveals with that look stuns me.

The striations in those obsidian orbs seem to fluctuate, flickering and surging with dark browns and golds. It’s impossible, a trick of the light, I know, but still, it affects me. Makes warmth flood me in response to his visceral reaction.

“I already told you why .”

“You can’t want me.”

“Why can’t I?”

“I’m a priest.”

“You’re not a priest.” I cup him through his pants, making him jolt in surprise. But it’s too late—he’s hard. “See? You’re a man. My man.”

“You’re crazy,” he breathes, his hand darting to mine. He shoves at my wrist, but my grip tightens around his cock. A hiss escapes him as he grinds out, “No.”

Because I have no need to force anything, I back off. Even move a few feet away.

“I was just reminding you of what you are,” I tell him calmly, and ignoring his scowl, I retreat, wandering deeper into the building where I find a kitchen with a dinner table and a tiny sofa.

The light’s on like he forgot to turn it off, and I spy a busted kettle on the floor.

What happened between then and now?

I move over to the kettle and bend down to pick it up, but when I do, my knees buckle and I almost slam into the floor.

He’s there.

Like I knew he would be, even if I hadn’t anticipated falling.

My damn body, letting me down again—I’m growing tired of it not knowing what my purpose is.

His arms sweep under mine as he catches me before I can collide with the tiled ground. Within seconds, I’m sitting at the table, on one of the small stools that circle it.

He’s crouching in front of me, and his expression is concerned now. The rage has gone and his worry is a balm to my soul.

“You’re ill?—”

“I’m not sick,” I counter, unsurprised that he knows about my illness. I feel like everyone does.

His knuckles hesitantly rub over my crown. “The first time I landed in Rome when I was transferred here, I saw on the news that you’d been operated on.” His jaw works. “You have beautiful hair. An angel’s hair.”

The admission, torn from him as it is, sinks into me like stones slipping through water. Not only his choice of words but that, on his first day here, he saw me on TV.

Fate... yet again.

Could it be more obvious?

Our first face-to-face meeting.

My tongue feels thick in my mouth. “ I am an angel.”

I’m not sure why I say that. I never intended to, but the words slipped out, just like everything else I’ve said or done tonight.

He frowns, then his fingers trace along the part of gelled hair which I use to control how much of the scars are visible. That he touches me in such an intimate spot doesn’t seem to register.

It isn’t the touch someone gives a stranger, and while I know that’s because we’re not strangers, he doesn’t. Yet he touches me like he knows me.

Because he does.

He just doesn’t realize it.

“The cyst?” he asks simply.

“The cyst.” I tip my chin up. “They say it caused delusions.”

“But you don’t?”

“No, I know my purpose. Even if I’m the only one who does.”

“Are you physically well since—I mean, should you be out and traveling if…?”

“I discharged myself.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I’m as well as I can be. But the truth is, being in the hospital would have been detrimental to me. I’m a nomad. I travel around a lot. Being stuck in there was sucking the life out of me.”

“If you needed to be there, then you shouldn’t have left,” he chides, and I shiver when his fingers collide with a scar.

It isn’t sensitive.

If anything, it’s still numb, but I can feel him. Touching me.

Finally .

I tip my head toward him, letting the curve of my skull rest on his hand.

“I’m as well as I can be,” I repeat.

“You almost collapsed?—”

“I tried to keep up with you. I failed,” I tell him dryly. “I exerted myself too much. Plus, before that, I followed Paolo.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because his response was strange to his penance. I was angry at first. So angry with what he said. With your absolution.” I blink at him. “I’ve been friends with a lot of victims of domestic violence over the years, and I knew how his niece had to be feeling.”

His voice throbs with emotion: “I will not let her be abused again just because no one will listen to her?—”

“The police have to help.”

“With what? Something he could deny? Something she hasn’t even confessed to me?” His scowl makes a reappearance. “Why would she speak with the police when she won’t talk about it in confession? Not once has she mentioned his actions to me.”

I gnaw on my bottom lip, hating that he’s right.

But I’m also torn because I felt the bloodcurdling rage earlier. The loathing for a man who could be self-piteous when he was the abuser consumed me as much as it did Savio.

“I don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it,” he breathes, hand trailing over the curve of my head onto my chin, across my throat, and along my shoulder, down my arm to my pulse point.

When he bares my palm to his gaze, noting his blood there, his fingers trail over the divots and curves.

It’s absentminded.

Like his thoughts are elsewhere and his fingertips represent him wandering through his mind, meandering between his thoughts.

I’m not about to complain, not when his touch is a thousand times more magnetic than I’d ever imagined.

All of a sudden, the body that had never responded to the cute guys in high school, college, or at the frickin’ gym, is flaring to life as if a police siren has just started flashing.

Every part of me—body, mind, soul, and heart—flutters in response to his attention. I feel like a flower, a bud that has been tightly furled in the dark, slowly opening and blossoming now that the sun is kissing its petals.

Only, Savio isn’t the sun.

If anything, he is the dark.

The moon?

Maybe.

Even that projects a faint kiss of light, and some flowers bloom only at night…

I focus on his scarred knuckles as he traces patterns on mine and whisper, “Even Adam had Eve.”

He stills. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t look at me, so I tip his chin up to ensure that he’s staring straight at me. “You know what it means.”

“I don’t know you . So how can I know what you’re thinking?”

“You do.” Where it matters. “You know me.”

He shakes his head. “This is crazy. You’re?—”

“No. I was crazy,” I admit. At least, in the eyes of the world. “But not anymore.”

He’d been crouching in front of me, however, my words have him flooding the space with energy. He surges upward and backs away from me.

“You can run from me, but you can’t hide,” I intone softly, glancing at the blood on my fingers. Then, I make my own vow to him: “I’ll do what I must to keep you safe. Even if it’s from yourself.”