Especially not for a ferryman's coin.
Screams erupted, and I used the chaos. Bodies slammed into me as I slipped through panicked commuters, elbows catching my ribs where Rafael had cut me. I made it onto the train just as the doors slid shut, and through the window I watched the maintenance worker calmly return to his mop while people fled around him.
The conductor passed through, checking tickets. My hands shook as I handed mine over, and the adrenaline crash hit hard enough tomake my vision blur at the edges. I needed somewhere private to fall apart for five minutes before I could think straight again.
I also needed chocolate. I passed through the dining car on my way through and grabbed three candy bars. Emergency supplies were very practical, and I deserved something good after the night I'd had.
I walked through the train cars, checking compartments until I found an empty one and slipped inside. Privacy, finally.
The bed folded down from the wall, and I drew the curtains. My side throbbed with each movement, and I couldn't stop touching the bandages, pressing on them and tracing where Rafael's blade had gone in.
I pulled out the Judas Coin and studied it in the dim light.
Such a small thing to destroy a life. I rolled it across my knuckles the way Dionysus had taught me twenty years ago.
I'd been so desperate for his approval back then.
Now I was going to kill him for a different coin.
My hand trembled, and the coin clattered to the floor. I bent down, picked it up, gripped it tight in my fist until the edges bit into my palm hard enough to hurt.
Someone had given that coin to Azevedo. Someone wanted Dionysus dead and had engineered the perfect trap to make it happen.
And somehow, Rafael was all mixed up in this now. I wondered what he’d think of me if he knew I was on my way to Rio to kill his father.
I pressed my forehead against the cool window as the train lurched forward and tried to process it all. It felt like fate that Rafael and I should meet again after all these years, but maybe it wasn’t. It couldn’t all be fate. Someone had to have given Azevedo the Judas Coin for a reason. Dionysus must’ve requested me for this job for a reason. There were too many moving pieces for this all to be fate.
And yet…
I touched my fingers to my lips and tried to remember the taste of him.
No wonder every encounter had burned. No wonder he'd looked at me in Eden like he wanted to destroy me and devour me in the same breath. We'd been circling each other for two decades, and neither of us had known it until tonight.
The boy who'd watched his father buy a feral child had grown up to become a priest with Azevedo as his mentor. And I'd grown up to kill that mentor.
Outside the window, the Italian countryside disappeared into darkness. Every shadow could be hiding Pantheon assets. Every station could be an ambush point. I checked my watch. Still hours before I reached Paris.
Rafael Oliveira was a problem I didn't know how to solve. Dionysus's son shouldn't have looked at me with so much heat in that courtyard. It was as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted to kill me or kiss me.
Whatever he wanted, it wasn't holy. And I had no idea what it meant for what came next.
I stormed through thedoors of the sacred chamber. Five cardinals in scarlet robes jerked upright from their positions around the table, midnight prayers interrupted.
"Tell me Lorenzo Vasquez was lying," I demanded. "Tell me Cardinal Azevedo wasn't trafficking children to the Pantheon."
The cardinals stared at each other, and then at me.
I took another step further into the chamber. "Tell me the Vatican wasn't supplying children to an underground crime syndicate. Tell me we were helping orphans, not breeding killers for the Pantheon."
"That's quite an accusation, Father." Torretti said, setting down his rosary beads. "Where exactly did you hear this?"
"Lorenzo Vasquez told me. The assassin." My hands clenched at my sides.
Cardinal Sanguinetti rose slowly from the head of the table. "You would believe the word of a murderer?"
“The man’s a professional liar,” Torretti agreed.
“And yet you refuse to refute his claims.” I stomped further into the chamber until I was standing at the edge of the table. “If it’s not true, then tell me it isn’t. Better yet, prove it. Bring out all the receipts,the copies of checks I signed my name to. Prove to me that I had no part in what he says I did! That Azevedo was innocent!”
