The Vows We Break: A Twisted Taboo Tale

by Serena Akeroyd

  Whenever I walk into a holy chapel, I feel wrong. On edge. But in here, even surrounded as I am by religious prompts and artifacts, I feel freer.

  I suppose this room is my personal space. Free from religious prompts that the Holy See insists I have, and more of my own personal preferences.

  My faith is in here. Not my religion.

  The two are definitely separate, but I only just realize that now.

  How can she have changed things for me so much and in such a short space of time?

  When I settle against the desk, perching my behind on it, I watch as she flutters around the room, touching everything, leaving me to process how different I am today.

  My lips twitch at the sight of the butterfly in my office, but I ask, “What did you feel this morning?”

  “I don’t know. Like you couldn’t breathe.” A frown flutters over her brow. “It was strange. I haven’t felt it before.”

  “You took it as a sign?”

  “Of course.” She grins at me over her shoulder, and I have no choice but to grin back.

  I shake my head, though, murmuring, “I had a flashback.”

  Her smile dampens at that. “A bad one?”

  “Kind of. No worse than usual.” I suck in a breath. “It was short.”

  “I’m glad. Can I do anything?”

  Gulping at the earnest question, I hold out my hand for her. Instantly, she’s there.

  I sigh when she slips her arms around me, and as I press my face into her throat, I smile. She really meant it.

  She smells of me. Of us.

  “You took enough time to wash off the blood, hmm?” But nothing else. Just came straight to me. My little homing pigeon, I think ruefully.

  She snorts. “Didn’t think you’d appreciate me walking around covered—”

  “No,” I concede, smiling a little, but my smile dies when I think of the man still in my church.

  “Who was he?”

  Christ, it’s eerie how she does that. How she sometimes knows what I’m thinking and where my thoughts have turned.

  “A capo in the mafia. Marco Corelli.”

  She tenses. “Seriously?”

  “Yes.” I break the seal of confession without a second thought because, hell, it means nothing to me anymore anyway. And Andrea? She’s not just anyone. “He killed someone last night.”

  That has more tension filling her. “How are you feeling?” she queries warily.

  “Homicidal?” I tease, and stun myself with the levity in my tone.

  “Yeah?”

  I pull back so she can see my arched brow. Her hand comes up and she traces it, and I let her.

  I love how tactile she is.

  I need it. It grounds me. Reminds me I’m a man.

  “It cements a truth home.”

  “What kind of truth?” she questions, confusion in her eyes.

  “That you’re right. I’m not a priest.”

  Her lips twist into a smile. “You’ve seen the light. I wondered if I’d have to fight you.”

  “No fighting required.”

  “How are you feeling?” Her hand comes up to brush over my temple, like a whorl of hair has fallen loose, but I showered and gelled it this morning after I dealt with the blood on the wall.

  There’s no reason for her to do that aside from the need to connect with me, and fuck, if I don’t need that connection.

  “I’m feeling better,” I say slowly, not altogether surprised that I mean it.

  “What about the capo?”

  “He killed someone. I’m finding it hard—” My throat closes. “He doesn’t deserve to live. Everyone lets him get away with murder. I might have dealt with him before if he came to confession often.”

  “Before me? B.A., you mean?” She winks.

  “Yeah. B.A.” Confusion whirls inside me. The past me and the present me is in the air. But I’ve been this Savio without Andrea far longer than I’ve had her, so the tension in me creates a storm that urges me into gently standing up, being careful with her as I move away and head for the window.

  As I peer out of the office and onto the street, my gaze drifts over the homeless around me.

  There are three who have patches in this locale, and in the next hour or so, more will appear as they come for food.

  Lisabetta, Matteo, and Gianni are all in place, huddled under their sheets, but as I stare at Gianni, who’s in front of his supermarket, tucked into the doorway because there are vents there that let out heat during the night, something about his positioning comes across as weird.

