THIRTY-SEVEN
The building wasn’t finished yet.
Concrete pillars jutted out against the Roman night, half-formed and skeletal, suspended between creation and decay.
Fitting. I was bringing something sacred here.
Something that shook with borrowed divinity, begging to be remade in pain.
Offered not just to the saints, but to the part of Him that smiled behind the veil.
Wind slid through the hollow floors and windows, whispering like a congregation caught mid-prayer, ready to bear witness. I stood in it and listened. The silence between each gust held meaning. It sounded almost holy.
I hadn’t been here long. Found this place by accident – though accidents weren’t real when He guided your feet.
I’d been heading to the hospice in Tivoli when I’d come across it. Dragging the ghost of D’Angelo’s past from whatever piss-limbo had refused to claim it.
I had kept the old man breathing longer than mercy ever would, because necessity was holier than pity. He was rotten, even his body was breaking up under the stench of it. But, once he had served his purpose, that decay would serve mine. He was to be offered to the saints, just like the others.
Tugging on the chains I’d looped around the naked beams above, I tested their bite. The metal groaned obediently in response. The hungry shackles caught the low light in glints, as delicate as broken glass.
She liked chains. She loved to be strapped in and used. It was all for her – a theatre of need and indulgence before I cleansed her.
A cold gust snuck beneath my collar. It was supposed to be warm tonight. But here I was – wearing a coat. The air bit at my cheeks. It might hinder me.
I turned. The soles of my boots ground sand and pebbles into the concrete, the only misplaced sound in a night otherwise brimming with holy anticipation.
My gaze drifted slowly towards the shadowed corner. The machine waited there. The one I’d bought for her. The one she’d already wept against, clenched around in silence – a baptism of sweat and want. It waited again, patient, gleaming.
A muscle jumped in my jaw. Jealousy was filth. Worse when aimed at a silicone thing. But there it was, low in my spine, hot and acid and climbing – devouring me piece by piece. The thought of her arching beneath artificial rhythm, before she’d ever broken under mine… it sickened me.
It… also delighted me.
Perhaps, once she was cleansed – once her mind stopped clawing at the past and started craving only absolution – I should simply keep her. Entirely. Flesh and thought. Her purpose was clear: beauty to enthral, mind to submit, and sense to dissolve. She was meant to be used. To be purified.
To be mine again.
I heard footsteps then.
Heavy. Unmistakably male.
Initially I’d thought it fitting for him to be a part of this, given his inclinations towards abduction and being untraceable, but… his decay had begun to seep into the cracks of my plan. A volatile dog should be put to death, not coaxed. But mercenaries usually cost a lot.
The footsteps stopped short. I didn’t have to turn to know why.
He was staring at my altar.
The crude table was strewn with necessities: weapons laid out in ascending order, glistening restraints arranged like relics, vials of sedatives labelled with my own hand, and a delicate array of implements meant to hurt, heal, and hush.
It was all there, waiting for her. Waiting for the angel that kept showing up in my dreams, trying to shame me with her cries and her beauty.
But shame didn’t live in her any more.
Only reverence.
And her name.
He whistled low – mocking and amused. The sound slithered between the bare concrete pillars of the unfinished building. His silhouette leaned into the gloom, head inclined, most of his rugged face swallowed by shadows.
Filthy sinner. But his presence was necessary.
‘You really know how to make a girl feel important,’ he rumbled, boots grinding gravel as he stepped towards the altar. The voice grated like a broken prayer – too loud in a place meant for silence and reverence.
My body snapped taut the moment he neared it. His hand lifted, fingers twitching towards something sacred – something I had cleansed, baptised in holy water, blessed with my own sweat.
‘Don’t.’ The word tore from my throat like a curse.
He froze mid-reach. The shadow turned slowly. Locked eyes with me across the unholy divide, hand still suspended in the charged air like a threat half-born.
‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’ he hissed.
I angled my head left, my neck cracking in sharp relief – then right. Another pop. Calming, almost ritualistic. The therapist always said to ground myself in physical sensation. I preferred a quiet type of violence. When they were bound – but loud – as I sliced them open.
I counted backwards from ten, the voice in my head belonging to the latest therapist whose tongue still graced a box in my basement.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
By the time I hit six, my eyes found the shadow concealing his face.
