Broken Honor (Melbourne Syndicate #1)

Prologue - Lunetta

The room is still like a chapel after confession. There’s nothing here but the bed beneath me. No mirror, no wardrobe, no lamps. No window to the outside world. Just four pale walls, clean and bare.

The floor is polished marble, pale gray and cold beneath my bare feet. The ceiling overhead is high, vaulted, almost cathedral-like, and yet there is no grace here. Only emptiness. A single overhead bulb hums faintly.

The bed is large, its white linens stretched tight and smooth around the mattress, untouched—except where I sit, staining it with my sweat, with the dirt smeared across my skin and the blood drying on my lip. The pristine sheets are rumpled beneath my thighs, damp from the feverish heat of my body, a stark contrast to the untouched order surrounding me.

I’m a blemish on this room. A filthy stain on white.

The red dress clings to me, soaked through at the back. The neckline is torn—ripped just beneath my collarbone—exposing the curve of my breast, the edge of my bra, the vulnerable swell of skin that shouldn’t be seen. One strap dangles off my shoulder. The other is barely holding on, and my chest rises and falls too quickly with every breath, making the torn fabric shift more.

My thighs are pressed together. My fingers dig into the mattress on either side of me. And my lips won’t stop moving.

"Sanctifica me, Domine…" I murmur, my voice trembling. "Cleanse my mind, my flesh. Forgive me these thoughts that fester in the dark. Take them from me, Lord. Burn them from my bones."

I close my eyes tightly, trying to still the memories, to banish the heat still simmering in my blood, the way my body shuddered beneath his hands, the way I moaned—moaned—for him.

"Forgive me for the hunger… for the ache… for the cries You must have heard from my lips. I am Yours, not his. I belong to Your light, not his shadow."

My voice breaks. My prayer falters for a moment—but I keep going.

"Sanctify me… cleanse me. I didn’t want it. I didn’t mean to…"

God help me, I didn’t mean to.

The door clicks, and the soft metallic sound makes me freeze.

My fingers tighten around the twisted rosary on my wrist, the beads pressing into my skin, grounding me in pain. I feel him before I see him.

The air in the room grows heavier, darker, charged with sin. Leather soles brush the floor in unhurried steps.

Each one echoes across the marble.

He is tall. Towering. Dressed in tailored black from throat to ankle, a long dark coat resting across his broad shoulders like the wings of a fallen angel. His shirt is crisp beneath the lapels, a few buttons undone, exposing a line of hard, tanned chest and the faintest dusting of dark hair.

His face is cut from stone—high cheekbones, sharp jawline dusted in faint stubble, lips full and unsmiling. And his eyes… those eyes.

Cold steel. Pale gray with flecks of gold, like molten metal trapped in frost. They are locked on me, and my heart stumbles.

He watches me for a moment, head tilted, amused by the sight of me—bruised, disheveled, praying in a room he designed to break people in.

The closer he gets, the smaller I feel, like the very air around me bends to make space for him.

I clutch the sheets tighter, my lips still whispering prayers.

"Domine, libera me… deliver me from his hands. From his eyes. From my shame."

He stops right in front of me. I can feel his shadow falling over me. He kneels—lowering himself to my level with the kind of grace that should be gentle, but never is with him.

His coat pools around his knees. His knees brush mine. His face is close now—so close I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek.

He leans in.

His nose brushes my face, then drifts lower.

He inhales me, his lips almost grazing my skin.

I shut my eyes and I continue my prayer. Louder now. Desperate.

"Purge me, Lord. Strip me of desire, drown this fire. Don’t let me fall again—don’t let me—"

His fingers slide through my damp, tangled hair, pushing it away from my face with a gentleness that makes me shudder. His touch leaves trails of heat behind, electric and cruel.

He leans in closer, his lips near my ear.

“I came because I missed you,” he murmurs.

The words scrape against me, low and intimate, laced with that mocking softness that always makes me feel raw.

My eyes fly open again.

I glare at him with every shred of fury I can summon—but he only smiles.

“You can’t pray away the screams of last night,” he says.

