The Sinner and the Priest, Part Two (The Sinner Sisterhood #4)

Prologue

Somewhere on the busy streets of Rome, in the dead of summer, a starving homeless woman begs for food.

“Please.” She holds out her hands to strangers, both tourists and natives alike. “I have not eaten in days. Have mercy, please.”

Her words fall upon deaf ears, but they see her threadbare clothes, body of skin and bone, and their eyes are bloated with judgment. She is a ghost of flesh and blood among the living, but will not be alone for long.

“Shame! Shame on you all,” she warns, voice cracking as she shakes a finger. “Famine does not ask permission to ride. He unfurls his starvation in the creeping shadows, and no one will see him coming. He will come for you all.”

“Out of my way,” a tourist shouts nearby, waving their camera. “You’re blocking my view!”

The hungry woman moves away with slow feet, muttering, “How can you see shadows coming if you already live in the dark?”

She collapses on her chalk signboard in the shadows of an iconic monument and stares at her recently scrawled words: Judgment is coming.

A camera shutter clicks nearby.