Chapter 6 #2
‘Retrograde amnesia,’ Renzo says, eyes on me while he speaks. ‘Forcing recall could cause permanent damage. True or false?’
A pause. ‘In some cases, yes. If the trauma is severe and the neurological pathways remain unstable. Gentle exposure can help, but—’
‘So I’m guessing a sledgehammer won’t?’ he asks, his eyes fixed squarely on me.
‘No, Signore. I highly advise against that.’
‘Good. Seven a.m. I want you here to take a look at her. Run every test there is.’
Another pause, longer this time. ‘Of course.’
He ends the call and sets the phone down with a click, then pats the mattress beside his hip. ‘Come here, angel.’
The sound of the patting and his silky, far too shadowy voice is obscene in the quiet.
I blink when his meaning lands. He wants me to… to… ‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘I’m getting tired of asking.’ The words are a rumble, half coaxing, half command. And the curved perfection of his mouth as he speaks… Sweet heaven deliver me but why can’t I look away from it? ‘Come on. You look like you’re about to fall off that chair.’
‘I can’t – I will not – sleep in the same bed as a man.’ My voice climbs, mortified, and I lower it quickly. ‘It’s… wrong.’
He laughs, coarse and deep and hot. ‘Says who?’ he asks again, and I hate that the echo lands in my bones. When I don’t answer, he exhales through his nose. ‘Fine. Chair it is. But you’re not leaving.’
My heart thuds. ‘You can’t keep me,’ I challenge. Then I suck in a breath. ‘What I mean is, I have a perfectly adequate room here.’
‘I can keep you and I will.’ His eyes flick to the door, then back to me. ‘Here’s the deal. Go lock the door. Bring me the key.’
My mouth opens. ‘What?’
‘If you bring me the key, it means you don’t plan to run.
It means you trust I’m not going to… do anything you don’t want.
’ His gaze holds mine steadily and for once, there’s no mocking in it.
‘And it means I sleep without worrying some idiot in a lab coat will wander in and sedate me because my heart does cartwheels when you breathe.’
My cheeks burn. ‘That isn’t true.’
‘It is. Very much.’ He nods at the lock. ‘Go on. Prove you’re not a flight risk.’
His demand sits uneasily in me. ‘If I lock the door, the staff—’
‘Won’t be a problem.’ His mouth hardens. ‘They know better than to disturb us. Come. Here.’
Everything in me tenses.
I recall when he appeared before me in the balaclava.
I picture the soldiers, the chopper, the black hood.
I picture the Madre Superiora’s pinned mouth when she’s displeased, the set of her shoulders when she says obedience is the shortest road to peace.
I can almost hear her now: Do not place yourself in occasions of sin.
I look at the bed. At him. At the scandal inherent in the idea of staying.
His voice intrudes, gentler than I expect. ‘If you’d rather go, try the handle. See what happens.’
I glance at the door and don’t move. I think of being bundled through harsh corridors, of the black hood and the bite of plastic restraints.
I think of the church that haunts my dreams and the shadow who stands just out of sight. I think of the name he said like a vow.
Giada.
My stomach swoops.
‘I’m not running,’ I say at last. For good or ill, there are doors to be mentally unlocked within this chaos. And I… I feel the essential need to be here. To gain answers I’ve been long denied.
He watches me with that rabid intensity as I stand, cross the room, and turn the key. The lock engages with a clean, mechanical click. I hold the heavy key for a second longer than necessary, feeling its weight imprint on my palm, then walk back and set it on the tray within his reach.
‘There.’ My voice comes out steadier than I feel. ‘But I’ll remain in the chair.’
His eyes dip to the key, then to me. Then reaches over and snags it within his large hand. ‘Deal.’
I sink onto the chair and fold my hands tightly in my lap to stop them fidgeting. He adjusts his pillow with a hiss, angles his body towards mine and settles back.
The monitors obediently flatten towards calm. I try not to be furious with the machine for telling truths I’d rather ignore.
He watches me like a man who’s found water in a desert and can’t quite trust it not to be a mirage. The scrutiny should make me feel small. It doesn’t. It makes me feel… seen. As if my skin is a book he once read and loved and now he’s reacquainting himself with his favourite chapters.
‘Tell me about your day,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Your day,’ he repeats, as if we’re discussing weather in a café. ‘What time you wake. What you eat. What you do when you’re not doing… godly things.’
The bluntness unsettles me. ‘Why?’
‘Because I need to picture where you’ve been,’ he says simply. ‘To stop me picturing where you went the night everything fell apart.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Silence stretches. ‘You will.’
I can feel the shape of his doubt in it. I clear my throat.
