The Pope: Cards of Love

by Lovell, LP

  I swallow the lump in my throat. My problems have become his, and I never wanted that. “I know.” I stroke over his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just trust me?”

  “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

  “Get in the car. We’re going to the police station.”

  A knot forms in the pit of my stomach. I trust him. He won’t let anything happen.

  * * *

  Detective Harford walks around the corner, a smile breaking across his face when he sees me.

  “Miss Thomas. What can I do for you?”

  I inhale a deep breath. “I’ll tell you what you need to know about Nathaniel Hewitt. But I want full immunity. I want to walk out of here today, and I want your assurance that Nate will never know that it was me.”

  He narrows his eyes and nods once. “I can do that.”

  I spend three hours in one room answering endless questions. How long did I sell for Nate? How much did I see? Did I see any of his associates? Had I overheard any phone calls? I tell them everything I know, and add a little bomb courtesy of Judas. He assures me it will blow up and from the look on the detectives face when I said those six words — he works for the Moretti family — I’d say he’s right.

  By the time I get out of there I’m tired, grumpy, and hungry.

  Judas sends me a text: I’m outside.

  His car lingers at the kerb, and when I get in, he hands me a paper bag. Opening it, I see a sub sandwich inside, turkey and ham. My favourite.

  “Thanks.”

  He pulls away from the curb. “How did it go?”

  I shrug. “I’ve given them what they need, and I’m not locked up for intent to supply.”

  He smiles and places his hand on my thigh. “Good. This will work. I promise.”

  For once, I hope I haven’t placed faith the wrong guy. Honestly though, at this point, if Judas were to betray me, I think I’d rather die than live through the aftermath. Such is the lengths to which I’ve fallen under his spell. He feels like my reason for existing now.

  25

  Judas

  It worked perfectly. The lead detective received the toxicology report and arrested Nathaniel within hours of Delilah making her statement. Of course, I want more time, but I’ve run out of choices. I have Saint breathing down my neck with a ticking clock, and Delilah is in several sets of crosshairs. I thought I would have time to watch my little sinner grow, to nurture her, but the time is up. It’s now or never. Do or die. She’ll either succeed or she’ll fail.

  I pull up in the multi-storey car park and stop beneath the flickering orange glow of one of the overhead lights. There’s an eerie silence that puts me on edge, and I jump when the car door opens.

  Tommy Ingleston slips into the passenger seat and glances at me. He’s young and severe, his sharp black suit perfectly tailored and his dark hair combed into place. A pair of glasses covers the permanent scowl on his features.

  “Tommy.”

  He nods. “Judas.” His father worked for my Dad and uncle. Best solicitor in the country, my Dad used to say. The man kept them out of jail, so he couldn’t be much short of a miracle worker.

  I pull away and make the short drive across the city to Scotland Yard. Pulling into a taxi rank, I turn to him.

  “I doubt he has representation yet, but if he does, you simply tell them you were sent by a mutual friend. He’ll assume it’s the Moretti’s. Fabricate evidence if you have to. He needs to roll over on them. Be sure to remind him what the penalty is for double homicide.”

  He nods his head and gets out of the car without a word. Tommy is strange, but he’s damn good at what he does. Takes after his father.

  I sit there and wait. Minutes turn to hours, and I sigh, cracking my back as stiffness sets in. The traffic thins out until only a few cars splutter by now and then. My phone rings, and I glance at the screen, seeing Delilah’s name.

  “Little lamb.”

  “Judas, where are you?”

  “Handling some business.”

  There’s a sigh. “I don’t like being here. What if they know where I live?”

  “Delilah, calm down. The Moretti’s won’t even know that Nathaniel has been arrested yet. You’re safer there with your friends than alone.” I hate this; that I’m doing this to her, but I have to. She needs what is about to come every bit as much as I do. I can fix all of this, but I need her to evolve. “Just stay where you are. I’ll see you later.” I hang up the phone, gripping it tightly in my hand. This is my path. This is God’s will, his test. We have to pass it.

