Page 36

ADRIANA

The café disappeared in the side mirror.

I twisted in my seat, trembling so violently I could barely fill my lungs. The street curved out of sight behind us, taking with it the overturned tables, shattered glass, and the quiet afternoon that had been destroyed by gunfire.

Demitri’s jaw was set hard. His gaze moved constantly between the road, the mirrors, and every side street we passed. The car hurtled over the cobblestones, tyres shrieking as he took the corners at speed. A horn blared behind us. Someone shouted from the pavement. Demitri shifted gears with one swift movement, then returned both hands to the wheel.

I pressed one shaking hand to my mouth and looked back through the rear window, but the street behind us had already changed shape. Rome folded around us in alleys, stone walls, shuttered windows, and blind corners.

The men who had come for me had not counted on a priest with a gun. Nor had I. And now I understood something with a coldness that settled deep in my bones. Father Demitri was not running from violence. He was born to it.

I sat rigid in the passenger seat with one hand braced against the door and the other pressed to my stomach, trying to hold myself together by taking slow breaths. My ears still rang. Everything sounded wrong. The engine. The tyres. Demitri’s breathing. My own heartbeat battering inside me like a fist against a locked door.

Demitri drove with both hands on the wheel. His jaw was locked so tightly a muscle pulsed beneath the five o’clock shadow along his cheek. He didn’t look at me.

My hands began to shake. I curled my fingers into my shirt and stared through the windscreen. The countryside stretched around us, beautiful in that careless Italian way. Sunlight lay across the fields. Cypress trees stood in thin, dark lines along distant ridges. A farmhouse sat alone on a hill, its walls the color of old bone. And I was in a speeding car with a priest who carried a gun like it was born in his hand.

At last, Demitri took a sharp turn off the main road. The car bounced hard as the tyres hit dirt. Dust rose behind us in a thick, pale cloud. He drove another hundred feet, maybe more, until we reached a narrow stretch bordered by dry grass and low stone walls. There were no houses nearby, and no parked cars. There were no trees close enough to hide behind. Just open land in every direction.

The engine idled for a moment, growling softly in the silence. Demitri looked into the rear-view mirror. Then the side mirror. Then across the fields. His eyes moved with a cold precision that made my skin tighten. He had chosen the place because it gave him sightlines. If someone approached, he would see them. Yet, if someone followed, there would be nowhere to hide.

Demitri turned the engine off. The sudden silence was violent. For a few seconds, neither of us moved. Dust drifted past the windows. Heat shimmered above the road. My pulse filled the car, loud and humiliating. I stared at him, waiting for the priest to come back. The controlled voice. The gentle distance. The careful sadness that had made him seem safe even when I felt he was dangerous. Instead, he inhaled slowly. When he exhaled, something in him changed. His shoulders eased by a fraction. His face emptied. The last softness drained away as if someone had opened a valve.

“Do you have a phone?” he asked.

I blinked at him. “What?”

“A phone.” His gaze cut briefly to mine. “Is there one on you?”

“No.”

He studied me for a long, unreadable moment. “Nothing at all?”

“No.” Panic sharpened my voice. “They dragged me out of my home. I told you that. I barely escaped with my life, let alone my handbag.”

He looked away through the windscreen. The fields stared back at us, bright and empty.

“How did they find us?” He asked, though it seemed like he was speaking to himself more than anything else.

A cold thread pulled through me. “What do you mean?”

“The café was not a chance encounter.”

My stomach turned. I saw the table flipping. The glass exploding. Demitri’s gun rising. The old man falling beside his newspaper. I pressed my lips together.

“They followed us?”

“No.” Demitri’s gaze shifted to the side mirror again. “If they followed us, I would have seen them.”

There was no arrogance in his voice, only certainty. “They’re tracking us somehow. Are you sure you have nothing on you?”

“I told you, I don’t.”

My hand moved before I had a chance to think. Straight to my throat. The rosary rested beneath my fingers, the pearls warm from my skin. My father’s rosary. The last thing he had put in my hand. The last piece of him I had left.

Demitri’s eyes followed the movement. For one heartbeat, he went utterly still. Then something lit behind his eyes.

I looked up. Demitri’s face was hard. For a moment, I saw the priest again. A man who understood the violence of grief because he had been living inside his own for years. Then a distant sound broke through the silence. An engine. The sound was faint, somewhere beyond the curve of the road, hidden by the rise of the land. Demitri moved immediately, turning the engine over.