It's the priest who greeted us earlier, now flanked by three altar boys who are too big and alert to be ordinary teenagers serving the church. My instincts scream danger as I study them more carefully.
The priest’s expression remains polite, but his eyes are anything but, flicking from me to Kayla and back to me with obvious suspicion. I shove her behind me, heart thundering.
“Sister Catarina, where are you going with Sister Sarah?” he asks, his calm voice bellying the clear warning underneath.
Sister Sarah. Disgust curls my lip as I size him up. I can take him in a fight. It's the ‘altar boys’ I'm worried about. But I know if push comes to shove, I can take them too.
I won’t let them have her again.
"We're going for evening prayer, Father." I smooth my expression into something serene and innocent as the lie slides off my tongue.
He opens his mouth to say something—I don't know what, and I never will—because a side door not far from where he's standing suddenly swings open, and chaos erupts.
Dhimitër storms in, gun raised. “Down!” he roars as the four monks behind him—Roan's men—drop their act. They whip out their guns and open fire at someone in the room they’ve just exited.
“What the fuck?” I shove Kayla to the floor, drawing my own gun as I glare at Dhimitër and his team. The plan was to hold our cover until the very end. What the hell changed?
A nun emerges from the same doorway Dhimitër’s team just came through, but this is no peaceful servant of God. She’s got guns raised in both hands, professional military stance, sweeping the space for targets.
Fuck. She must be one of Fabian’s moles, and she obviously caught on to them.
"Watch out!" I scream at Dhimitër as she fires, and he barely dodges in time, the bullets whizzing past him before punching into the stone wall.
Before I can track her again, movement flashes at the edge of my vision. One of the altar boys yanks a gun from under his robes and shoots blindly, dropping one of our men hard, his blood splattering the wall.
Hysterical screams from genuine clergy members mingle with the explosive gunfire, and through it all, the priest murmurs frantic prayers, hands raised as if he can will theviolence to stop. Another altar boy shoves the man against the wall, pulls a gun, and levels it at me.
I drop and roll instinctively as he shoots, bullets shredding the floor where I just was, then return fire from my new position. Kayla screams behind me, and I twist around in time to see one of the nuns hauling her to her feet and dragging her away.
“Move!” Dhimitër shouts over the chaos. “Go! Get her out of here now!”
I don’t hesitate. I put a bullet through the nun’s head, then grab Kayla’s trembling hand and pull her with me, wrapping my arm around her back and forcing her head down so my body shields hers as we move.
Together we run down the crowded hallway, past the priest lying motionless on the floor. Fuck—he’s been hit in the crossfire. A nun shrieks and rushes to him, pressing her hands desperately against his bleeding shoulder. But we don’t stop. There’s no time.
The doors ahead are shattered now. Bullets whistle past as we burst through them, and I suck in a sharp breath, relief washing over me as we finally make it outside the abbey walls.
A heavy thud sounds behind us, and I gasp when I see another of our men collapsed on the front steps, his blood soaking into the stone.Fuck.
I keep running, dragging Kayla with me.
We hit the gravel path at full speed, sprinting towards the sedans. So close now.
We’re almost there when sudden, explosive pain tears through my side. I groan, my feet stumbling, but I keep going, not daring to stop or look back until we reach the car.
Beside me, Kayla is sobbing, her body trembling uncontrollably, blood visible on her sleeve. “Get in!” I yell as I wrench the door open and shove her into the back seat, ignoring the burning agony in my side.
Gunfire sprays the gravel inches from my feet, and the last of Roan’s men collapses, a gaping hole in his back. I dive into the sedan next to Kayla just as Dhimitër yanks the driver’s door open. Blood is spurting from a wound in his shoulder, but his face remains grimly determined. He throws himself behind the wheel as more of Fabian’s men come pouring out of the abbey. Then his phone rings—like some absurd reminder of normal life in the middle of chaos—and I gape as he answers it.
“Drive.” I try to yell, but it comes out as more of a wheeze through the increasingly sharp pain in my side.
The door slams, tires scream, and the sedan lurches forward. I hit the seat hard and swing myself over Kayla’s smaller frame, inhaling sharply at the blinding agony the movement causes. But I keep her body down and out of the line of fire as the windows shatter around us. One bullet hits the rearview mirror, spraying more glass shards everywhere.
I stay curled over my sister while Dhimitër drives us away from the abbey at breakneck speed, my body a shield until the noise fades and the danger feels distant. Only then do I sag back, my vision spinning, the world tilting sideways.
“Katie!” Kayla yells, and I don’t understand the frantic panic in her voice. “You’re bleeding.”
“We have Kayla,” Dhimitër’s stoic voice cuts through my growing confusion. “But Katie—she’s been shot.”