  Hours later and Tommy finally walks out the front of the building. Crossing the road, he gets in my car.

  “Well?”

  He smooths a hand over his tie. “He’s going to inform on his employers in exchange for his freedom. He’ll have a few hours on bail to organise his affairs, and then he’ll go into witness protection.”

  “How long until he’s released?”

  He checks his watch. “Within a couple of hours. They’ll be watching him.”

  “And he knows the evidence against him?” He nods. “Perfect.” Reaching into the centre console, I pull out an envelope of cash, handing it to him. “Thank you for your services.”

  Another jerky nod and he gets out of the car. I watch in the rearview mirror as he disappears into the night like a shadow that never was.

  I sit and wait, long into the night, until finally, Nathaniel staggers from the front of the building. For a moment, he just stands there, as I guess I might if my entire life had been destroyed. Until I went after the person I thought was responsible — in this case, the one person whose ‘evidence’ had forced me into that shitty corner.

  Turning, he starts walking with purpose. He hails a cab a little way down the street, and I pull out, following it. Sure enough, he goes straight to Delilah’s house. My heart starts beating frantically in my chest, and I will it to calm as I pull up on the other side of the street and cut the engine. He gets out of the cab, and I wait, wondering if Myrina actually came through on delaying his tail. Five minutes, that’s all I need.

  Nathaniel steps up to the front door and looks both ways up and down the street. All the lights in the house are off, which means everyone must be asleep. Taking my phone out, I pull up Delilah’s number, my finger lingering over the call button. She can’t be asleep. I assume Nathaniel will pick the lock or know where a spare key is, but instead, he uses his elbow to smash one of the glass panels. There’s no way anyone in the house wouldn’t hear that. So I drop my phone and watch.

  What’s his plan here? Kill all four girls in the house? Excitement rushes through my veins. This is it, the moment where Delilah will descend into the smouldering pits of darkness, where she will bathe in blood and depravity. Or…she’ll die, and we were never meant to be. Now sin for me, little lamb. Prove you are worthy.

  26

  Delilah

  I jerk awake at a sound. Sitting bolt upright, I strain to hear over my hammering heart. Nothing. Glancing at the alarm clock, I see it’s two in the morning. I’ve still not heard anything from Judas. What if something’s happened to him? What if the Moretti’s found out what we did?

  I still when I hear a creak from the stairs. Holding my breath, I listen intently. There’s another creak, and I know it’s the floorboard two steps away from my door. It’s probably just Summer. She gets up in the night. There’s the ominous slow squeak of my doorknob turning, and I freeze as though my lack of movement will make me invisible. When the door drifts open, I can just about make out the hulking shadowy form in my doorway. Adrenaline floods my veins, and I leap off the bed and dive towards the window. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m like a fleeing animal just looking for a way out.

  Something tangles in my hair, and I’m wrenched back against a hard body. “I warned you, Lila.” Nate. His hand goes to my throat, and hot breath assaults my neck, forcing bile up from my stomach. For a few seconds, all I do is panic, my limbs
flailing frantically. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me! “Scream, and I’ll snap your pretty fucking neck.”

  Turning, he throws me on the bed, the full weight of his body landing on top of me. Fingers resume their hold on my throat, squeezing.

  “I was just going to kill you, but I think you owe me, seeing as you ruined my fucking life,” he hisses. His free hand trails up my thigh, and I whimper, turning my head to the side and squeezing my eyes closed. “You going to give it up to me one last time, Lila? Or shall I just take it.” He laughs, his breath washing over my cheek. I count to ten in my head, trying to remain calm. Just wait. Opening my eyes, I focus on the bedside table, on the dim red light of the alarm clock.

  Nate pushes himself off me, reaching for his belt, and it’s in that tiny moment that I manage to shift my weight and lunge for the bedside table. My fingers wrap around the wooden hilt of the knife, and I wince as I contort my injured thumb to flick the blade out. Nate’s full weight falls on me again, and he tries to grapple with me in the darkness. I start swinging wildly, panic driving me to just do something.

