Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
LUCA
T he men are milling about like they’re ants hard at work. My hands shake as my brain can’t wrap around what I see.
These aren’t men I’m used to seeing; they’re new. And there are more of them. Some are dragging dead bodies out of the tree line towards an organized pile in the middle of the dooryard.
The rooster from hell is bellowing from the coop off to the right side of the commotion as if he senses something’s amiss.
“Father Russo!” a man shouts, in a tone that says he’s likely been yelling at me this entire time.
Finally, I turn away from the destruction.
Ardesia and Brynne are walking toward me with looks of despair on their faces.
It’s what buckles my knees and sends me to the floor.
Ardesia rushes me, guiding me up and onto a chair in the dining room. The same one Sloane fucked me senseless on what seems like only hours ago, even though it wasn’t.
“Where is she?” I ask him. “You said we’d be safe here. Instead, we were sitting ducks, weren’t we?”
Pain riddles his face, and Brynne turns away to hide hers.
“I’m so sorry. Things got out of hand back home, and I tried to get here as fast as I could once I got word…”
“Word? Did you know he was coming?”
“We had a feeling. He captured one of Brynne’s men, a capo. Even though we’d like to believe our men’s loyalty runs deep and true, there’s always a chance they can spill intel to save their hide.”
A numbness is stretching and winding through me like a thick fog clotting in the air of a frosty morning. “How do we get her back? We have to move.” I stand, freezing, when they share a look I can’t quite decipher.
“Listen,” Brynne says softly, stepping towards me and placing her hand on my arm. I don’t like it one bit. It’s how I’ve laid my own on those suffering before I read their last rites.
I hold my tongue in respect for her, even when I want to lash out.
“We can’t barrel in there, guns blazing this time. It’s gotten…complicated,” she finishes, motioning for me to sit back down.
I do, reluctantly.
“How has it gotten more complicated?”
How the hell has a twenty-one-year-old caused this much upheaval?
Though looking at her, you’d assume chaos follows her.
She’s the definition of anarchy-made flesh, and it’s what called me to her in the first damned place.
“Matteo has aligned with the remaining three families,” Ardesia says, taking over as Brynne looks at a loss of how to console me while still telling me the truth.
The truth is what I seek, however. Ardesia knows that.
I swallow.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “And they’re all working in the flesh trade?”
Ardesia nods. “I don’t think he wants her for the trade, though. He seemed to want her for himself. He likes stubborn, fiery women.”
Well, she’s damn sure that. But it gains her all the wrong intentions.
My obsession proves that.
“So, what’s our move?”
Ardesia leans forward, biting his bottom lip before looking at Brynne. “We don’t have a move yet. This needs to be done right. Because if not...” He lifts his brows, sits back, and smacks his hand on the table.
“War,” I finish for him.
Brynne nods. “We can’t make the city unsafe for the innocent over the life of one girl, Father Russo. We have to operate for the good of the many, you know that.”
I hang my head, thinking of what he could do to her right this second, as I break down and sob.
“I understand. I don’t fucking like it, but I understand.”
I don’t have the connections or the manpower to get her, or I’d do it myself.
“I have a chopper waiting to take us back to the city,” Ardesia says, and I look around the cabin.
Only days ago, Sloane and I were in complete solitude—hiding away from the world that wanted to hurt her, from the religion that felt like a vise around my throat.
I chose her.
Now she’s gone.
I don’t know what to do. How to act.
I’m lost again.
“You want me to pack her things?” Brynne asks.
I nod, sniffling. I know I can’t do it.
She moves off to the bedrooms.
Ardesia sighs, looking around. “Peaceful, isn’t it? Well, it was. I can’t deny I’m fucking livid that the other families know where this place is now. I enjoyed having it to myself. Like my piece of heaven.”
I nod. “I know we were hiding, but enjoyed our time here.”
It seems mundane to be having this conversation when Sloane is lost and likely being abused, but there’s a way things are done in this world, and going against two Dons in the mafia isn’t wise.
After an hour, the cabin is locked up, and I’m sitting to Ardesia’s left in the helicopter, my bag between my feet. The world below us is a vivid green, slick with rain and chill. A world I’ll likely never have the pleasure of seeing again. But while I was here, I felt like I lived.
I breathe a sigh as we move over the water surrounding the island.
