Chapter 3 #2
‘What are you doing?’ I say again, voice shaking. No answer. ‘Please. I don’t understand.’
The man closest hesitates a fraction of a second. Then he pulls a small device from his vest, flicks a switch. ‘Target secure.’
A woman’s voice crackles through it, distorted but calm. ‘Proceed to extraction.’
Extraction. The word chills me.
They move like a single body, swift and methodical. One of them opens the chest at the foot of my bed, snags a pillow case and begins tossing in my few possessions – habit, rosary, the wooden cross, hairbrush, even my threadbare shoes. They don’t miss a thing.
Tears blur my vision. ‘Where are you taking me?’
Still nothing.
One of them reaches for me again, producing a black hood from his pack. I twist away from him, attempting to evade him even with my panic rising.
‘Stop! Don’t—’
The fabric descends, rough and heavy, and the world goes dark.
I try to launch myself away from him but it’s no use. I feel myself lifted as my breath snags somewhere between a sob and a prayer. Hands support me, propel me through the space with sure steps, their grip absolute. My feet barely touch the ground as they carry me down the hall.
I catch fragments of other sounds – the weeping of a sister, the hiss of a radio, the dull mechanical hum of engines outside.
From routine, I know we’re in the inner courtyard when fresh air hits and permeates the cloth covering my face.
Half a minute later, we’re outside the walls of the sleeping quarters but still within the safety – well, the not so safe – confines of the convent.
But fear seeps into my very bones when the smell of diesel and grass hits my nose.
And the night erupts in wind.
No, no, no, please, dear Father, let this be a bad dream.
But the deafening chop of rotor blades battering the sky only grows, until the vibration shakes through my ribs.
A gruff male voice shouts, ‘Clear the courtyard!’ in a tone that doesn’t belong to anyone but a commander.
I stumble as they half-carry, half-drag me across open ground.
The hood presses against my mouth; I can’t breathe properly, can’t see, can only feel the gale of the helicopter wash flattening my nightdress against my body.
Dear God, I’m only wearing my thin nightdress.
This can’t be happening. This must be some kind of penance.
‘Wait.’ The voice is etched deeper in power and authority, which is manifested when everyone freezes.
I begged God for a sign. For clarity, for purpose. For punishment, even, if doubt was my sin. I just never thought He’d answer like this.
I twist in their hold. ‘Please! Tell me why you’re doing this! What do you want with me?’
No response.
Air shifts and footsteps move closer. I sense it belongs to the man who just spoke. The one in command.
Through the hood, I barely make out the figure moving towards me. He’s towering but he moves slower, heavier. He leans closer and I feel breath rasping through the hood, a sound strained and uneven.
Wind whistles softly, bringing the scent of leather, bergamot, and the faint bite of petrol and smoke clinging stubbornly to his skin.
My breath stutters. Then—
The hood is ripped away.
Candlelight of one small lantern swinging from a hook in the courtyard flares against a broad-shouldered shadow in black tactical armour.
He’s wearing a balaclava like the others. I blink, then confirm every impression I got. And more.
Yes, he’s tall.
Oh yes, he’s powerful if the livid blaze from his intelligent eyes is anything to go by. And holy heavens, he’s… breathtaking. In a way of fallen angels and men who were never meant to walk among mortals. The very kind of dangerous beauty I was warned to guard my soul against.
But… he’s also unsteady… his stance wavering for a heartbeat as if the very gentle breeze is knocking him off balance.
There’s nothing unsteady about his fixed gaze though. He’s watching me as if I’m a miracle and a plague come to life.
He steps even closer and my eyes struggle to focus.
There’s barely any light to start with and he blocks the lantern with his shoulders, but I watch the silhouette of him reach up.
Yet I gasp when he tears off his mask.
I can’t see his face clearly. But I hear him. A voice I feel before I understand.
He makes a sound. Deep. Rough. Disbelieving.
‘Santa Maria, it’s you,’ he rasps on a breath. A vow. A breaking. ‘At last.’
I freeze.
My lips part, but no sound comes out.
Then he coughs suddenly, a harsh, painful sound, and sags, gripping the side of the courtyard bench to stay upright.
Two soldiers move towards him instinctively.
He snarls – actually snarls – ‘Don’t touch me.’
They stop dead.
