Chapter 12
Lorenzo stopped the bike outside of a warehouse that was connected to an old air strip. I winced at the pain in my shoulder. Rio’s heat and humidity pressed down on us, making it difficult to breathe.
I couldn't believe my father was dead. It wasn't fair. Lorenzo was here, alive, heart beating under my palms while my father lay cold in a booth at Sanctum. My father was dead because of the man I was holding onto like he mattered.
Let go. Get off the bike. Walk away.
My hands wouldn't obey. My fingers remained locked around him as if I released him now, something worse than grief would rush in to fill the space.
It’d been twenty years since my mother had wrapped her arms around me, and just as long since I’d hugged Gabriel... Or anyone else. When was the last time I’d touched someone so casually?
I didn’t know, but my body acted as if I were starving for it.
I forced my fingers open. The absence of contact left my palms cold despite Rio's heat.
Lorenzo dismounted, swayed, then caught himself on the handlebar.
I looked away. "I'm leaving." Was that my voice? That didn’t sound like my voice.
Lorenzo went still. "What? You can’t just leave.”
"You heard me." I swung my leg over the bike. "Thanks for the ride. Good luck with the whole 'everyone wants you dead' situation."
I made it three steps before his hand closed around my wrist.
I jerked my hand away as if he’d burned me. Maybe he had. Every time he touched me, it sent a jolt of heightened awareness through me and made my body do things I couldn’t explain or control. Every nerve ending screaming yes, more, don't stop.
“Rafael, wait.”
"Wait for what?" I demanded. "So you can explain why you killed my father? Give me some bullshit justification about the coin, about having no choice?" I stepped closer, and he stepped back. "I don't want to hear it. I don't want to be near you. I don't—"
The warehouse door swung open.
A man stood in the doorway, honey-brown eyes sweeping over us both before landing on the blood. "Hey, you want the whole of Brazil to hear you two lovebirds arguing? Shut up and get inside before every operative in the city is on top of us."
My teeth ground together. He was right, and I hated him for it.
"Why is he alive?" A second man appeared behind the first, this one armed with a katana.
"Jasper." The first man's voice carried a warning.
"It's a reasonable question, Diego." Jasper took a drag from his cigarette. "Lorenzo just killed his father. One of them should be dead."
My hands balled into fists. "Ask him."
Jasper's eyes slid to Lorenzo, waiting.
"It's complicated," Lorenzo said.
Jasper snorted.
"Inside," Diego said again, stepping back from the doorway. "Before someone calls the cops or worse."
I didn't move. Every instinct screamed to walk away, disappear into Rio's maze of streets and never look back. I could survive on my own. I had training for this. I didn't need Lorenzo or his friends, or whatever mess I'd just jumped into.
Except the Church wanted me dead. The Pantheon wanted Lorenzo dead. And standing in an alley arguing was a good way to make both of those things happen faster.
You don't have a choice. You never had a choice.
"Fine." The word tasted bitter.
I pushed past Diego into the warehouse. It wasn’t anything special, just a space with a concrete floor and exposed pipes.
Lorenzo followed me inside. I tracked his movement without meaning to, hyperaware of his presence. I moved away, putting a table between us. The distance didn't help. My skin still remembered the solid warmth of his back against my chest.
"Water?" Diego gestured toward a camping stove in the corner. "Coffee?"
"Shower," I said through clenched teeth. "I need to wash this off."
I didn't specify what this was. The blood. The smell of Sanctum. The memory of my father slumping in that booth. The feel of Lorenzo's warmth still burning into my palms.
Diego studied me. "Bathroom's through there. Best we could do on short notice."
"Fine."
I headed toward the bathroom without waiting for a response. My shoulder screamed with each step, but I ignored it, focused on forward motion, on getting away from Lorenzo's orbit before my body did something else I'd regret.
The bathroom reminded me of the gym showers in high school. It was communal and open, but I didn't care.