The heat floods my face—shame and anger and memory all tangled together. My lips still move, muttering a prayer I don’t hear anymore.

His hand trails lower.

“Can’t you understand, tesoro mio,” he says, fingers grazing the curve of my chest, slipping beneath the torn neckline. “Your body longs for me.”

He palms my breast, thumb brushing over my nipple.

It responds—tightening, aching beneath his touch.

I gasp, soft and sharp, betraying everything I just begged forgiveness for.

He chuckles, low and cruel.

“I told you I’d make you want to give it to me.”

And then he kisses me.

His mouth bumps into mine, stealing the last remnants of my prayer, devouring them, replacing them with heat and want and humiliation. His tongue pushes past my teeth, into my mouth.

I try to resist but my body betrays me. Again.

He tears away only to bite down on my neck—he trails lower, tongue flicking against my skin, dragging heat through my veins like poison.

I moan as pleasure shoots through me.

Then his mouth is at my throat—tongue trailing heat, teeth scraping gently over the bruise he left there last night. I gasp again, my head tipping back, and my fingers twist tighter in the sheets.

"Sancta Maria, mater Dei…" I try to whisper. But the words die in my throat the moment I feel his hands moving again. His hands move to my thigh and he spreads my legs apart—slow, firm, without asking.

My knees resist at first, drawn together by instinct, by modesty, by fear. But his strength is effortless, his body pressing between them like a force I was never built to withstand. My thighs part inch by inch under his grip, shame blooming hot between them.

Cool air kisses my inner thighs, the damp heat there unbearable now.

He looks down at me, eyes gleaming with that cold fire—predator and priest in one. Reverent in the way his gaze trails over my exposed skin, blasphemous in the way he touches it. He pushes my dress up so it bunches around my waist. His hands caress my bare thighs as his mouth sinks into my neck again.

“Good girl,” he whispers as he reaches between my legs, rough fingers curling around the waistband of my panties.

My mouth is open but all that comes out is breath—short, shaking, desperate. My rosary slips from my wrist, beads scattering across the white sheets like pearls from a broken strand.

I fight to close my legs, to be free from this torturous emotion but all I feel is wave after wave of pleasure.

He stares down at me with an evil grin.

“You want it, don’t you?”

“No,” I answer weakly.

His hands move up to my breasts. “Tell the truth.”

“I don’t!”

“Tell the truth!”

“I don’t!” I scream, waking up with a gasp.

My body jerks upright, drenched in sweat, lungs heaving like I’ve surfaced from drowning. My heart pounds so hard it echoes in my ears—wild, unsteady, violent. The sheets are tangled around my thighs, damp and twisted. My skin is slick, flushed, fever-hot, as though his hands are still on me.

I look around, panting in fear.

He isn’t here, it was only a dream. He was never here.

I pat around for my bottle of water and when I find it, I gargle it like I have been parched for months. My hands quake violently, making the water spill on my night dress.

I sit there for a moment, staring at the pale walls, trying to remember where the dream ended and where the memory began.

I feel sick.

Disgust coils in my gut as I scramble to my knees on the mattress, fingers clutching the edge of the headboard, trembling under the weight of a thousand sins. The rosary lies beside me, cold against the sheets, the beads slick with sweat.

I grab it with shaking hands and press it to my lips, knuckles white from how tightly I hold it.

“Cleanse me,” I whisper, breathless, hoarse. “Cleanse me, Lord… please.”

The tears come fast, sliding down my cheeks and mixing with the sweat still clinging to my skin. I bow forward until my forehead touches the sheets, chest heaving, body curling into itself like a penitent sinner at the altar of her own shame.

“Purge these thoughts, purge these cravings… I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want it. I didn’t mean to…”

What were these dreams? Why did they haunt me? Why do I not reject them?

“Take it away,” I whisper, over and over, rocking on my knees, voice cracking, throat raw. “Take it away, take it away, take it away…”

No peace comes with my desperate prayers, just the echo of his voice from my dreams.

You can’t pray away the screams of last night.