The weight of the 9mm Beretta in my hand was a physical manifestation of everything I had spent ten years trying to outrun. It felt cold, heavy, and sickeningly final. Outside the thick, reinforced glass of the gallery, the night air was shredded by the staccato rhythm of gunfire and the jagged shouts of men who had come to claim Lorenzo’s head—and by extension, mine.
I wasn’t a killer. I was a musician. I played Bach to empty pews and hid from the shadows of my own past. Yet, here I stood, my pulse hammering against my throat like a trapped bird, watching Lorenzo stumble.
The gunshot wound in his shoulder was a dark, spreading stain on his silk shirt. He didn’t collapse, though. He leaned against a priceless marble bust, his breath hitching, his eyes—those predatory, obsidian eyes—fixed entirely on me. Even in the face of an onslaught, his focus was a suffocating shroud.
"Stop looking at me like that," I hissed, my voice trembling. My fingers were slick with sweat against the grip of the gun. "Tell me what to do. You’re the monster here, Lorenzo. Lead."
He let out a low, humorless chuckle that turned into a sharp wince. He pushed himself off the pedestal, closing the distance between us with a terrifying, steady grace that defied his injury. He didn’t stop until he was looming over me, his scent—sandalwood, copper, and gunpowder—invading every inch of my personal space.
"You aren't a monster, Serafina," he murmured, his voice a low vibration that seemed to rattle my ribs. He reached out, his hand hovering over mine, his fingers calloused and warm as he covered my grip on the weapon. He didn't take it; he guided it, pointing the barrel toward the door. "You’re just finally acknowledging that the world you inhabit is not one of prayers and stained glass. It is a world of consequences."
"I never asked for this," I retorted, though the protest felt hollow. "I never asked for you."
"Liar," he whispered.
He stepped closer, his chest brushing against my arm. The heat radiating from him was feverish. He was maneuvering us toward the secondary exit, a hidden panel behind a Renaissance tapestry, but he moved with an agonizing slowness that felt deliberate. He wanted me to feel the danger. He wanted me to feel the frantic, pathetic way my pulse synchronized with his.
"We have to move," I breathed, my eyes darting to the gallery doors. Wood splintered as a heavy boot kicked against them.
"In a moment." He cornered me against the wall, his uninjured hand coming up to bracket my head. He wasn't hurting me, but the restriction was absolute. He was a cage made of expensive wool and bad intentions. "You held that gun perfectly when the first one broke in. You didn't blink, Serafina. You didn't even scream."
"I was in shock."
"You were in your element," he corrected, his thumb tracing the sharp line of my jaw, then drifting to the pulse point in my neck. His touch was electric, a searing contrast to the freezing terror blooming in my gut. "Do you remember the night in the garden, all those years ago? When you were sixteen and the world felt like it was ending?"
My breath hitched. The air in the room suddenly felt sucked dry. "Don't."
"I was there," he continued, his voice dropping to a gravelly, intimate register that made my stomach turn over. "I watched you. You were so small, so terrified, and yet... you had that same look in your eyes then that you have now. A quiet, desperate resolve. You did what had to be done to survive. I simply ensured that your survival remained... pristine."
"You were watching me?" The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. "All this time? The funding, the cathedral, the 'coincidence' of our meetings—it wasn't patronship. It was surveillance."
"It was devotion," he growled.
He leaned down, his forehead resting against mine. The sound of the door hinges groaning under the pressure of the attackers grew louder, but in this narrow, velvet-curtained space, the world felt like it had shrunk down to the space between our lips. My body betrayed me, leaning into his heat, my resistance flickering like a dying candle.
He didn't pull back. Instead, he pressed his hips against mine, pinning me firmly against the wall. The move was possessive, undeniable. He wasn't asking for my permission to take up my space; he was reclaiming what he had spent a decade marking as his own.
"They want to kill me," he murmured, his breath fanning across my lips. "And if they do, they will take you. Do you think they will be as patient as I have been? Do you think they will let you play your organ in the moonlight, or will they break you just to see if you scream?"
"Why are you doing this?" I whispered, my voice breaking. "Why are you keeping me here?"
"Because you are the only beautiful thing I have ever owned that didn't rot the moment I touched it," he said.
He kissed me then—not with the gentleness of a lover, but with the desperate, bruising intensity of a man who knew he was dying. It was a collision of teeth and tongue, a frantic tasting of grief and adrenaline. My grip on the gun faltered, and he caught my hand, forcing me to drop the weapon. It clattered to the marble floor, but neither of us looked down.
His hand slid to the back of my neck, tangling in my hair, pulling me flush against his injured shoulder. The pain that must have flared in him only made him grip me tighter, his mouth moving against mine with a hunger that bordered on worship. I hated him. I hated the way my hands found their way to his lapels, the way I found myself holding him up, terrified that if I let go, he would fall and the shadow of the men outside would finally swallow me whole.
He broke the kiss, breathless, his eyes dilated and dark, searching my face with a terrifying intensity.
"They're inside," he rasped, his voice dropping to a warning whisper as he stepped back, grabbing my wrist so hard it bruised. He pulled me toward the dark void of the hidden passage, but stopped abruptly at the threshold.
He turned to me, his expression shifting from predatory to something sharper, something almost pained. He reached into his coat and produced a small, silver locket I hadn't seen in years. He pressed it into my palm and folded my fingers over it.
"If we get separated," he hissed, "you run to the cove. A boat is waiting. But whatever you do, do not open that locket until you hear the sound of the church bells ringing for Matins."
Before I could ask him why, the gallery doors exploded inward in a spray of splintered mahogany and white light.