"New Orleans," Jasper said quietly.
Everyone looked at him.
"New Orleans?" Diego finally said. "Did you hit your pretty head, guapo? What's in New Orleans?"
"The one person Zeus can't touch." Jasper pulled out a cigarette and lit it. In a pressurized cabin. "To see the Oracle."
The Cessna touched downin New Orleans. We'd stopped in Mexico at dawn for fuel, Jasper chain-smoking on the tarmac while Diego threw cash at someone who didn't ask for names. Nobody talked because what was there to say? We were going to New Orleans to beg a stranger for help that would probably get us killed. The silence in the cabin pressed down on my chest until breathing became work.
Lorenzo sat across from me during the descent, cleaning his blades. The movements were so automatic they looked like meditation. When he glanced up and caught me staring, he smiled, like nothing had changed between us.
Like we hadn't spent an hour on a warehouse floor fucking until we were both covered in cum and blood.
I looked away first, focusing on the window. New Orleans spread below us in all its contradictions. Not the tourist bullshit of wrought iron and beignets, but the real city underneath. Industrial zones and shotgun houses, green spaces swallowed by humidity, the Mississippi cutting through it all brown and thick as old blood.
The wheels hit tarmac hard enough to rattle my teeth.
We taxied to a private hangar where Diego passed bills to a man speaking rapid fire Spanish. The Louisiana heat hit like a fist when westepped outside, thick enough to taste. The air was heavier than in Rio, wetter.
Lorenzo fell into step beside me as we walked to Diego's waiting car. His shoulder brushed mine. I shifted away, putting space between us.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. His eyes tracked the movement, his jaw tightening briefly before his expression went blank. Then he shrugged and kept walking, like my rejection was no big deal.
Maybe for him it wasn't.
The safe house was the color of old teeth. Inside, the rooms were narrow and deep, lined up one after another. Diego tossed his bag on the sagging couch and Jasper disappeared into the first bedroom.
That left Lorenzo and me standing in a hallway barely wide enough for one person.
"You want first shower?" Lorenzo asked, like we were normal people discussing normal things.
"Yeah."
I grabbed my bag and escaped to the bathroom before he could say anything else. The water pressure was shit and the temperature couldn't decide between scalding and freezing, but it was still the first real shower I'd had since Brazil. Pink water spiraled down the drain.
I scrubbed until my skin turned raw, trying to wash away the memory of how he'd tasted. When the water went cold, I stepped out, dried off and yanked on clean clothes.
Lorenzo was waiting in the hallway when I opened the door.
He'd stripped down to his boxers, golden skin on display, bruises in the shape of my fingers blooming purple-yellow across his hips. The bite marks on his neck and shoulder had faded to shadows.
My mouth went dry and I suddenly wanted him all over again.
"Bathroom's yours," I said, and moved past him in the narrow space.
His hand caught my elbow. "Rafael."
I couldn't look at him. "What?"
"You okay?"
Was I okay? I'd watched Lorenzo kill my father, abandoned the Church, jumped through a window, covered him in cum and teeth marks and claimed him like an animal. Now I couldn't even look at him without wanting to do it again.
"Fine."
His grip tightened slightly. "You sure? Because you've been acting weird since—"
"I said I'm fine." I pulled away and kept walking to the bedroom, shutting the door before he could follow.