‘Everything is in place,’ I told him, voice flat.
The reflector light carved a pale cross down his neck. It didn’t deserve a clean edge. It deserved a blunt one. Something to bruise before it split. I wasn’t one to relish a bloody mess, but I’d make an exception for him.
Jerking my chin towards the far corner, I looked at a cracked plastic folder that sat beside an empty syringe. ‘The address is there. Don’t fuck it up.’
He glanced at it. Then at me.
Then he moved, too slow, as if a part of him longed to test my boundaries just to see what would happen.
I almost hoped he would.
He whipped his head towards me, the movement quick enough to disturb the atmosphere.
For a heartbeat, the thought perched there – right on the edge of make-and-break – before he let it drop with a scoff.
‘I don’t know if you’re crazy or just pedantic,’ he said.
I realigned my jaw until it clicked, swallowing the I’m not crazy that used to come so easily – too loudly.
That line had stayed behind in another country – buried with the white walls, the priests, the pills that were meant to drown God’s voice.
Mother’s rosaries, her whispers – all gone now.
Long gone. My parents hated that sentence.
You’re not well.
You need help.
Take the pills, love.
Pills. As if pressed powder could silence the voice of God. As if a chemical could dull His pulse inside my veins.
It was then I’d realised my true calling. It had been through them that I had learnt what could truly hush the voices in my head. Too bad they hadn’t lived long enough to understand it, too.
They were sinners anyway – unrepentant and blind.
So I’d given them to Him. My first offering. Proof of obedience and love.
‘Takes a thorough kind of man to get close to his targets,’ my new employee said, turning now to face me fully – a dark smirk spreading his mouth. ‘And they never even saw you coming.’
‘Take the fucking folder,’ I snapped, sliding my hands into my coat pocket, fingers curling tight around my switchblade. The metal cooled my skin. It was hungry. It always was. But I couldn’t very well feed it with his blood. That would have been desecration.
It was meant for her.
Her blood.
For anointing, not spilling.
He gave a knowing laugh then, as if he thought he could see through me. As though he’d figured out what I planned, what I felt.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t.
He was just another wretch, crawling through the filth of this world and calling it pleasure.
I watched him long after he left, headlights slicing a crooked path down the cracked, unfinished road. The night swallowed the sound of his engine, but the echo stayed – like a curse half-spoken.
She was mine, but purpose demanded sacrifice. I had to let him touch her. Just enough.
My hands trembled. I rubbed them hard, as if friction could burn the envy out.
The bike waited under the skeletal frame of the building, sleek and black as a grave. She purred when I touched her. So faithful and patient. Such a pretty girl.
There was still time.
One more sin before redemption – one more hymn in steel and blood.
Helmet on. Throttle twisted. I rode for Ossidiana.
The city smeared past – red, gold and rot. Neon bled like stained glass.
Inside that venue awaited the next offering: slick with sweat, drunk on lust, deaf to salvation. Every soul in there was begging for deliverance.
They just didn’t know who would answer.
The moment we stepped inside the ensuite, I became acutely aware of how small the room was.
Maybe because when Cain moved towards the window, without switching on the light, his broad frame blotted out the city glow – letting shadow swallow the space.
He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the glass.
That grim and hollow expression belonged to a man who had just watched his home burn, and his past return with the force of a runaway train. And it twisted something in me. He looked like someone who’d run out of places to bury his grief, and I hated that some of it now carried my name.
This was why I never asked for help. Because the few times I had, people lost things. People got hurt.
And as I held his gaze – him standing so still in the dim light – a decision settled quietly inside me: I couldn’t let him get caught in this. Couldn’t let him bleed for something that had nothing to do with him.
But how the hell was I supposed to stop it?
‘Thank you for… earlier.’ His voice cut through the heavy silence, but he didn’t turn. His back was to me, tension drawn tight across his shoulders.
‘I couldn’t listen to him any more,’ I admitted, taking a step towards him.
The dull thud of my shoes on the carpet made him snap his head to the side.
I stopped. There was something in that sharp, animalistic movement that stabbed cold in my gut.
My eyes narrowed. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
Cain didn’t answer immediately. He turned slowly. Darkness played across his face, sharpening the already unforgiving angles.