  Matteo and Lisabetta are tense. Like balls under their blankets.

  I always feel guilty for having a spare bed when they’re around, but I actually asked the archdiocese if I could allow someone to stay while the room was empty and they refused.

  I’ve been tempted, several times, to break that rule, but there’s no rhythm or rhyme as to when they’ll allow someone to reside there, and though these three have all showered in my home, they’re surprisingly uncomfortable with my allowing them to do so.

  Lisabetta usually asks me once a month, and I have to assume that’s in alignment with her period. I can’t even imagine having to deal with that on the streets. I make sure to give her more money than usual around that time. Matteo typically showers before he goes to his weekly confession, but Gianni? He’s only showered a handful of times, mostly when he’s been beaten.

  Still, there’s something unusual about him.

  Something that doesn’t sit well with me. His body isn’t tense, if anything, he’s sprawled out. One of his legs is under the filthy duvet I gave him a few months ago when the weather turned bitter, but the other isn’t.

  The others are tense from the cold.

  Why isn’t he?

  “Savio?”

  When her hand brushes my shoulder, I almost jump in surprise.

  “Savio?” she repeats, and I hear her concern.

  Turning to her, I mutter, “One of my friends, he’s—” I don’t linger long enough to explain. Instinct prompts me to take action. I move away from her, rushing out of the office and down the hall toward the private side entrance.

  When I’m outside, I can hear her behind me, her heavy footsteps pounding after me. The thought crosses my mind that she shouldn’t be running, but she is, and I know she’ll carry on until I stop too.

  Within seconds, I’m at the storefront, and I crouch down beside Gianni. The stench, as always, hits me first. There’s nothing quite like it, and it always takes me back to Oran—thankfully not enough to trigger a flashback, but for the uncomfortable memory of stinking like this to ghost my mind for a while.

  Cleanliness is next to godliness, they say. Well, I’m clean because once you’ve been as dirty as Gianni, there’s nothing quite like being normal again.

  When I go to touch his shoulder, he moans, and not in sleepiness.

  I pull back his blanket some, surprised and a little disturbed when I feel wetness—

  “Blood,” Andrea rasps from behind me. “Are you bleeding again?”

  The question has me peering at her. “Probably, but that’s not me.”

  Blood has no scent unless there’s a ton of it, which has me staring down at my hand, and seeing the scarlet dripping from my fingers makes my brain freeze.

  “Shit!” Andrea mutters, and I hear her fumble with her phone before she’s dialing the ambulance and I can hear her talking.

  Gianni’s eyes drift open, and he looks at me, giving me a sheepish grin. “Morning, Father.”

  “Gianni, what’s—?”

  He blows out a breath then painstakingly slurs, “Better if you don’t know, Father. You’re a good man, but you don’t need to be getting into trouble on my behalf.”

  I pat him down, trying to find the source of the blood, and when I find it, he lets out a sharp hiss when I put pressure on the wound that’s made his coat even filthier than it already was. For a second, I watch him waver in and out of consciousness and
I rumble, “ETA on the ambulance?”

  Andrea whispers, “Eight minutes.”

  Too long.

  I know it. Perhaps she does too.

  Quickly, I slip out of my jacket, ruffle it up and hold it against the wound that’s not bleeding enough. Not because he’s getting better, but because his heartbeat is too sluggish to pump out more of it onto the street below us.

  How he’s still awake, I’m not sure.

  “Gianni, who did this to you?” I rasp, needing to know. Needing to make amends. If someone had attacked him, and that same person assaulted Riccardo last night, I have to visit the carabinieri.

  “Messed up, Father. Should have stayed away,” he slurs.

  “From who? Tell me! I’ll report it to the police.”

  Out of nowhere, from weak to strong, Gianni’s hand snaps around my wrist. “You mustn’t,” he grinds out, and his eyes are feverish, with pinpricks for pupils as he stares up at me. “Corelli is dangerous. You can’t get involved.”

