Chapter 4
Four
Cisco
Mercy eases her bag from my hand as if she can undo the damage, but it’s too late.
“Welcome back to Rome, Don Angelotti,” the nun says in Italian. “We hope you had a pleasant flight.”
She doesn’t so much as glance at Mercy, and something rabid coils low in my gut.
“I did not realize a car had been sent for us,” I say.
“Two cars.” Her tone is clipped and cool. “You will go with Signor Bellandi. The American will come with me.”
I go still. Behind us, two large men in suits have appeared as if they had been standing there the entire time, simply waiting for me to notice them.
My grip tightens on the handle of Mercy’s bag, but I’m too late. One of the suited men is already taking it.
“Shall we?” The nun gestures down the path toward the parking lot and turns without waiting for an answer.
I don’t move. “Mercy.”
She looks at me.
“Are you okay with this?” I ask in English.
“It’s fine,” she says lightly. “It’s nice that they offered to pick us up, don’t you think?”
The brightness in her voice does not match the look in her eyes.
It says, Keep the masks on, do as they ask, we will speak later.
I hold her gaze a moment longer, then incline my head and allow myself to be herded away from her.
But the greater the distance, the heavier the stone sinks in my stomach.
By the time I’m ushered into the back of the black car, it feels like I’ve swallowed it whole.
The door shuts. The man beside me says nothing. Neither does the driver.
And then we are off.
Rome moves past the window in brief flashes of ocher walls, traffic, and laundry strung between old buildings. I barely notice. My pulse is too loud. My hand is already tightening around the beads of my rosary inside my pocket, thumb catching against the crucifix.
Mea culpa.
We skirt the outer Vatican walls, the crowds lining up to visit, and pass through a side gate after a brief exchange with security. The guard peeks in at me, then away again, as if he has been told not to stare too long.
I know this part of the Vatican. Or I knew it once.
Service roads. Internal gardens. Quiet courtyards are hidden behind the spectacle shown to pilgrims and tourists. The roads are narrower than I remember. Or perhaps it is only that everything feels smaller now that I know exactly what lies are hidden inside these walls.
We stop before a pale stone building with shuttered windows and too many locked doors. It’s one of the residences used for important guests, such as Cardinals, during conclave season. It’s for men whose sins are handled discreetly, a leash dressed as hospitality.
The suited man gets out and then comes around to open my door.
“This way, please, Don Francisco.”
I step out of the car and smooth a hand over the front of my shirt, though it does nothing to settle the pressure tightening beneath my ribs. The building before me is pale stone and shuttered windows, elegant in the way only old power can be.
The driver hands me my bag with a smirk that tells me he checked inside and found a surprise.
While Mercy showered this morning, I noticed her bag was missing a few of her favorite things.
A frown tugs at my brow when I recall the wounds on her thighs.
I would rather face embarrassment than have Mercy suffer without her toys, so I packed them in my bag, knowing it was less likely to be confiscated.
We could be here for days, and despite my aching to help satisfy her, the prophecy clearly states it’s a very bad idea for the Sinner and Saint to “become one.”
A man in black waits just inside the entrance with a takeaway coffee cup in his hand. Thin silver hair sweeps neatly back from a face I recognize almost as well as my own sins.
Monsignor Bianchi.
For one stupid, treacherous second, relief moves through me.
His eyes crinkle, and he hands me the cup. “Double espresso, no sugar, if I recall correctly?”
I take a sip and almost sigh as the bitter heat hits my throat. “Thank you.”
He beams. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”
“That is not a high bar, Monsignor.”
“No.” His mouth tilts. “There was blood on the wall then.”
He was still an exorcist, and I was still a prisoner in Blackfriar then. A demon was snarling through a dying man’s teeth while Bianchi fumbled for the rite, and I stood there knowing exactly what looked back at me from the other side of those black eyes.
“His Eminence asks that you come to him at once,” he announces.
“Before I am shown my room?”
“Especially before that.”
I glance past him, into the polished quiet of the residence. “And the American?”
His expression alters by a degree. “She is being shown to her room. Don’t worry, it is on the same floor as yours.”
My brows slam down. “The same floor?”
“For her safety, of course.” Bianchi studies me for a beat, then steps aside, ushers me in, and lowers his voice. “Walk with me, Francesco. And do try not to look as though you’re about to kill someone in the entryway. It upsets the marble.”
He vowed to keep using my birth name despite the administrative mistake.
I let him because he is my friend. We move down the corridor side by side, our steps muted by old stone and runner rugs.
The residence smells faintly of bleach. Somewhere deeper inside, a door closes with soft, careful finality.
As we move through the opulent, ancient halls, my mood sours with our silence, and the coffee tastes too bitter.
The more I think about them housing Mercy on the same floor as me, the more I realize nothing about this is accidental.
Not with the monsignor being the one to greet me, whom I have a history with.
Not with the proximity of Mercy’s sleeping quarters.