‘Never do that again,’ he whispered – but beneath the words was a nail digging into my chest, something I couldn’t quite place. ‘You’ll get hurt.’
I sobered. That was it, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just anger – it was fear. He couldn’t bear to see me hurt.
‘I’ll be f—’
He flinched. Just slightly. As though the sound of my voice scraped against something tender in him.
‘How long were you planning to keep lying to me?’ His voice dropped an octave, its edges turning razor-sharp.
A shiver licked down my spine. The way he said it – more Ghost than Cain – usually sent my pulse racing. But this time, something else bled from it.
‘Lying about what, Cain?’ I asked, turning fully towards him.
His eyes didn’t waver. ‘I don’t like lies. Of any kind.’
‘What lies?’ I pushed, irritation flaring to the surface, but it was already splintering into something hotter.
‘Your family. Did they have any dealings with Travis? Is that why they let this play out?’
I snapped upright as if struck. My hands went to my hips, my teeth grinding.
‘They’re not gangsters,’ I bit out. ‘My uncle is a good man. My brothers are good boys.’
Silence. Long, heavy. He let me stew in it for several beats as he turned to face me.
‘So… you do know what they do.’
‘There’s nothing to know,’ I shot back. ‘They own the workshop, they—’
‘Shut it, Paula.’
My stomach dropped.
Cain’s gaze turned to iron. And I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
‘You’re still lying to my face. Or… do you actually believe in that?’
My mouth parted, disbelief clinging to my throat.
‘What does my family have to do with us?’ Something violent surged through my veins.
He stared. ‘I’ve been lied to my whole life.’
‘Is this why you’ve been brooding? Because you think I lied to you?’
Cain’s voice was steady, almost indifferent. ‘I know you lied.’
I felt a sharp pang hit my chest, heat flooding my face.
‘I did not lie.’ My voice came out firm, my hands curling into fists at my sides. ‘I told you exactly how things were. A couple of times, they helped out some friends, some family, as one would – that was it! If you had questions, why didn’t you just come to me and—?’
‘Because I don’t believe they didn’t know about Travis,’ he said, his voice deepening, cutting through the stale air between us. ‘It’s impossible not to know when someone is being abused.’
‘This again?’ My fingers pressed into my temples, trying to rub away the pounding frustration. My body sagged under the weight of this never-ending argument. ‘I’m too tired for this. We’re both too tired. Let’s rest and talk about it in the morning.’
‘I don’t think so.’ It landed wrong, too even and too quiet.
I whipped my head towards him, heart thudding against my collarbone.
He was barely visible in the darkness, but I didn’t need to see his face to sense what was coming.
The quiet curdled, pressing on something brittle inside him – and I saw it: the moment that anger, frustration, inevitability of the past bled into something darker, something that needed control to breathe.
‘Maybe I should remind you what kind of monster I am.’
And then—
He took a slow step forward, his presence looming, his body language shifting, unfolding like a predator stretching in the dark.
‘But I’m a forgiving man.’ He paused just long enough for the words to sink in, the air crackling between us. ‘I will forgive you… if you ask nicely.’
I let out a bitter laugh. ‘I’m not asking for shit! I did not lie to you.’
A long moment stretched between us. Then, his shoulders rolled back, exuding power, finality. And something inside me shrank.
‘I see.’ He hummed.
The silence was thick and suffocating, wrapping around my throat like invisible hands. Cain stood there, watching me with something foreboding in his eyes. He’d barely moved, yet I felt the pull of him, a force that made my skin prickle, my pulse stutter.
‘Come here.’
It wasn’t a request.
My spine snapped taut, and I forced myself to hold his gaze, ignoring the shiver that trailed over my back at the authority in his tone.
He didn’t seem the least bit surprised at my resilience. If anything, my defiance amused him.
Exuding pure control, edged with something lethal, he took another step towards me. ‘You come to me now… or you crawl back later. Either way, I won’t ask twice.’
It should have been a warning – every instinct told me to run – yet beneath the fear, something inside me unfolded.
The same reckless hunger that had always answered his darkness stirred awake, licking through me, tightening low and deep until my breath faltered.
He knew what he was doing. Knew exactly how to push, how to pull.
And I hated that my body listened and obeyed instantly.