  “He shot you,” I whisper thickly. “You’re one of the men he thinks he killed last night.”

  “He has, I just took a while to die,” Gianni whispers.

  “What did you get yourself into?” I demand, furious at him. This is probably why he refused my money last night, dammit. I know the homeless take on jobs. He isn’t always here, even though his stuff remains close to his patch in front of the store.

  “Nothing good, Father. Nothing good.” He’s starting to slur even worse now. “I don’t know how I stayed alive this long. Maybe it was to see you—” His grin makes a cheeky appearance. “You going to save my soul, Father?”

  The words resonate more than I could even imagine.

  “Only God can help me now,” he mutters.

  A hand lands on my shoulder. She squeezes me there, reminding me I’m not alone, and, for the final time as a priest, I give the Viaticum to a man who was forgotten by the many, and who’ll be remembered by the few.

  Nine

  Andrea

  The EMTs turn up their noses when they see Gianni. His stench is certainly memorable, but the way they handle his body has me wanting to slap them.

  Both men cover him up before they turn to Savio and mutter, “He’s got a gunshot wound. It’s a crime scene, Father.”

  I don’t focus on the conversation, mostly I just watch Savio as he stands on the street, because from his house, tucked away in the kitchen, it’s hard to hear.

  He’s in shock, and he’s going through the motions as, reading their lips, the EMT talks about crime scenes and the police.

  I’m surprised they’re giving this much weight to the death of one homeless man, because if the police’s treatment is anything like theirs? It will be an open and shut case—as in, the case is opened, then the file is dumped into a drawer that’s snapped shut.

  The carabinieri do come, however, and maybe my eyes deceive me—but they never do—I can see they respect Savio. Maybe they’re here for him.

  Is that even possible?

  That the police like my serial killer?

  My lips twitch at the thought, but they don’t see me because Savio sent me back to the house when I started shivering when the EMTs pulled up. I didn’t argue, mostly because I knew he wanted to be left alone, and while it’s in my nature to want to crowd him, to make him feel better, I knew I couldn’t.

  Whatever Gianni was to him, Savio feels his loss, and as a result, I mourn Gianni too.

  When Savio returns to the house, I can feel his anger, and I know what’s going to happen.

  Fate.

  It keeps messing with us.

  Here I was, tempting him toward the straight and narrow, then a capo walks through the doors, confesses to murder, and a homeless man Savio cares for is evidently one of the victims.

  Only God can help me now.

  Those words… Savio can’t know what they mean to me.

  It’s such an unusual phrase. Okay, it might not seem like it is, but thinking about it, I know it’s just not something you hear every day.

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘Goddammit.’

  Even, at a push, ‘God, help me.’

  But, ‘Only God can help me now?’

  I legitimately know of only one time I’ve ever heard that particular phrasing.

  Once.

  The day Linda tore from my apartment, got abducted by her husband, and he killed her.

  It was why she’d run away from me. She’d been pacing back and forth in my apartment in downtown Chicago, looking out of the window as though she half-expected him to pop up out of nowhere.

  And she hadn’t been wrong, had she?

  He’d evidently been waiting on her outside.

  My throat closes at the thought, because I remember her whispering those words, remember her tears, the sobs that made her body heave, so I’d shared my truth with her.

  And she’d been more scared of me than her husband.

  I release a shaky sigh, torn up once more by Linda’s death.

  Savio isn’t the only person with death staining his soul.

  It’s my cross to bear as well.

  The door slams closed and I peer down the hall, not moving from my position at the kitchen table. There’s a scant view of the road where the police and the coroner are working on removing the body, but I moved away from the window when the crowd started to gather—it was impossible to see anything then.

  When he strides into the kitchen, his goal is the sink. Considering his hands are covered in blood, I’m not surprised, and I move over to him, nudging him away as I twist the faucet, let the water run, and then pour soap in my hand.