“Won’t take us too long to get to the jet,” Ardesia says in my headphones, and I nod without looking at him.
It’s all I can do to keep myself in check. To keep calm.
My heart breaks into a million bits and pieces as I leave the island without Sloane in tow.
Not knowing how we’re going to handle this or even having a plan is going to be the fucking death of me.
Bishop Riley looks over my written confession. I’ll likely be excommunicated today and removed from power. It’s the right way to do it.
We’ve had priests vanish before, and it’s all because they don’t want to face whatever they did to get cut off from the church.
I’ve been home for a week, and it’s time to finish this.
“You don’t want to remain?” he asks me.
I swallow, tugging my brows together. “What do you mean? You have plenty of evidence to throw me out of the church. I’ve come to terms with my fate.”
I’d included a resignation letter behind the confession to save time.
Bishop Riley is in his sixties, rotund and balding. He looks at me over the top rim of wireframe glasses and then sighs.
Tossing the papers down, he removes his glasses and throws them on top of them. “Listen, let me tell it to you straight,” he starts, rubbing his closed eyes as if reading my confession had harmed them somehow.
“Alright…” I give him room to go on.
“I’ve seen and heard far worse things than these from priests, and some of them are still in power in churches I oversee. If you want to stay at your post, I won’t stop you.”
I’m flabbergasted. The knowledge I’ve been working with some of the filthiest sinners takes me aback.
“We’re only human, Father Russo. And there’s something to be said for how weak manly flesh is, don’t you agree?” He waggles his eyebrows at me in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and I swallow past a lump in my throat.
“I don’t know, I…”
He raises a hand and cuts me off. “Listen, you still have a few weeks on sabbatical. Take that time to figure out where you are in your faith and how you want to go forward. Whichever way is fine with me. I only want your happiness. But I want you to know you can remain here if you wish.”
I nod. “Thank you, Bishop.”
He dismisses me with a flick of the hand, and I’m on my feet in a flash. He does not take kindly to being disobeyed.
My walk back to my car is strange. I feel like I’m in a world I thought I understood until now.
Nothing I believe, even about my vows, seems… right.
It’s upturning my life and my beliefs even more.
I get in the car and head to where I’ll always find solace in the storm.
My mother’s.
She knows something is amiss when she opens the door, as mothers always do.
“What is it? What has happened?”
I fall to my knees, burying my face in the warmth of her stomach as I shatter.
She doesn’t say a word. Her hands come down in comfort into my hair.
“Shh, it will be alright. You’re home now,” she coos.
It doesn’t cease the onslaught of emotion, however. It only gets worse now that I’m here with her.
Over an hour later, I’ve collected myself, and we’re sitting in the kitchen, where I finally tell her everything. I don’t leave out any sordid detail.
It has to happen even if John never lets me live my mistakes down because she tells him.
“Oh, Luca. I didn’t want this life for you. The guilt you have because you’ve found something so pure is absurd. I understand your calling. Even I find the grandeur of St. Andrews calming and welcoming, almost otherworldly, but it’s no life I ever wanted to watch one of my sons live. Because you’re not living.”
“I am living, Mama. I’m living for the lord.”
She shakes her head. “And if you’re not meant to? You said yourself you chose her.”
I swallow. “I did. I do. I—” The situation with her being missing and Ardesia himself unsure of how to go forward has me at a pause.
I can’t go toe to toe with a man like Matteo Barone.
That, I know.
“How are we going to get her back, then?” Mama asks with a smirk and a flush on her cheeks.
Tears culminate again. I shrug.
I had left no detail out.
She knows Matteo has her and that even the Grim Reaper of New York is treading lightly not to start a massive war between the families.
“I don’t know, Mama. I truly don’t.”
“Well, I think you know what your first steps are, right?”
Talking about this, thinking about this, while all the while I know unspeakable things could be happening to Sloane as we speak, has me on the fucking edge. But it must be done.
“John’s never going to let me live this down, you know? Leaving the faith.”
Mama smiles. “Well, what are brothers for, hm?”
I scrub my hands through my hair, images of Sloane tied up, bloodied, or worse, sweeping through my head.
As if she knows where my mind is plunging, Mama stands and beckons me toward her, opening her arms for another hug.
“Come. Help an old woman cook dinner, yes?”
She doesn’t need help.
I do.
And she knows it.