‘We rise at five. We take tea, sometimes bread. The bell rings for Lauds at five-thirty. Then work – kitchen, garden, laundry. Lectio after, then… it’s simple.’ I shrug, oddly defensive. ‘There’s peace in simple.’
‘And at night?’ His voice is quieter now, dark around the edges.
‘Compline. Lights out. Sleep.’
‘Alone?’
I shoot him a look. ‘Of course.’
He huffs something that wants to be a laugh and fails, because pain catches it before it gets free. His hand strays to his bandage, stops, falls back to the sheet.
‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ he says, and the words seem to surprise him. ‘I’ve forgotten what simple feels like.’
‘I don’t think you’ve ever known,’ I say before I can stop myself.
His eyebrows lift. The smallest flicker of a grin threatens. ‘Careful, Sister. Your claws are showing.’
‘I don’t have claws.’
‘You do. And you’ll rediscover them soon enough.’
I don’t have an answer for that so I look to the crucifix of polished steel on the far wall, the only soft thing in this hard place, and force my breath to slow. The chair’s edge bites my thighs. I can smell him now that the antiseptic has thinned – adrenaline, clean sweat, resin from the tape.
It’s disconcerting, the intimacy of scent.
‘Why do you call me “baby”?’ I ask, to distract myself.
His eyes half close, as if he’s remembering a room with different light. ‘Habit. One you loved once upon a time.’
I shake my head, unwilling to even fathom such a thing. Because… because… ‘Please don’t.’
He nods once. ‘All right.’ Then, after a beat, softer, ‘Not tonight.’
The concession lands warm and wrong at the same time. I look down at my hands. The rosary leaves little moons in my skin.
‘You said your family turn miracles into weapons,’ I say carefully. ‘What will they do… if they find me here?’
A muscle jumps in his jaw. ‘Depends who gets to you first.’
‘That isn’t comforting.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be.’ He studies me, weighing something. ‘I won’t let them hurt you.’
‘You don’t even know me,’ I say again, because I need to.
He shakes his head. ‘I thought I knew enough. Turns out there was way more.’
That should frighten me more than it comforts me. The terrible part is, it does both.
For a time, we sit like that, locked in a silence with its own weather system. My eyes burn. I tell myself it’s the hospital air. I tell myself I am only tired. I tell myself a lot of things and believe none of them.
When I sway, he notices.
‘Sleep,’ he says.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not. Close your eyes. I’ll be here when you wake.’
The promise is impossible and dangerously seductive. I stare at him, searching for malice, trickery, anything I can hold up to my conscience as proof I should flee. I find bruises, stubbornness, fury. And something else, buried deep: the ache of someone who has been hungry for a very long time.
‘I can’t sleep in a room with a man,’ I say, weaker than before.
‘You can,’ he agrees easily. ‘And you will.’
‘Is this how you always get your way?’
‘No.’ He looks at the key, then back to me. ‘This is how I earn it.’
My eyelids feel treacherously heavy. I fold my arms, grip my elbows, and try to anchor myself upright. A minute passes. Two.
The chair is less forgiving than stone. My head tips; I jerk it back up. He says nothing, only watches, the way a sentinel watches the horizon for the first streak of light.
‘Will you pray with me?’ I ask, the question escaping before I decide to speak.
His throat works. He nods once. ‘You start. I’ll… listen. But only if you do one more thing for me.’
I stare at him, waiting.
He stares back for a moment, then nods at my rosary before pointing to his wrist.
I don’t even know why I comply. A rosary is personal. Sacred. And yet, I find myself slowly unwrapping the beads from my hand, draping one end over his and re-tying it over both of ours.
He moves equally slowly, sliding his larger hand over mine until it engulfs mine. I gasp at the heat, the rough and smooth texture of his skin.
At the… intimacy of our flesh touching.
At the volts of electricity spreading through me as I stare.
I can’t look up into those mesmeric eyes.
So I bow my head.
It’s a good thing I asked to pray. I need guidance. Desperately. And if not, perhaps… deliverance.
The words come, softer than usual, stripped of performance: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name… My voice drifts, thins; I lose my place and pick up again in the wrong spot, and he doesn’t correct me. When I finish, I don’t say amen. I let the end fray into breath.
He’s still watching me when I open my eyes. There’s something different in his face. Not softness. Not exactly. Restraint, maybe. A man holding the reins of his own ruin and choosing – for once – to pull back.
‘Tomorrow,’ he says, voice quiet and dangerous, ‘we start digging.’
I swallow. ‘Into what?’
‘Into you.’ He nods at the rosary binding us, then at the key in his other hand, then at the door. ‘Into your Madre. Into everything.’
Something vital seems to break inside me, then rebuild itself with determination. ‘Why?’