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Demitri stood between my knees and cleaned the cut.

His head remained bowed, dark hair falling over his brow.

I watched his hands. They were built for violence. Scarred knuckles. Broad palms. Strong fingers that had held weapons and contained so much violence. Those same violent hands cradled mine as though the small cut mattered. The contradiction unsettled me. It also made it difficult to breathe for reasons that had nothing to do with panic.

He wrapped clean gauze around my palm and secured it with tape.

“Too tight?”

“No.”

He released me. The loss of his touch felt immediate and immense.

“Why did you become a priest?”

The question escaped before I could reconsider it.

Demitri remained between my knees. For several seconds, his hands rested on the counter on either side of me. He could have stepped away, but he chose not to. His eyes settled on the tiled wall behind me.

“My father took my car into Rome the morning after I told him I was leaving the family.”

I was silent, waiting patiently for the words to come.

“I think he was trying to delay my leaving. The longer I stayed, the more chance there would be that I would reconsider and stay.”

His mouth twisted into something that resembled pain before he lowered his gaze.

“Men were waiting on the road beyond the estate.” His fingers curled against the edge of the counter. “I heard the first shots from the terrace. The sound travelled across the valley. At first, I thought the guards were training. Then the gunfire continued, and I knew.”

His breathing changed.

“I ran.”

I saw it as he spoke.

A younger Demitri crossing the estate, already knowing what waited beyond the gates.

“By the time I reached the road, the car had struck a tree. The horn was trapped beneath my father’s head and wouldn’t stop sounding.”

The muscles in Demitri’s arms tightened.

“The windscreen was gone. The doors had been torn apart by bullets. There was so much blood inside the car that my hands slipped when I tried to pull him out.”

My chest tightened.

“He had been shot so many times that I didn’t recognize his face.”

I felt my heart crumble into a million pieces as the image of Demi finding his father roared into my head.

“I dragged him onto the road. Part of his skull had been destroyed, but I kept searching for a pulse.”

Demitri stared past me.

“I promised I would stay. I told him I would take his chair, avenge him and become whatever he had wanted me to be.”

His fingers dug into the wood.

“I offered him every part of myself I had spent years refusing.”