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“You’re going to tell me where the drive is and all of this will be over.”
The vodka on his breath burned Francis’s eyes, squeezing out tears, or maybe those tears were due to his lungs scorching him up from the inside. He bucked, kicked, but Sal’s weight pinned him to the floor. His whole body throbbed in time with his struggling heart. Darkness beat in, wave after wave.
The belt loosened. “Breathe,” Sal said and patted his face. “Slowly now. You ever choked on a grape, Padre? Yeah, like that, just calmly breathe. Slow down, don’t panic… There you go… Slowly, nice and slow…”
Gradually, Francis’s throat opened again, and his lungs ballooned, filling back up. The thudding in his head faded. “Where’s Vitari?” he wheezed.
“He’s fine.” Sal dangled a small key, then dropped it back into his pocket. “But he’s not coming to save you. So give me the drive, and I’ll let you go. For however long you’ve got left.”
He didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t let him go. People like him said they would, to make their victims compliant and easier to kill. “You had… a good friend… in Vitari.”
Sal’s eyes betrayed his pain. He didn’t want to be here either. Francis almost pitied him. Whatever was happening had cost Sal a lifetime of friendship.
“Padre”—Sal produced a gun from behind his back—“time to confess. Where’s the drive?”
“What drive?” he wheezed.
“USB drive, had Vitari’s name on it. You saw it, same as I did.”
That drive. The one in his pocket. “I don’t?—”
Sal tightened the belt and the choking, horrible gut-knotting agony began again. Minutes, hours, he wasn’t sure how long it was before Sal loosened the belt and consciousness seeped back into his tingling body.
“You don’t want… to do… this,” Francis panted.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Always… a choice…”
Sal kept the gun pointed down, not yet aiming it. Perhaps not wanting to. “He loves you. I didn’t think it possible, two men… But I see it, it’s real.”
More tears squeezed from Francis’s eyes. It was love, and it wasn’t right that the whole world kept trying to take it from them.
“I wish I didn’t have to do this,” Sal said, with real hurt in his voice. “I was with him when he learned you’d been shot in St. Peter’s. My papa, he…” Sal winced away the end of that sentence. “Vitari would have razed Roma to get to you. But I will do this, Padre. I love Vitari, but I love my papa more. Give me the drive.”
Whatever was on the drive, it couldn’t be worth dying for. “Pocket… In my pocket.”
“This gown has pockets?”
“Underneath. Let me up…”
Sal eased off, then got to his feet, but he kept hold of the belt around Francis’s neck and hauled him upright too. Francis swayed, sweating hot and cold, dizzy, but he managed to lift his cassock and dig into his pocket.
He removed the drive and handed it out. “I hope it’s worth Vitari’s love.”
Sal let go of the belt and took the drive, holding it up in his left hand between his finger and thumb, checking it was the one he needed. Then he raised the gun in his right hand and aimed at Francis’s head. “This time, we won’t miss.”
Francis closed his eyes. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from… evil.”
As he opened his eyes again, he saw the agony on Sal’s face. He did not want to do this, because of Vitari. Because of a love he knew to be real. Because he knew he’d never come back from it. “Is this the family way?” Francis asked quietly. “Can you live with yourself, once you pull the trigger?”
“Probably not, Padre,” he said with great pain in his eyes.
A hooded figure rushed up behind Sal and slammed a huge vase over the back of Sal’s head, dropping the big man to his knees, then the floor. Francis gaped, not recognizing the intruder in the hooded sweater and black jeans, but then he saw the man’s blue eyes and square jaw.
“Father Davis?”
“Hey, you okay?” Father Davis asked.
