Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Elena’s POV

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The sound cut through the chapel like knives. Candles flickered. Someone screamed far back by the main doors. A child began to cry. Shoes scraped stone. The whole place trembled with fear.

I spun around.

A man fell hard near the side aisle flat on his back, air punched out of him. His head hit the floor with a dull thud. His arms spread, then stilled.

For a heartbeat I did not move.

Then my feet did.

I ran to him and dropped to my knees. “Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”

No answer. His chest barely lifted. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans. No jacket. No priest could ever look like this. He smelled of clean soap and gunpowder and something like cedar. My pulse raced.

“Sir,” I said, louder, leaning close. “Breathe. Please breathe.”

Training found me. First aid from school. Clinical postings. The checklist I once learned with bright eyes and steady hands.

Airway. Breathing. Circulation.

I tilted his head back. His jaw was strong under my fingers, rough with a soft stubble that brushed my palm. I checked his mouth clear. His pulse beat faint and stubborn at his neck.

“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “Not today.”

I pinched his nose and sealed my mouth over his. Warm breath flowed into him. One. Two. Three. I pulled back to watch his chest. It rose, shallow. I went again. One. Two.

Gunfire cracked outside the chapel closer now. People rushed past the side door, a blur of coats and hands. I kept breathing for him. My lips were warm against his. His chest rose bigger. Come on. Come back.

In the third round he jerked and choked. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. The metallic taste hit my tongue and my body reacted before my mind did I flinched and my hand swiped across his cheek in a small, startled slap.

He coughed hard, then stilled… and looked up at me.

Dark eyes. Clear. Focused. Intelligent. They locked onto mine like a hook.

“What kind of feisty angel are you?” he rasped.

Heat shot up my neck. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to slap you. Don’t stand up—”

But he did. In one smooth motion he rose to his feet, taller than I expected, towering over me. The serious line of his mouth did not soften. He scanned the chapel once, fast, reading it like a map, then looked back down at me.

“You need medical treatment more than I do,” he said, voice low, calm. “Come.”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t go with you. It’s dangerous.”

One corner of his mouth tipped, not quite a smile. “You didn’t think it would be dangerous when you kissed me?”

“I didn’t kiss you,” I snapped, breathless. “I was saving your life.”

“Then allow me to save yours,” he said. “You look like a broken angel.”

“No,” I whispered. The word came out small. My hands were still braced on the floor. Blood had dried tacky at my brow. My cheek throbbed where Luka’s hand had landed. My heart beat too fast.

He looked into my eyes really looked and something in his gaze shifted. No pity. Not mockery. Something steadier. Protective. Deciding.

His fingers lifted. He wiped the blood trail on my forehead with the flat of his thumb, careful, almost gentle, as if he owned the right to touch me and also knew he did not.

I flinched, starting to push his hand away…

A second gunshot crashed against the walls.

Closer.

Instinct made me jump forward into him. His arm slid under me fast, sure—on hand catching my lower back, the other scooping under my thighs. He lifted me clean off the floor as if I weighed nothing.

“Hey!” I gasped, grabbing at his shoulders to steady myself.

He was solid. Muscle under cotton. The stubble on his jaw brushed my temple as he dipped his head to move. “Hold on.”

He moved. Not a run, not a stumble. A powerful glide. He cut through the side aisle, past benches and candle stands, toward a heavy service door near the sacristy. We burst into a narrow corridor that smelled of lemon polish and old wood.

Footsteps pounded somewhere behind us. A shout. Another crack of a gun.

The man’s grip tightened under me, impersonal and secure. He shouldered the exit bar. The back door flew open to a small stone courtyard washed with late sun and siren light beyond the wall.

A big black van idled by the gate.

Two men turned at once when they saw us both in dark clothes, both with that same quiet alertness I had felt in him. One yanked the side door open.

The other swept the yard with his eyes and a hand near his waist like he was ready to draw a weapon if the wind sneezed wrong.

“In,” the tall man ordered.

“I can walk,” I said, even as he set me gently inside and climbed in after me.

The van door slammed. The driver punched the gas. We shot forward. Tires bit gravel, then found the road. The engine hummed low. The city blurred into a ribbon of motion.

I pressed my back to the cool paneling and tried to steady my breathing. My hands shook. He crouched in front of me, one knee braced on the floor, searching my face like a doctor with eyes instead of tools.

“Head wound,” he said. “Small. Cheek swelling. Older.” His gaze sharpened. “Who hit you?”

“I allowed it for my father,” I said. It was all I could manage.

He held my stare a second longer, then gave a short nod like he had placed a pin on a mental map. He snapped his fingers once. “Kit.”

One of the men slid a compact black box across the van. The tall man flipped it open, pulled a sterile wipe, tore it with his teeth, and reached for me. I jerked back, then forced myself still.

“May I?” he asked.

The question surprised me. I nodded.

He cleaned my brow with slow, steady strokes. The wipe stung. I didn’t flinch. He pressed a butterfly strip in place. His fingers were sure, careful, maddeningly gentle for a man who had carried me through gunfire like I was air.

“What’s your name?” I asked, voice small.

“Valerio,” he said, as if we had met on a quiet street instead of the edge of danger.

“Elena,” I said.

“I know,” he answered.

Of course he did. I had given him my story in the office ten minutes before the sky cracked open. I looked past his shoulder at the men.

The one near the door had a scar along his jaw. The driver watched the mirrors with a patience that read like experience.

“Who was shooting?” I asked.

“People who wanted to make a point in a holy place,” Valerio said. “They failed.”

“Because you fell,” I said before I could stop my mouth. “You fell like a man who had been shot but it seems like it missed...”

He studied me for a fraction of a second. “And you kissed life back into me.”

“I told you,” I said, cheeks heating. “CPR.”

He almost smiled. Almost. Then the lines of his face settled again. He lifted my right hand with care, turning my palm upward. There were faint tremors I could not control.

“When did you last eat?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Yesterday. Maybe.”

He reached behind him, pulled a small bottle of water and a wrapped protein bar from a side part of the huge luxurious looking van which smelt of rich Italian interiors, and set them in my lap. “Drink. Then eat.”

“I don’t…”

“Drink,” he repeated, not unkind, but final.

I obeyed. The water was cold. It felt like forgiveness against my tongue. I took small sips until the tightness in my throat eased, then peeled the wrapper and forced myself to chew. Food tasted like cardboard when your heart was a bruise, but the steadiness that came with it was real.

The van turned off the main road, dove into a shaded lane lined with tall trees. Sun flickered across Valerio’s face in brief golds. He watched me, unreadable and present.

“What happened in the chapel before I got there?” I asked, quieter. “Why were they after you?”

“Wrong question,” he said.

“What is the right one?”

“Why are they after you?”

I stared. “Me?”

He lifted his chin to the blood on my brow. “You left a powerful man who does not like to be seen for what he is.”

“Luka doesn’t control gunmen,” I said, but the words sounded thin even to me. Luka controlled the rooms with a smile. He controlled people with a checkbook. What else did he control?

Valerio’s eyes softened, but only by a degree. “The world is not neat, Elena. Lines blur. Men who play politics sometimes hire wolves and swear they asked for sheep.”

The van slowed at a gate. It swung open without a word. We rolled into a quiet courtyard of long trees surrounding a building that looks like a dark castle. The engine cut. For a second, there was only the sound of leaves and a far fountain.

Valerio stood and offered me his hand.

I hesitated, then took it. Warm. Solid. He pulled me to my feet as if he could lift the weight I carried, too.

“Inside,” he said.

“I can’t stay,” I whispered.