I stripped out of my suit jacket. The fabric was stiff where blood had dried and the shirt underneath wasn't much better. Every piece of clothing I removed was peeling away evidence of the worst night of my life.
The water ran cold, but I didn't wait for it to warm. I stepped under the spray and let it hit me like punishment, like penance for every choice that had led here.
I grabbed the industrial soap from the ledge and scrubbed at my hands. My father's blood had worked its way under my fingernails and into the creases of my palms. The soap stung where my knuckles had split during the fight, sharp enough to make my eyes water.
Maybe that wasn't the soap.
Don't you dare.
I scrubbed harder. My shoulder throbbed with each movement, but I needed to get clean.
The door opened behind me.
I spun and found Lorenzo standing in the doorway, stripped down to his underwear. Blood still marked his skin in patches he'd missed. His side was bandaged, white gauze already seeping red where the wound I'd given him in Rome had torn open again.
"Get out."
"I need to shower too." He swayed on his feet.
"I don't care what you need." I turned my back on him, facing the spray. "Wait your turn."
"Rafael—"
"I said get out!" The words echoed off the tile, bouncing back at me from every direction. "I don't want you here. I don't want to see you. I don't want—"
I turned back around at the sound of water hitting skin. Dammit, didn’t he ever listen to anything I said? The bastard got right in the shower with me.
I shoved him hard. "I told you to leave!"
Lorenzo stumbled backward but didn't go down. His hand shot out and caught my wrist, fingers slipping on wet skin but holding on.
"Let go of me!" I tried to wrench free, but he held tight. We went down together, with me landing on top of him.
Lorenzo didn’t fight back. He just stared up at me, eyes unfocused. His hand shook as he lifted it. I flinched as he gently placed his palm against my cheek. “I remember you,” he said, voice almost a whisper. “You were with him… You…saved me.”
Then, his eyes rolled back, and he went limp beneath me.
Shit!
I pressed two fingers against his throat. His pulse beat steadily. The wound in his side had torn open completely, fresh blood mixing with water and soap, turning everything pink.
This is my fault.
"Help!" I called, lifting Lorenzo by his shoulders. "Hey, need some help in here!"
His head lolled against my chest.
Diego flung the door open and took one look at Lorenzo before uttering a curse in Spanish. "What the fuck happened?"
"He passed out. His side's bleeding. He needs—"
"Keep pressure on the wound. I'll be right back. Jasper!" He backed out the door shouting for Jasper to bring him the medical kit.
I pressed my palm against Lorenzo's side, applying pressure.
Lorenzo made a small sound, and his eyes fluttered back open. "Rafael?"
God dammit, why did the sound of my name on his lips sound so good? "Shut up. Don't talk. You're bleeding everywhere."
His hand closed weakly over mine. “Don’t let me die alone.”
I froze and stared at him. His face had gone slack again. The words had come out so quietly. Why would he say that to me?
He had Diego, Jasper. People who'd actually chosen to stand by him. People who weren't related to the man he'd just killed. And yet he'd looked at me and asked me to stay.
Don't let me die alone.
I'd spent twenty years in the Order surrounded by brothers who would have watched me hang without blinking. I'd knelt in chapels full of men who called me brother while teaching me that touch was sin, that wanting was weakness, that my body was something to be controlled and denied.
I'd been alone my entire life.
Maybe Lorenzo had too. Caged as a child. Sold. Forged into a weapon. Had anyone ever stayed with him when it mattered? Or had he learned the same lesson I had? That survival meant standing alone?
My hand pressed harder against the wound. Blood pulsed hot against my palm, his heartbeat steady under my fingers.
He'd killed my father. I should hate him. Part of me did. But another part recognized something in that quiet plea, in the way he'd reached for me even as consciousness slipped away.
He didn't want to die alone, and I understood that in a way I didn't want to examine too closely.
I wasn't leaving. I didn't know what that made us. Not enemies, not anymore, but not friends either. Something undefined and dangerous and probably stupid.
But I wasn't leaving.