Unholy (Park Avenue Kings #6)

Chapter 1

ALESSIO

THE CONFESSIONAL SMELLED like old wood and incense, but there was a faint scent I recognized that hit me straight in the chest every time I breathed it in.

I didn’t think priests usually wore cologne, but Father Rafael Vitale wasn’t just any priest.

He was my priest.

My…

I shook the thought away before it could fully materialize in my mind and rubbed my hands on my jean-clad thighs. I’d been sitting here on the narrow bench long enough that my ass had gone numb, but it was better than kneeling. I couldn’t do that—wouldn’t do that. Not for him. Not anymore.

As his scent entered my lungs again, I closed my eyes and let it wash over me. It was fresh and reminded me of the sea, and it didn’t belong here in an ancient confessional booth in the oldest church in Manhattan.

Just stop… It was the mantra I repeated to myself over and over every time I came here, but it didn’t help. Nothing did.

I opened my eyes and stared at the lattice screen that separated us and wished like hell I had a clearer view of the man on the other side.

Part of me was glad he was in shadow, because I didn’t think I could take him staring at me with those blue eyes that sometimes had a hint of green or grey depending on the light and what he wore.

Though those black vestments he lived in now didn’t do him any favors.

The bench creaked as I shifted my weight, the only sound that had been made in however many minutes I’d already been in here.

I came once a month, and for years I’d never bothered entering the booth.

I let my brothers—by choice, not by blood—make their confessions and receive their absolutions while I waited alone in a pew and tried not to feel anything when I looked at our priest.

Ridiculous, since I was the one who’d brought him into their lives and insisted they go every month. There were so many sins between the seven of us, though, that it felt necessary to ask forgiveness and free my brothers from the weight of the decisions we made.

The minutes stretched on and I didn’t speak. He knew I wouldn’t. Still he waited.

He always was the more patient of the two of us.

I imagined him sitting there, his shoulders impossibly straight, his hands probably folded in his lap on his robes. Such a holy man now, one end of our two extremes.

What did he think of me now? Did he even think of me at all?

God, why did that hurt worse than anything? A tight fist reached into my chest, wrapped its cold fingers around my heart, and squeezed so hard I reached for the wall to steady myself.

“Are you ready?”

His voice had me jolting in surprise. I hadn’t been expecting him to speak.

He knew to let the time pass between us without words, an act I put on for my brothers so they wouldn’t worry about me.

They’d been doing too much of that over the past few months, and if sitting in this booth gave them a bit of relief from thinking I was losing it, then I’d suffer through the torture of being in a confined space with the one person who’d hurt me the most.

I swallowed and wondered if my voice would shake if I answered him.

Fuck did that make me weak. I didn’t want to show he still had any effect on me, so I clenched my jaw tight, staying silent even as I dug my fingers into my thighs.

He’d never pushed before, not once. Never demanded confession, never reminded me why I was there. Never complained about my silence.

After all, he knew better than anyone that I didn’t come to be forgiven.

I came because…

Well…fuck. Because it was the closest I was allowed to be, which made me reckless or a masochist, though my money was on both.

But what was the alternative? Live without him?

That was never an option. Not for me.

Must be nice for him, though, to be able to turn his feelings off. To be able to just…decide that he wouldn’t feel all the things he felt back then and go on his merry way.

Yeah, that must be real fuckin’ nice.

Maybe I should’ve asked him how he did it. Back then and now. That’d give us something to talk about. Somehow I didn’t think he’d be so eager for me to get in the booth with him then.

The familiar taste of age-old bitterness and resentment made a sudden reappearance as I glared through the lattice now, the heartache and pain from a years-old wound turning acrid as I remembered the finality of his words that fateful day as clearly as if he’d spoken them just now.

Was I ready?

I’d been ready for that discussion for years.

But that wasn’t what he was asking, and I knew he never would.

He’d made a decision for both of us that day.

A decision he had never looked back from, one he’d claimed was for the best, but as I sat there in the claustrophobic confines of the confessional, it might as well have been a jail cell because that was what he’d condemned me to that day.

The only difference was, my cell was surrounded by stained-glass windows, wooden pews, and a piece of lattice I wanted to rip out of its wooden grooves.

“Are you ready?”

The steady, sure cadence of his voice had my hands curling into fists as I continued to glare at the all-too-familiar shadow waiting for me to give him something—anything—to work with. But everything I wanted to say, he didn’t want to hear.

He wanted my confession. I wanted his admission.

I wanted him. He wanted God.

How could I compete with that?

We were standing on opposite sides of a cliff and no amount of patience, fortitude, or sacrifice was going to change the fact we both wanted fundamentally different things from each other.

“Alessio…”

My breath caught at the sound of my name rolling off his tongue, and for a second I thought I’d misheard until there was movement on the opposite side of the booth, and then the shadow shifted.

He’d moved closer.

Closer to me.

I, on the other hand, didn’t dare move. This was the closest we’d been in years, the closest I’d allowed him to be, and the only reason I was allowing it now was the barrier between us. It would’ve been too painful otherwise.

“Alessio—”

“No.” It was the first thing I’d said since stepping inside this upright coffin, and as I continued to stare at the man on the other side of the wall, my hands started to shake.

That was when I saw it, a hand on the booth, a face move closer, as Rafael rested his forehead to the lattice and whispered again, “Alessio.”

I shot to my feet so hard and fast that it was a miracle I didn’t fall on my ass. But the sound of my name in that voice…

My. Name.

It’d been too long.

The blood rang in my ears as I backed away. Backed away from everything I wanted and everything I couldn’t have, and before he could say another word, I turned on my heels and booked it out of there like the hounds of hell were on my ass.

Instead of a holy man offering me absolution for something I didn’t fucking want.