They want me to feel comfortable while, at the same time, painting me in a scandalous light.
“You’ve lost weight,” Bianchi notes.
“So has your optimism.”
“There you are.” He huffs a quiet laugh through his nose. “I was beginning to fear you’d changed.”
I cut him a look. “I assume this is the part where you tell me not to start trouble.”
“I would never insult you with advice so unrealistic.” He touches his heart.
Instead of heading toward the papal apartments, where administration meets, he veers down a service corridor. He stops halfway down beside a steel door, and we step aside to make room for an alarmed staff member to scurry past with a tray of rotting fruit.
A lump forms in my throat. “Has the food . . . ?”
I can’t finish the sentence.
Bianchi’s expression pinches, and something like doubt flickers over it. But then he glances around as if to see if we’re followed, then says, “Until recently, the situation was mainly in America. It was easy to explain away. Unfortunately, it is now appearing here.”
I follow Bianchi as he starts walking again, but my limbs feel numb. Has the rot followed me to Italy?
“People are gathering at the square,” Bianchi continues, “demanding His Holiness make a statement.”
“Which will be?”
His lips press together as we arrive at a door. He puts his hand on the knob and pauses. “That depends on what happens in this meeting.”
He opens it and takes me into a dimly lit space.
The door closes behind me, turning everything pitch-black until Bianchi reappears nearby, illuminated by a lantern he has lit with a flame.
He stands at the base of a windowless spiral staircase with a hollow center, but another passage leads away in two directions.
It’s the kind designed to facilitate clandestine meetings.
“It gets dark up there,” Bianchi explains, handing me another lantern. “Be careful not to fall down the middle.”
And then he’s off, climbing. I follow a few steps behind.
No electrical lights on the walls. No sensors. No cameras at all. Just stone steps wide enough for one man, and an open space we circle in the center.
Most of Bianchi’s figure disappears into the shadows. It seems like a floating lantern. I imagine I’d look the same if anyone followed me.
Perfect for ambushes, or for seeing enemies coming.
I hurry to catch up.
“He is in one of his patient moods,” he says quietly.
Even a whisper echoes loudly. Prying ears in the darkness could hear us at any level.
“Great,” I mutter.
“Also . . . I thought you should know.” A pause. “And I thought you should hear it from me first that your access has changed.”
Of course it has.
Bianchi goes on, carefully neutral. “Temporary adjustments. Consolidated movement. The usual performance when Rome is frightened and does not wish to call itself so.”
“The nun who greeted us at the airport is Custodi.” My jaw tightens. “She hardly embodies the feeling of safety.”
He stops and fidgets with his lantern.
What concerns me about the nuns of The Custodians of the Veil is that they answer only to the Cardinal and the Pope’s inner circle. They are cold, overzealous in their faith, and see all outsiders as a threat.
“Bianchi . . .”
“The American is alive, uninjured, and not currently screaming at anyone.” His tone stays dry, but his illuminated face turns to me. “Take the gift offered in that sentence, Francesco.”
“She should not be handled by women who have already decided what she is.”
“No,” he says mildly, “she should not.”
I stop. Bianchi takes another step, then notices I am not with him and looks back, raising his lantern to illuminate his face.
For a moment, we simply stare at one another, years and prisons and exorcisms and Vatican lies suspended between us.
He knew me as I was before. I met him as a frightened man pissing his pants, a man relieved to have someone like me on the side of good for once.
“We have known too much to play games, Bianchi.”
“Francesco,” he says, “if I were leading you to execution, I would at least have the decency to let you finish the espresso.”
That nearly gets a smile out of me.
Nearly.
He waits until I am moving again before murmuring, “Do not mistake their faces for safety.”
There it is, the truth.
“I don’t,” I say.
“Good.”
We arrive at the top floor, where a vestibule leads to a single door guarded by a plainclothes security officer. Not the Pope’s Swiss Guard. Not the Vatican Police. This man is off the books, and he ignores us, which means he expects us.
What makes this more unsettling is the location. Only the Roman Curia—the elite of Vatican City —visits the papal apartments. I had been under the impression that the Pope occupied the entire top floor, but now I can see that it’s walled off. The Pope must live on the other side.
The world believes this side doesn’t exist.
I look Bianchi dead in the eye and ask, “Why am I here if my security clearance is reduced?”
“I said consolidated. Not reduced.”
Porca miseria! Damn it. This is the one place I always refused to be. I agreed to become Entity to do God’s work outside these walls, not within them. They either have something to offer me, or I am not going to leave these apartments, despite what Bianchi makes it look like.
He refuses to meet my eyes, takes my lantern, blows it out, but leaves his own lit. Finally, he lifts his gaze.
“You may call him Eminence. You may call him out. I recommend not doing both in the same sentence.” Then, because he knows me too well, he adds in muttered English, “And try not to let him see how much the girl matters before you decide how much you intend to deny it.”