Chapter 4
MASSIMO
“The work we do here is groundbreaking, truly. Society doesn’t care about those who are suffering from sin.
But their families do. These patients, with the right therapy, could be released to live a normal life again someday.
The director believes in the power of holiness and science working together.
We are blessed to have him as our patron. ”
“And is this an official scientific research arm of the Church?” I asked Father Benedict, one of the most senior officials at Hallow Hall. I knew it wasn’t, of course. It was unsanctioned, a pet project of the powerful. A remnant of a murky past.
He paused, and I sensed his brain frantically working through what to say.
“What did Cristoph say?” he finally asked.
Ah yes, Cristoph, my “in” to Hallow Hall and the one who had made me my fake credentials and letter of recommendation, and vouched for me.
Father Benedict had no idea that his colleague was lying dead in a river about ten miles away.
All he and the rest of the higher-ups at Hallow Hall knew was that the company that funded Hallow Hall was sending in a new senior manager for training.
Me. It was supposed to be the man called Christoph, now a John Doe in some Torinese morgue.
“I didn’t ask Cristoph that question, as I wasn’t sure how familiar he was with the project. But I assume this work is sanctioned by the Church, yes?”
“Not as such. Because of the delicate nature of the work, we can’t really afford to make it public; you understand.”
“Yes, of course, I understand completely.” Fucked-up old perverts preying on defenseless innocents was a tale as old as time.
Yes, I understood exactly what was going on.
Luckily for me, I had a job to do here, and once it was done, I was gone.
The place made my skin crawl, which took a lot for a man like me.
Father Benedict said good night and invited me to sit in on another session tomorrow, then left me alone finally.
With a bone-rattling sigh, I pulled the fucking dog collar that had been strangling me all day free and dropped it on the bed.
The cassock was next. The fabric was suffocating.
It joined the rest of my disguise on the covers.
Of all the disguises I’d donned to reach important, well-hidden men, this was the worst.
The room they were putting me up in was in the basement and didn’t have a single window.
It had stone walls with candles instead of real lights.
The space was as spartan as you would expect, with a twin mattress resting on a simple, wooden bed frame and a desk and chair where you could do Bible study.
It was pretty bleak, honestly, but I’d slept in far worse places.
I sat and fished a cigarette out of my pocket, lighting up and inhaling deeply. I’d never needed a cigarette more than today after the shit I’d seen at Hallow Hall.
All these perverts parading under God’s name, carrying out their foul therapies and believing themselves to be holy.
I wished there was a shower in the simple quarters because I needed to wash myself clean of the filth of the day. Not of the patients. No, those poor souls were to be pitied. It was the filth of those in power.
Well, soon enough, there would be one less head of the monster for the patients to deal with.
I took my brief out of my bag and flipped it open.
Michal Vargas. Now Father Michal Vargas, second in charge at Hallow Hall. Apparently he’d had quite the misspent youth. Why someone from his past had taken out a hit on the man I had no idea. I didn’t ask why. I did the job, and I got paid.
I was seventeen when I discovered my calling.
“Alora, bravo, Edoardo!” My high school math teacher, Mrs. Vasco, was the kind of woman who thought a cheerful expression and a few enthusiastic claps could lighten the atmosphere in a room full of juvenile delinquents.
She frequently attempted to engage the kids in my class in something approaching learning but never quite managed.
Luckily, she hadn’t bothered to bring in her spirit stick again after someone had gotten stabbed with it.
“Edoardo wants to be a doctor—that’s amazing!” she enthused. She looked around the class and smiled warmly. “So, between all of us in here, we have just about everything covered. From detectives to doctors to chefs! You kids are the future, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”
It was really quite admirable how she managed to say such blatantly false statements with a straight face.
“Now, have we covered everyone?” she mused, counting the names on her list, and then seemed to falter. “Oh, there’s one left.”
Her gaze dragged across the room toward me. I sat in the back corner, a no-man’s-land of empty chairs where not a soul dared venture. Even in a school for troubled kids, no one wanted to sit with me.
