“Father. Father, stay with me.”
He looks up at me and somehow, strangely, he smiles. That same gentle smile he’s been giving me since I was a boy confessing sins I didn’t understand.
“Dante.” His voice is barely a whisper. “My son.”
“Don’t talk. Save your strength. I’ll get you out of here.”
“No.” His hand finds mine, weak but insistent. “No, it’s…it’s alright. This is…this is where I’m supposed to be.”
“You’re supposed to be in your church. Safe. Not here, not in this?—”
“I’m exactly where God needs me.” He coughs, blood on his lips. “Blessing…blessing everyone. Even the sinners. Especially the sinners, may God grant them easy passage to his kingdom.”
His eyes drift past me, taking in the destruction. And he raises his trembling hands, makes the sign of the cross over all of it.
“I absolve you,” he breathes. “All of you.In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”
Then his hand falls and his eyes close and Father Benedetto is gone.
Something wrenches forcefully inside me, seizing in my chest.
This man baptized me. Heard my first confession. Tried for decades to keep some small piece of my soul clean despite everything I did to dirty it. He was good in a way I never could be, pure in a way I stopped believing was possible.
And now he’s dead. Another body on the pile. Another casualty of the violence I brought into this place.
I close his eyes and stand up, and something has shifted inside me. The grief is there, burning in my chest, but so is something else. Something colder and Harder.
These people took my son. They killed my men. They murdered a priest who never hurt anyone in his entire life. They’re all going to die for this.
I pick up my weapon and wade back into the fight, and I’m not just killing anymore. I’m hunting. I stop thinking like a human, and more animalistic.
I have just a single purpose—destroy them all.
I’ve cleared more than a dozen more of Isabella’s soldiers when I sight her. Scarlett, emerging from behind a pillar with a gun in her hand and murder in her eyes. She’s covered in blood, her face streaked with tears and dirt, but she’s moving with a determination I’ve never seen before.
“Luca?” I shout over the gunfire.
“Safe. With the others in the passage.”
She falls in step beside me, and I don’t bother stopping her. Not with the look I see in her eyes. We fight together, back to back, covering each other as we push through the chaos. I don’t know what happened to her down there, what changed her from the terrified woman I left behind cover to this fierce creature fighting at my side. But I’m grateful for it.
I fight with the brutality of a man who lost so much. She fights with desperate courage and surprising skill, her shots not always accurate but enough to keep heads down and enough to buy us precious seconds.
Together we push toward the altar, toward Isabella, forming a path through her soldiers with bullets and blood.
“On your left!” Scarlett shouts, and I spin to drop a man who was about to target us.
“Behind you!” I return the favor, putting two rounds into a soldier she didn’t see.
We move like we’ve been fighting together for years instead of minutes. Like some part of us always knew we’d end up here, side by side in the flames, protecting each other.
Isabella is near the ruined altar now, her wall of guards thinning as my surviving men engage them from multiple angles. She’s still calm and composed, that cold smile still on her beautiful evil face. Like she’s watching a mildly entertaining show rather than a battle with lots of lives cut short.
I hate her with an intensity that surprises me. This woman who ran the trafficking operation that took Scarlett. Who watched her husband die and spent six years hunting for his secrets. Who brought an army to kill everyone I love.
We eventually corner her near the altar, Scarlett and I approaching from different angles while my remaining men keep her guards busy. Isabella’s back is against the ancient stone, her options running out.
And I see Scarlett’s finger tighten on her gun trigger.