  “Fuck.” He pulls back slightly, but not enough. Something changes in my blind, adrenaline-fuelled haze of panic. Fear turns to anger and panic turns to determination. Wrapping my hand around the back of his neck, I pull him close, driving the blade into any available spot. I hate him. I want him dead. A ragged scream slips from my throat as I stab him over and over, finding a certain satisfaction in every single blow. I keep going until my arm aches, and I can no longer breathe properly.

  The light blinks on, and all I see is red. Blood. So much blood.

  “Lila.” Someone says my name on a whispered breath. I shove Nate off me and scramble to my feet. He lies there on my bed, his eyes wide and unseeing, his t-shirt still soaking through with blood like he has sprung a leak. Red stains my bed sheets, my clothes, and my hands.

  I wait for the impending tears, the horror, but they are strangely absent. I’m glad he’s dead. It’s what he deserved. This wasn’t wrong. This was justice. I feel the righteousness creeping through me, and for the first time, Judas’s words make sense to me. I could almost believe that this is all ordained, part of a higher purpose.

  I look at Tiff, Summer, and Trisha who are now all huddled in the doorway.

  “I…called the police,” Trisha whispers.

  “Thank you.” My voice is too calm, too controlled.

  They’re all looking at me like I’m about to either have a breakdown or kill them too.

  “Um, Lila, you should put down the knife,” Tiff says. I’m still clutching the knife in my hand, blood dripping from the blade, my hands painted red. “Do you want me to call Judas?” She whispers.

  I nod mutely, and my knees give way as I collapse to the floor with my back to the bed. I feel empowered, but also numb like my emotions have become so scrambled that I can’t find them anymore.

  I don’t know how long passes… Minutes? Hours?

  A man with a tiny torch crouches down in front of me and shines it in my eyes, making me flinch away from him. He moves to touch my neck, but I recoil.

  “Delilah, I need you to stand up for me.” I blink and look at his face. “That’s it, just stand up.” I climb to my feet, and he talks to me the entire time as he walks me through the house. I’m hurried outside and into the back of a police car. Of course. I’m a murderer, and murderers get locked up.

  Only I don’t go to the police station. I’m taken to a hospital where I’m put into a room, stripped and photographed, poked and prodded. I’m finally given a bed, and I sit there with two policemen while they take a statement. They want a blow-by-blow, an exact re-telling of what happened down to the tiniest details. How Nate got in the house. What my previous relationship to him was. On and on it goes, until finally Detective Harford turns up and they leave.

  He braces his back to the door, his arms folded over his chest. A deep frown mars his features. “I’m sorry, Miss Thomas.” That’s it. That’s all he says. Then with a shake of his head, he leaves the room.

  An hour later and I’m free to go. One of the nurses brings me some jeans and a hoody, courtesy of Tiff. When I step out into the waiting room, Judas is waiting. I spot him immediately as though there’s not a single other person in the busy waiting room.

  He crosses the room to me and trails his fingers down my cheek. The police only gave me some baby wipes, and I know I still have blood on me. I can feel it crusted onto my skin, clinging to my hairline. His eyes trace over my face, and a soft smile touches his lips. We don’t need to say anything. Not here. Taking my hand, he leads me out of the hospital and to his car. We don’t speak until we’re inside his apartment, standing in the bathroom.

  I strip out of the hoody, and then the jeans, dropping them to the bathroom floor. Judas takes in my naked form, his gaze gradually drifting south. I know what I must look like — something out of a nightmare. I also know Judas won’t care. He won’t judge me. The blood is crusted over my stomach, my chest, my throat, even my legs.