“That leaves just you, Massimo. What do you want to do when you grow up?”
My desk was a pitted mess of knife points pressed into the shiny wood.
What could I say? I was a fidgeter. I twirled the small knife I always carried between my scarred fingers and used the flat of it to scratch my neck.
She’d confiscated it once, but after I took out my restless energy by beating one of my male classmates, she never made that mistake again.
“I don’t know, Signora Vasco, maybe you have a suggestion for me?”
I gave her a lazy grin that only sent her shoulders higher.
“Something especially suited to my talents . . . something I could excel at,” I added.
“Mafioso.”
“Murderer.”
The murmured whispers made me laugh. I glanced around, but no one dared to meet my gaze.
“Enough!” Mrs. Vasco snapped, her positive, sunny attitude fading for a moment.
A mask-slip moment where I could see how much it cost her to stand in front of this class of lost souls every day and pretend so hard that they were going to be anything but losers when they were older.
More than half were headed to prison; the rest would be in gangs, on welfare, or sponging off family for the rest of their days.
Me? I had no intention of doing any of that.
“Now, you see, I might not have learned much this year in this shithole, but even I know that you need to get paid from a job . . . so murderer is out.”
Mrs. Vasco let out a long sigh, not even trying to hide her relief.
I twirled my knife between my fingers.
“But you did get me thinking,” I continued. “Sicario. That sounds much more like me.”
Sicario. Hitman.
“That sounds about perfect.”
Maybe Mrs. Vasco would be proud to know that her career day had helped at least one of her students find his profession.
I doubted it, however. She was too good of a person to be able to stomach that a kid she’d once taught had really grown up to be a killer for hire.
A mercenary, an assassin. A dark mark on the world.
She was good and kind and godly, like none of the men in robes at Hallow Hall.
Real goodness. No, God had no place here at Hallow Hall.
There were only men and the evil they did.
The place reeked of it. God had forsaken Hallow Hall and all the souls within.
Maybe I’d finally found a place to belong.
I’d been forsaken by the world for longer than I could remember.
I placed the brief back in my bag.
It had taken a while to track Vargas down.
Hallow Hall wasn’t exactly well-known. In fact, far too many people went out of their way to keep it secret, which only made me more curious about the company that was funding this place.
It wasn’t the Church, that was for sure.
There was no way they would. But someone was. That was clear.
Still, I didn’t need to get involved with any of that. I was only here to carry out a contract. Kill Vargas and get out of here, throw salt behind me and try to forget that such a place existed.
I couldn’t help. I’d given up trying. No matter what I did, someone innocent got hurt. I’d learned that the hard way, and not getting involved was the only answer.
Still, if I were going to get involved . . . I’d start with her.
The girl who spoke to the voices in her head.
The one who’d stared at me like she knew every single bad thing I’d ever done, like it was written across my face.
The one who’d called me Lucifer.
I chuckled as I remembered her wide eyes, gaze fastened on me, and her look of pure certainty.
Tipping my head back, I exhaled a plume of smoke up to the ceiling.
It had been too long since someone had seen me.
The real me. I’d gotten good at hiding in plain sight.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing, and these robes should have made me invisible.
Beyond reproach. But not to her. One glance and she’d known.
Maybe she really did have an angel on her shoulder.
But if she did, it was a shitty one if she’d ended up here.
That fucker, Father Pavol, was a new level of low when it came to humanity. Subjecting a poor young woman to his bullshit therapy just to get turned on, so he could go to his bathroom and jerk off over the john, was depraved, and not in a fun way.
Maybe the good father could have an accident while I was here. Why not? Accidents happened all the time.
Katarina Dmitrova.
Her name was beautiful, just like her. She was distant, elusive, living in a world in her head, speaking with spirits, or voices. She didn’t seem of this world. With her white clothes, long, tumbling blond locks, and serene expression . . . she was the fallen angel, not me. Otherworldly beauty.
She wasn’t the first woman I’d met who believed she was talking to angels.
My bag was gaping open, and I spied the top of a notebook calling to me from the depths. It was in my hand before I could question it.