She's looking at Gabriel Delgado, not Father Gabriel. The son of the family whose name is on the invitations, whose money flows through this room like blood through veins. She's seeing the suit that fits too perfectly, the way I stand in this space like I own it, the ease that only comes from birthright.
I'm unmasked. Everything I've been hiding behind the collar, the money, the name, the world I was born into, it's all visible now. Written on my body like a confession I didn't mean to make.
Neither of us moves. Neither looks away. She knows who I really am now.
The question is: what is she going to do with that knowledge?
I'm already walking toward her.
The crowd parts unconsciously, the way it always does for men like me. I move through the room with the deliberate pace of someone who's never had to hurry because the world waits. The Delgado stride. Each step feels like shedding another layer of priesthood. By the time I reach her, I'm naked, just Gabriel Delgado in an expensive suit with a hard-on he can't hide and won't apologize for.
She doesn't retreat.
She watches me approach with an expression I've never seen on her face. Not the warmth from the churchyard. Not the vulnerability from her confession. This is assessment. A kind of grim recognition, like she's been waiting for the other shoe to drop and here it comes, Italian leather and all.
I reach her. Close enough to smell her perfume, not vanilla now, something more expensive, more dangerous. Close enough to see the pulse jumping in her throat despite her stillness. Close enough that the air between us could ignite. The suit doesn't protect me any better than the collar did. She could destroy me in this dress, and part of me wants her to.
The men she was charming have faded back, sensing something above their pay grade happening. We stand in a small circle of space while the gala flows around us. The weight of the room's attention presses against my shoulders, but all I can feel is her, the heat of her body, the challenge in her eyes.
She speaks first.
Not "Father Gabriel." Not "What are you doing here?"
"So the collar was just another expensive suit? Or was it witness protection?"
The words are quiet, but they land like fists. She's not asking about the priesthood. She's asking about the lie. About sitting in that confessional knowing who I really was while she poured out her shame. About serving communion with hands that learned to shake down power before they learned to consecrate bread. About the distance between the man who ran her home security check and the one standing here in Italian wool.
"Sera…"
"Don't." Her voice is controlled fury, but there's strategy underneath. "I'm excellent at math, Father. Or should I say, Mr.Delgado? I can calculate exactly how much you've been lying."
She's furious, and she has every right to be. But underneath the anger, I see something else. She's looking at me the way she looked at the room, reading layers, calculating angles. Her eyes drop to where my arousal is barely concealed by the excellent tailoring, then back to my face. The smile that curves her lips is sharp as a blade.
She steps closer, close enough that her breath fans across my jaw, close enough that one deep inhale would press her breasts against my chest. The perfume is intoxicating this near, something with jasmine and danger. My hands clench at my sides to keep from grabbing her, pulling her against me, finding out if that dress tears or unzips.
"Tell me, Mr.Delgado," she murmurs, voice dropping to something that makes my cock pulse against the Italian wool. Her eyes hold mine, furious and hungry in equal measure. "What other skills have you been hiding under that collar?"
The question hangs between us like a lit match over gasoline. Every instinct screams at me to close the distance, to show her exactly what I've been hiding, what I'm capable of when the restraints come off. But we're standing in my family's world, surrounded by eyes that report everything, and she's looking at me like she wants to either kiss me or kill me.
Maybe both.
My body is on fire. Years of control, three years of cold showers, and all it takes is her standing this close in a dress that should be illegal, challenging me with those amber eyes that see too much. The priest is gone. What's left is just hunger and heat and the recognition that whatever happens next, we're both about to burn.
6 - Seraphina
Ibarely recognize the man before me.
Not Father Gabriel. Not the man who brought me water while I painted storage rooms, whose voice steadied me in the confessional dark. Gabriel Delgado, wearing a suit that makes him look untouchable, standing in the crowd with unconscious ownership—not the confidence someone learns, but the bone-deep ease of someone born to it.
When I heard his name called across the room, the syllables carrying the way certain names do in certain spaces, I turned, curious to see this Delgado. As in the Foundation hosting this gala. As in the dying patriarch whose empire touches every corner of Miami's legitimate facade.
My body knew before my brain caught up—that tightness in my chest that meant Julian was about to flip a table or break someone's fingers. The same feeling hit me when I saw him, because the man responding to that name was Father Gabriel.
My Father Gabriel. The priest from Homestead. Walking through this crowd like he owns it.
People shifted without realizing it. Creating space. Not deference exactly—something subtler. The way gravity works, how smaller objects orbit larger ones without choosing to. He didn't notice because noticing would be like noticing air.
The suit transforms him. Or maybe reveals him. Italian wool that follows every line of his body, tailored to perfection. The collar is gone and with it the containment, the careful distance, the shield between him and the world. What's left is just theman, and the man looks like he could buy this room. Hell, his family probably does own it, at least the parts that matter.
