“No,” I say, and the truth tastes better than bravado. “But I’m sure about her. Which surprises the fuck out of me”
He nods once, as if that’s an answer you can build scaffolding around. “I’ll set the watch. Two bodies, rotating. No trash, no hacks, no contact. You’ll get a ping if she walks after dark.”
“And Tiernan,” I say, hand on the stair rail.
“Yeah?”
“If she looks over her shoulder and sees you, you’re too close.”
“Copy,” he says again. Plain and clean.
Behind us, through the office door, I hear Rafferty pick up the phone and start calling men who think they’re in charge of weather. He’ll order linen napkins and a roast you can cut with a look. He’ll have the room arranged so nobody’s back is to a window. He’ll pick a table with legs that won’t break if a man leans too hard on a lie.
He’ll do his job.
I’ll do mine.
Ask. Wait. Hold the line when they try to move it.
And if Don Marco decides to test how steady I am, he will learn what Blackvine made unbreakable in me and what it failed to touch. He will learn I don’t swing first in a room with crystal. He will learn I don’t swing at all if his daughter’s inside the blast radius. He will learn that the boy they sent west came back hard in the places that matter and soft in exactly one.
I touch the velvet pouch in my pocket, feel the weight of a ring that isn’t a trap.
“Let’s go,” I tell Tiernan.
“To war?” he says, because he can’t help himself.
“To dinner,” I correct. “And maybe to plan a wedding.”
7
CATERINA
Mother Superior’soffice always smells like beeswax and lemon—as if holiness was a floor that could be made right with a rag and a ton of elbow grease. The blinds slice the late morning light into neat bars across the rug. There’s a crucifix over her left shoulder and a framed letter from my father’s lawyer over her right—the kind written on thick paper that tries to look like conscience.
She gestures to the chair. I take it. Hands folded. Ankles crossed. I’ve been practicing this posture since I was six and somebody told me it was what good girls do with their edges.
“I received several troubling reports,” she begins, andtroublingdoes more work than any of the other words that follow. “You were seen entering St. Brigid’s on Halloween. Late. Unaccompanied but not alone. Costumed.” Her mouth finds a thin line. “Halloween encourages unseemliness. I would have expected you to know better, of all of our students.”
I don’t say anything. I study the little snag in the wood of her desk, right where a pen chewed through the varnish. It looks like a tiny mouth, mid-protest.
“Caterina.” She does not lean forward. Women like her never have to. Authority travels on the starch of their habits. “What were you thinking?”
I could recite the script: I lost track of time. I wanted to pray where it was quiet. I didn’t know anyone was there. I wanted to be close to my mother.
Instead, I swallow and let the question hang until it stops trying to herd me.
“I went to church,” I say finally. “On a holy night. I thought that was the point of churches. Who cares if I was in costume? It’s my last year to do it.”
Her eyes flick down to my hands, up to my face. “But you were not alone.”
I don’t blink. “No.”
“And you were…not praying.”
Heat moves through me like a thread pulled quick. I lift my chin a fraction. “Sanctuary is there for any who seek it.” I’m not giving her an answer, but a truth that she can’t deny.
Something sharp goes through her expression, too fast to name. “You were seen,” she repeats, slower, as if repetition can sand a thing into decency. “Not only by students. Also by Mr. Nico Moretti. And the sexton. Plus a photographer from the campus magazine. You are not invisible, Caterina, regardless of what you thought.”