I stumble at the ferocity in his voice. Another reaches for me instead, as if to steady me.
His voice explodes like thunder. ‘Don’t. You. Fucking. Touch. Her.’
All five soldiers recoil as though struck.
My heart pounds. Who is this man? Who commands armed shadows with a single word?
Why does he sound like he knows me?
He takes a step towards me slowly, as if each movement costs him something.
One hand presses to his ribs like they’re hurting.
The lantern swings, and for a fleeting second, I glimpse his jaw, his mouth, the outline of a scar near his temple.
He’s injured.
Badly.
But when he speaks again, his voice doesn’t waver. ‘For your sake,’ he says quietly, ‘for the sake of everyone in this place… come with me. Now.’ It’s a soft, deadly command writhing with savage violence.
I swallow hard. My voice is a trembling whisper. ‘Why? W-who are you? What do you w-want with m-me?’
He blinks, shakes his head.
The lantern swings again, catching his eyes – dark, burning, familiar in a way that shatters something inside me.
Someone I should know.
Someone I do not remember.
He steps closer.
A storm wearing a man’s skin.
‘Let’s go. Now.’
He moves… Looms. I stumble back, then sideways, then turn as the soldiers press in without touching me.
The wind shifts again and the smell of diesel hits me. I lift my head as the rising chop of rotor blades thrash the night apart.
The helicopter that I heard.
Dear God, this must be a nightmare.
A test. A punishment.
Seconds pass swiftly with a hand on the back of my head forcing me to duck – his hand. The click of harnesses, the scrape of metal, the unrelenting push forward. I’m shoved into a space that smells of oil and ozone and leather.
The noise becomes unbearable as the rotors roar, lifting us skyward. My stomach lurches as gravity lets go.
Lights flicker red, white, then the soft pulse of instruments. I hear a man on comms speaking low Italian, the cadence clipped, professional. ‘Package secure. Ground team following.’
Package.
That’s all I am now. An abducted package.
Something soft brushes my knee, then drops into my lap.
My bound hands reach, trace and search, and I know I’m holding my packed belongings. They brought everything. Even my rosary. For a strange moment I think that must mean I’m not being punished at all. That this is… protection. Salvation.
Or it is a hastened start of my next journey in the noviciate?
I shake my head, knowing I’m clinging to false hope. None of the sisters who were seen off on their last journey were treated to this alarming chorus of rotor blades and men with guns instead of hymns and holy water. I know in my heart of hearts that this wasn’t sanctioned by Madre Superiora.
This… I inhale shakily, swallow around an arid throat.
This is the devil’s work.
I can’t see the land below, can’t gauge how high we are, but the pitch of the engines tells me we’re moving fast. The air smells cleaner up here, sharper. I try to focus on breathing, on counting the thrum of the rotors, but my mind keeps circling back to the same thought.
Be careful what you pray for.
I prayed for God to test me. For a chance to prove my faith. For something that would burn away the doubt creeping through my soul.
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is how He answers the faithless.
Maybe I’m being taken somewhere to start again.
Or to end.
The noise shifts as the helicopter banks.
‘ETA to Modena in seventy minutes.’ The word means nothing. But it feels heavy. Final.
I try to pray, but the words stumble and scatter in my throat. My rosary digs into my palm.
Deliver me from evil.
And yet…
The man who’s taken me, who carried me out of my cell, the man with hands that felt far too human for a monster, who even now stares at me with naked savagery in the darkness, doesn’t feel evil.
There’s something in the way he moved. In the way the others deferred to him.
A gravity.
A pull I felt even through my fear.
As if my soul recognised him before I ever did.
The helicopter climbs higher, cutting through the clouds, leaving the only home I’ve ever known shrinking somewhere far below.
* * *
Renzo
I shouldn’t be up and about.
I sure as shit shouldn’t be running around the Italian countryside, stalking convents, gangster or not.
Only three days ago I was in an enforced coma brought on by my severe concussion. Sure, the doctors claim my peak physical state aided a quickish exit from the coma, but hell if I don’t feel as weak as a damn kitten.
And last but by no means least is the questionable gang I’ve surrounded myself with, courtesy of Nightowl.
But there was no way in hell I was simply going to lie in that hospital bed after he sent me the location I knew in my gut I couldn’t ignore.
So here I fucking am.