  “So perfect.” He reaches out, swiping his thumb over the corner of my mouth. “You did it, little lamb. You slayed your demon.” Narrowed eyes read my every reaction, looking for weaknesses, but he’ll find none. At the hospital, I was just numb, indifferent, but under Judas’s watchful gaze, everything becomes so raw again. All that darkness in me rises to the surface for its master, gravitating toward him. In Nate’s sacrifice, I can feel my absolution. It’s coursing through my veins, swaddling me in the warmth of the virgin’s embrace.

  “He tried to kill me. He wanted to rape me first.” My voice sounds almost robotic. Completely distanced.

  Judas closes that tiny gap between us and presses his body to mine. His hands cup my cheeks, and he tilts my head back, forcing me to meet his gaze. “But he didn’t.”

  “No.”

  He strips out of his shirt, then his trousers, before leading me into the shower. The hot water washes over me and turns crimson before swirling down the drain in a morbid whirlpool.

  Those beautiful blue eyes lock with mine as he strokes over my cheek, my jaw; my throat. “So beautiful,” he whispers.

  Pushing on tiptoes, I press my lips to his. I need him to ground me, to roll in the depravity with me. Maybe I should feel some kind of remorse or horror, but I don’t, because as I stand here, covered in blood and staring into his eyes, all I see is adoration.

  I kiss him again, but this time he rams me against the tile, his lips coming down hard over mine. There’s a sudden air of desperation, a frantic kind of need. His hands are everywhere, claiming, branding, and possessing me in the most reverent of ways. We’ve always been electric, but this is more. So much more. Everything has changed. I believe. In God, in him, in us. It feels like he’s worshipping me, welcoming me into his own personal temple.

  “Baptise me,” I beg against his lips. He pulls back, meeting my gaze. “Right here. Right now.”

  “Ah, but that would wash away your sins, and you wear them so beautifully.”

  “Then don’t. Skip that part.”

  He smiles. “Oh, I’ll baptise you, little lamb.”

  He lifts his hand and draws the cross on my forehead, and the silence of the action is permeated only by the sound of water crashing over tile, our mingled breaths — two hearts beating together.

  His lips crash against mine with so much hunger that it steals my breath. Fingers grip my thighs, lifting me and wrenching them apart. And then he’s buried inside me. My head falls back against the wall and a moan slips from my lips.

  Judas fucks me like he’s trying to crawl inside me, as though our souls could be bound anymore than they already are. And I feel it, the inexplicable pull, the absolute knowledge that I’m now every bit as stained as him. I no longer fear the darkness. I embrace it because he’s there.

  “Delilah Thomas,” he nips my earlobe. “I baptise you in the name of the Father.” His teeth sink into my neck, and his fingers wrap around my wrists,
pinning them above my head as he drives into me. He’s reaching into my soul, picking out all the little bits that once made me who I was and pulling on them. “And of the son.” Another deep thrust and that telltale tingle of pleasure starts to work through my body. I’m breaking apart, willingly surrendering to him, to his God, to everything that we could be. The pressure builds until I’m teetering on that blissful edge, willing to jump and knowing he’ll catch me. “And of the holy spirit,” he growls. And I fall, toppling endlessly into nothing but warmth. I’m cleansed, born anew, sculpted into his perfect other half, just as God created Eve for Adam. Everything I was before ceases to exist until I’m simply his.

  And here we are, two damned souls bound together, the blood of my last sin still trickling in watery pink lines over my skin. Nothing can tear us apart now. Nothing.

  It’s only once we’re in bed, with the first rays of dawn creeping through the window that we finally speak rationally.

  “How did he get out?” I ask, staring at the ceiling.

  He grabs my waist and pulls me onto my side to face him. “They convinced him to turn on the Italians. They allowed him a few hours bail before he went into witness protection. He was supposed to be watched…”

  “But he wasn’t?”

  His eyes flash with something depraved. “I paid them off.”

  Closing my eyes, I roll onto my back. “You wanted him to kill me?” A deep stabbing pain takes up residence behind my ribs.

  “No, little lamb. I wanted to create you.” He rolls on top of me, his hand cupping my face. “You feel it don’t you? The power?” I nod. “He hurt you, Delilah.”