  As I cleanse him, my focus on his fingers, I’m surprised he lets me, but at my side, he seems to be vibrating. Like an animal trapped in a cage.

  I don’t look at him, don’t bother.

  I know what he wants.

  Blood.

  Corelli’s.

  And I don’t blame him.

  “Tonight?” I whisper, not because I’m scared. Not because I’m concerned. But because the mood deserves a whisper.

  Gianni’s passing deserves respect.

  He gulps. “I-I can’t not.”

  “You don’t have to justify,” I murmur, as I slide my hands over his, rubbing our fingers together and joining them in a tight clasp. “I understand.”

  “How can you? You’re light, you’re—” He buries his face in the crook of my throat.

  “I’m yours. I’m what you need me to be.”

  Even if that makes me an accomplice.

  I turn my head to the side. “We can do this. But first, you need to wash up. You have a service to—”

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  “You must. Do it in Gianni’s honor.” I get the feeling he has to do something, and just waiting around here would do him no good.

  It’s not like we could just storm wherever Corelli holes up. We have to plan, but he’s in no frame of mind for planning.

  He needs the calm that comes from doing something by muscle memory alone. A service will be simple for him. It would take his thoughts away, allow him to focus, and then, when he’s done, we will plan.

  Because we’ve got a mobster to slay.

  “Gianni didn’t deserve that, Andrea.”

  His mumbled words have me reaching up to touch his hair with my wet fingers. He was pristine this morning. Looking like innocence itself in his priest garb and dog collar. Now, with his hair mussed, his shirt bloodstained, and his jacket in the trash after he’d used it to stop Gianni’s bleeding, he’s actually in a state I prefer.

  He’s a man.

  Not a priest.

  My man.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  My whisper has him tensing. “He wasn’t a good man, not in all ways. He used to disappear, then would return flush with cash, and I knew he was involved with drugs.”

  “I wonder if he took something or—”

  “Either way,
to leave him to bleed out like a pig on the street? I can’t...” He gulps. “He can’t be allowed to continue.”

  Slowly, I murmur, “No.”

  “You’re not going to try and stop me?”

  I bite my bottom lip. “Would you let me?”

  He releases a shaky breath. “Probably.”

  His admission soothes me. It’s like a warm hug. “Only God can help me now.”

  He tenses and leans away to look at me, frowning all the while. “Gianni’s last words?”

  “Linda, the lady who I helped who died, she said them too.” My gaze turns distant as I think back to another time, another place. A different world for me. One where I was...

  I sigh.

  What was I?

  I’m not exactly normal now, am I? But my brain doesn’t have the same pressure on it as before, so I have to think my reasoning is sounder than it once was.

  The doctors said the cyst made me a risk taker, made me impulsive and more prone to doing stupid stuff.

  I wonder what they’d blame this episode with Savio on?

  Brain damage from the trauma of surgery?

  My lips twist at the thought, but it’s a good thing to remember. If we ever get caught...

  “She said those words?” he repeats slowly.

  I shrug, thinking he’s saying I’m dumb. “I’ve never heard that phrasing before.”

  His frown deepens. “I don’t think I have either.”

  “Not in confession? Sheesh. God’s your world, not mine.”

  He snorts. “Yes, very much my world.”

  I reach up, tug on his ear slightly, and mutter, “You’ve really never heard that particular phrasing before?”

  Savio shakes his head. “No. Variants, maybe, but—”

  “I think it’s a sign,” I blurt out.

  “Not everything is a sign,” he tells me gently, like he thinks I’m crazy again.

  “This is. Two deaths, two precursors to those deaths with that phrasing in my presence?” I shudder. “It’s meant to be.”

  His brow furrows, and for a second, I can tell he’s not sure what to make of me. I’m giving him what he wants—not arguing with his need to take out the capo like the trash he is. But, also, I’m giving him a reason he doesn’t want to hear.