And Jesus, look how it paid off.
The rotors thrum through my bones, steady and merciless, but I keep my eyes open, locked on the slight, shaking figure across from me.
Her.
Lit only by the emergency strips along the cabin floor, she looks carved out of candlelight and nightmares and every prayer I ever spat at the ceiling in the dead of night.
She’s clutching her bundled things to her chest like a child clutching their comfort toy. As if I would harm her.
Okay, maybe I will. I haven’t quite decided yet.
Her hood is back on because staring at her face was shredding something inside me. Because that look of fucking terror in her eyes? It claws at my soul, even through the manic exhaustion, through the pain, through the white-hot screaming of my ribs and my arm.
But over and above that, there’s the need to keep staring, never take my eyes off her. Because I simply need to confirm she’s real.
Finally.
Two hundred and sixty days since the last bullshit dead-end rumour. Months since the burned convent report that proved nothing.
But best of all, four days since I woke from my coma and two since Nightowl’s terse single-line message:
Santa Maria delle Nevi, Sicilian Alps. Move.
According to the doctors, my brain is swollen something fucked and my ribs are hanging together by spaghetti tendons. I shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be anywhere except the hospital bed I tore myself out of, with stitches still fresh, ribs still screaming, and an arm that feels like someone drove a steel rod through the bone.
Dante would maim me for even sitting upright, and Cesare would finish the job.
Orazio?
He’d have shot me in the kneecap just to stop me trying.
But none of them matter.
Not when she’s five feet away, breathing the same air again as me after all these years.
Not when I spent half my life imagining this moment and the other half hunting down every ghost that whispered her name.
I drag in a slow, measured breath, trying to keep my vision from tunnelling. The edges of the world keep dimming, tightening like a noose. Too much blood lost. Too long running on adrenaline and obsession; not enough sense left in my skull to rest when the doctors begged me to.
But fuck rest.
I didn’t claw my way out of that wreckage, didn’t survive the gunfire that took my mother and the silence that followed, didn’t tear London, Palermo, and half of New York apart piece by piece…
just to let a few injuries keep me from this.
From hard answers and broken vows and savage betrayal and yes, yes, yes, the sweetest, tightest pussy known to mankind.
The cabin tilts. My stomach lurches. Pain slams hot and thick behind my ribs.
One of the men leans towards me, voice tight. ‘Boss—’
I lift a hand, slow but sharp enough to cut through his worry. ‘No,’ I rasp. ‘Don’t touch me.’
His eyes flick towards her. ‘Do you want her restrained?’
A growl coils in my throat, low, feral, involuntary. ‘She doesn’t get touched,’ I grit out. ‘Not by anyone but me.’
I don’t know these men, but again, I had to go with my gut, trust that Nightowl, the secretive fucker, wouldn’t choose this moment to take me out.
Or enact whatever the hell their end game is.
And for whatever reason, they knew I would want this kept secret, even from my own family, and they orchestrated it just so.
Fuck, I owe them. And I don’t even know who the hell they are.
The soldier nods instantly. Good. They understand. They know what this means.
The helicopter dips again, and my vision shudders.
Her hood shifts with the movement, and for a heartbeat I catch the faintest outline of her face – the shape of a cheek I memorised at seventeen, the curve of a jaw I kissed on the night of her eighteenth birthday, the mouth I’ve dreamed of through every blackout, crash and coma because Giada sucking my cock was better than ten lines of coke and a ticket into heaven.
My chest tightens.
God, she’s right there.
A breath away.
Alive.
The pain hits again, harder this time, like someone driving a fist into my ribs from the inside. My lungs seize. My fingers go numb. I grit my teeth and try to push through it, try to keep watching her.
Stay awake.
Stay awake.
Just a little longer.
But the darkness claws up anyway, thick and merciless.
I force my head towards my men, throat raw. ‘Listen to me… You don’t let her out of your sight. Not for a fucking second. If anyone comes for her before I wake—’
‘We know, boss,’ the nearest one says, steady as steel. ‘She’s safe. We’ll bring her straight to the facility.’
Good.
Good.
The world tilts sideways. My head sags back against the vibrating metal.
Her breathing is the last thing I hear, soft, uneven and terrified.
And mine is the last vow I make before the dark finally takes me.
Mine until I fucking die.