“Shush,” he murmurs against her nose. Too close. Too violent.

Hurting her, this motherfucker—he’s hurting her. He cannot live. He cannot be near her. He’s crushing my heart in my chest and this glass fucking wall is squeezing my vision into a funnel with me at one end, too small to rip this building off its foundations, and her at the other, too big to get through to my side.

“I’m going to kill you.” I whisper it like a prayer, powerless, pressing my hands to the glass as if my rage can get them through it.

“Sure you are. Let’s go, princess. Visit’s over.”

When she obeys him, I scream loud enough to shake the foundation, but with every breath, a part of me dies.

CHAPTER 8

SARAH

Dario’s rage, banging around on the other side of the glass, is terrifying. The old stone church is going to shatter.

When I pause to listen, stuck like a deer in headlights, Sergio grabs my forearm and yanks me back down the hall the way we came, past more cells like my husband’s. All empty. He swings me in front of him and closes the heavy metal door, cutting me off from the man I need to protect and who needs to protect me. We’re in a guard room with a bank of screens. A man with a thick black goatee sits in the chair. His name is Sam. I used to see him in church sometimes, but he acts as if he doesn’t know me.

I have never felt so exposed and alone. In the car on the way here, Massimo told me to act as if I have no feelings for my husband, and he’s right. Whoever those cells were built for, I’m destined for one if I show my love. And if I’m trapped in there, I can’t help him.

“I told your grandma I’d bring you around.” Sergio shrugs and opens the far door as if totally unaffected by what just happened. “So, come on.”

Up a narrow flight of stairs, he uses his thumbprint to open the door at the top, leaving us in a little-used back hall of Precious Blood.

There have always been a handful of spaces my thumbprint wouldn’t grant access to. I never wondered why. How many horrors are hidden behind those doorways?

“Your gramma said they’d be on the rectory side.” He stands in the middle of a hallway intersection, looking totally lost. “In the workroom next to the big kitchen, which is like… okay, how many kitchens do you guys have?”

“Four.” I know where I’m going now. I turn and he follows.

“Hold up.” He gets slightly ahead, lost as he is, then snaps his fingers. “Sewing circle. That’s what she said. So, it’s like you make a quilt for poor people or something?”

“We make and repair clothes for anyone who needs it.”

“Any one of you? Like, it’s not for charity or nothing?”