The camera flashes. Front. Side. Back. He turns me by the shoulders like a package being readied for shipping, his touch clinical, efficient. It should feel safer than greed. It doesn't. Impersonal means I'm not a person. I'm stock. And that scares me,
The third guard moves from the door, where he had stood up until now. I've noticed him watching me, his gaze interested, unlike the clinical one of the other two. He speaks low and fast to the clipboard guard, who looks from me to him, then steps aside, scribbling more notes.
Permission.
The third guard crosses in four steps. Standing in front of me within seconds. Close enough that his breath hits my collarbone, warm and wet, smelling of tobacco and cheap coffee. His hand settles on my hip, fingers spreading wide. Not moving, just… possessive as he watches my face for any signs of cracking.
I give him nothing, my eyes locking on the white sheet behind him, on the crease in the upper left corner where the tape pulls loose, fabric sagging. I count the threads I can see. I am not here. I am in a fourteenth-century apse outside Catania, assessing plaster decay. Documenting deterioration. Anywhere but this room with his hand on my skin.
His fingers slide up. Over ribs. Press just hard enough to wake the bruises. My jaw locks against the flare of pain. Eyes stay on the wall. He traces the curve of my breast with his thumb, a slow circle, then flattens his palm over my sternum, right on my heartbeat. His mouth finds my ear. Words so low they vibrate against my neck.
"Ti piaccio?"
My pulse hammers into his hand. I can't stop that. I control everything else, face and hands and breath, but not the heart. We both feel it.
His other hand grabs. Greedy. Fingers digging in, kneading, thumb dragging over my nipple. Mouth still at my ear, words spilling, promises of what he'll do, how long he'll take, how no one will stop him because I belong to the operation now and that means I belong to whoever wants me.
I stay in the church. Pigment faded in the lower register, but the upper holds its color. The apostle on the left has a crack through his halo. Needs acrylic resin before the rains.
His hand drops between my legs.
My body flinches. The wall crumbles. For one second I'm fully here, his fingers forcing past resistance, breath sawing atmy throat, clipboard guard still writing, camera forgotten on the table because this isn't documentation anymore. This is him taking what he's been told he can have.
The door slams open.
Yelling. Multiple voices. A body hits the floor. For a confused heartbeat, I think it's mine, knees finally giving, but then a shape blocks the guard. Matt's voice, raw and ragged, louder than I've ever heard it, English because his Italian was always shit.
"Get the fuck off her. Get the fuck OFF her."
He's over me. Covering me. Back to the guards. Arms caging me, not trapping, shielding. He's shaking, adrenaline or pain or both. Through the gap between his shoulder and chin, I see the corridor. The two guards who dragged him back frozen in the doorway, mouths open. This wasn't the plan.
Boots land fast. Ribs. Back. Kidneys. Matt curls tighter around me, taking every hit, but he doesn't let go. Air punches out of him in grunts. I grip his shirt in both fists, pull him closer, press my face into his chest because I can't watch another person break for me. He holds me tight, shielding me from the world.
The flat-eyed guard says one word, and the kicking stops.
I don't hear the rest. Matt's heart slams against my ear, too fast and uneven, a trapped bird. Whatever the order, they haul us both upright.
Matt still clings to me as they kick us out onto the corridor. My clothes hit my face, balled up and thrown from behind, and I get my shirt over my head while moving because I will not walk through this compound with my skin showing one more second than I have to. My underwear is gone. But in that bundle is a loose skirt, which I pull as fast as I can. One of the guards has Matt by the collar, another has me by the arm. I focus on the concrete under my bare feet because it's the only thing I can make sense of right now.
They throw us into a cell.Mycell. Door clangs. Bolt slides. Then it's just us, the fluorescent buzz, and Matt's breathing, wet and labored.
Matt's on the floor, on his side, knees up, arms wrapped around his middle. But as he looks up at me through the blood, he's wearing the same steady here-I-am expression he had the first night when he split his bread.
I kneel, unable to stop the shaking in my hands. I don't fight it, just grab my sleeve hem and wipe blood from his face. Rough cotton. Useless. It's what I have left.
"You're an idiot."
"Yeah." He winces as I dab the split. "But I wasn't gonna let him touch you. Not while I'm breathing."
My throat closes. I keep cleaning, gentle around the swelling. Neither of us speaks for a while. His injuries are survivable. Bruised ribs, maybe cracked. Split eyebrow. Contusions on his back that'll darken by morning. Survivable is the new gold standard.
We sit in the quiet. Him on concrete, me beside him, hand still on his shoulder because letting go feels wrong. The light hums its single note.
"His name is Elio," I say.
Matt waits. Doesn't turn. Just listens.
"The man I told you about. I didn't think I relied on anyone until just now. Until I wished he's come for me by now."
