Page 80 of Unholy Saint

I had.

Or perhaps I had simply spent ten years trying to outgrow it.

Zeno’s car slowed as we approached the gates.

I sat in the back with Adriana beside me, one hand resting close to the weapon beneath my jacket. Zeno was in the front, speaking quietly into his phone, his attention divided between the call and the road ahead. Two more vehicles followed close behind us.

Adriana had been silent for the last thirty minutes. She hadn’t asked if I was all right. Somehow, that made me more aware of her than if she had. I could feel her watching me, quietly taking in the man sitting in the back seat with a gun beneath his coat.

She had met me first as Father Demitri. A man in a collar who spoke softly and carried his faith like armor. Then she had seen the cracks in that image. The man beneath the collar. The man who carried a weapon instead of a Bible and knew exactly how to use it. And now she was about to meet DeMarco Cavalho.

My real name.

My real family.

My real life.

The thought unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. Anxiety crawled beneath my skin as the gates came closer, each fo0t bringing me nearer to a past I had spent ten years burying. I had walked away from DeMarco Cavalho. Now I was about to find out whether he had ever really walked away from me.

Zeno ended the call and looked back at me. “They’re expecting us.”

The guard at the gate looked into the car before he reached for the radio. The gates opened and we drove in.

The estate unfolded with cruel familiarity. The west wall where Raze had once broken his wrist climbing down instead of using the gate. The old fountain Marcello had pushed Gianni into after an argument neither of them remembered correctly. The olive trees beyond the side path where Alessio used to stand, claiming to catch the best sunlight.

The car stopped in front of the house.

They were all there. Atlas stood at the top of the steps with his hands in his pockets, broad and still, his face carved into a calm devoid of violence. Marcello stood beside him, darker in expression, arms folded, jaw tight. Gianni was a few steps lower, his gaze fixed on me with an intensity I had almost missed. Raze leaned against a stone column, one shoulder to the wall, looking like he was getting ready for a fight. Tone stood near him.

Antonella.

Older. Sharper. Beautiful in a way that had learned to break hearts. A man stood behind her, close enough to reach her. His face was unreadable, but his eyes missed nothing. I guessed this was the man she had married. Archie Popovich.

My sister had not changed in the ways that mattered. Her hair was pinned back. Her clothes were black. She held her spine straight. She looked at me as if she had spent ten years deciding what she would do if I ever stood in front of her again, and every option had disappointed her.

No one hurried down the steps to greet me. No one smiled. The first Cavalho welcome I received in ten years was silence.

Zeno opened his door and got out.