Chapter 2: Crypt 7

Midnight Midnight tasted of damp stone, candle smoke, and the copper tang of old blood.

I went down the service tunnel behind the holy room, recorder in one hand and brass key in the other, the black slip dress I’d picked clinging to every curve like a whispered sin. The stairs spiraled down in a tight twist, iron rail ice-cold under my palm, and each step echoed like a heartbeat in a grave. The air grew heavier with every level—older and thicker, laced with myrrh, melted wax, and something metallic that curled in my nose: blood, or memory, or both. The walls wept moisture, centuries of water beading on the rough stone, and dripping in slow, steady beats that matched the pulse between my thighs.

Crypt 7 waited at the bottom.

The brass key—engraved in fancy script and heavy as guilt—slid home with a click that felt final and irreversible.

The door groaned open on hinges that hadn’t moved since the rich old days, the sound scraping along my spine like nails on a board.

Inside: a high room the size of a small church, lit by a single black iron candle holder, seven flames dancing on tapers the color of dried blood.

Stone walls wept in slow streams, moisture tracing lines down the granite like tears.

A cracked picture of the last meal hung overhead—Judas’s face half-gone, Christ’s eyes following me with painted sadness.

In the center: a velvet chaise, deep crimson, placed beneath the picture like an altar.

And cameras.

Four of them—old Bolex 16mm, brass bodies shiny, lenses like hungry and unblinking eyes, and red lights blinking in perfect beat with the candles.

Luca Valenti waited in the shadows, priest clothes gone.

White linen shirt open to the waist, black trousers low on his hips, barefoot on the cold and damp floor.

The scar through his left brow caught the candlelight like a lightning mark.

His cross hung loose, catching the flame, and swinging slow between the open shirt.

He held a remote—flat black, no buttons, just a single red light.

“Strip,” he said.

Voice soft, but the crypt made it thunder, bouncing off the stone until it filled every corner of my head.

I let the slip dress fall.

No bra.

No panties.

Just skin, gooseflesh, and the recorder clipped to a black lace garter like a wrong rosary, red light blinking against my inner thigh.

He circled me, slow and predatory.

The candles moved with his steps, shadows twisting on the walls like lost souls.

“You recorded last night,” he murmured, breath warm against the back of my neck. “Good girl. Tonight, we film.”

He pressed the remote.

The Bolex cameras whirred to life, film moving with a machine purr that shook through the stone floor into my bare feet.

Luca stepped behind the nearest camera and adjusted the focus with a lover’s care, his eye pressed to the viewfinder.

“Touch yourself, Elara. Like you did in your apartment. I want to see the sin you hide from God, from the world, from yourself.”

I obeyed.

Fingers sliding between my thighs, already slick, and circling my clit the way his tongue had in the confessional—slow, deliberate, and reverent.

The cameras rolled.

The candles burned lower, wax pooling like tears.

My moans echoed off the stone, raw and unfiltered, and bouncing back to me as if the crypt itself were moaning with me.

He watched through the lens, eyes dark, pupils blown wide with lust and something colder—calculation.

“Tell me your worst secret, Elara,” he said, voice low and coaxing. “The one you’ll never print.”

I gasped, hips rocking into my own hand, thighs trembling.

“I… I came to expose you,” I confessed, the words spilling like wine. “The abuse stories. The missing girls from the Boston church. The rumors of payoffs, of girls who vanished after private ‘counseling.’ I thought you were—”

He cut me off with a kiss, mouth bruising, and tongue claiming, tasting of smoke and holy bread.

His hand replaced mine, two fingers curling inside me, thumb on my clit, and relentless, perfect.

I came hard, knees buckling, and his arm the only thing keeping me upright, my release flooding his fingers, dripping down my thighs, and pooling on the stone.

The cameras caught every shudder, every tear, and every drop.

He pulled back, lips wet with me, eyes glowing in the candlelight.

“You’re not wrong,” he whispered. “But you’re not right either.”

He led me to the chaise, laid me down, and the velvet cool and slick against my heated skin, already damp with want.

From a stone hole in the wall—hidden behind a fake part of old cement—he produced silk rope: black, soft, and strong, the kind used in Japanese tying, the kind that left marks for days.

He bound my wrists to the chaise arms, ankles to the legs, spread wide, and exposed, offered.

The cameras adjusted—motorized mounts whirring, lenses zooming, and tracking my every breath, every twitch, and every bead of sweat.

Luca knelt between my thighs, shirt now fully open, cross swinging like a clock.

“This crypt was a reliquary once,” he said, voice reverent and hungry. “Bones of saints. Fingers of martyrs. Tongues of virgins. Sealed in 1893 after a scandal the Church buried deeper than the dead. Now it’s mine.”

He entered me slow, thick, and bare.

No condom.

No hesitation.

Just heat, stretch, and fullness.

I arched, cried out, and the rope biting my wrists, the velvet slick beneath me.

He fucked me like a prayer—deep, deliberate, and each thrust a syllable of Latin I didn’t know but felt in my bones: “Dominus vobiscum… et cum spiritu tuo…”

The cameras rolled.

The candles burned lower, wax dripping onto the stone like tears of the damned.

I came again, clenching around him, and his name a blasphemy on my tongue—“Luca, fuck, God—”

He followed, spilling inside me, hot and endless, and marking me from the inside out, his growl echoing off the high ceiling like a demon released.

We stayed locked, breathing hard, sweat mixing, and the crypt air thick with sex and smoke.

Then the twist.

A panel in the wall—right behind the picture—slid open with a grinding of stone on stone.

A woman stepped out.

Sister Mara, 30, church clothes gone, naked except for a silver collar etched with Latin: “Peccavi”—I have sinned.

Her body was a map of control: faint rope marks on her wrists, a tattoo of a snake coiled around her belly, nipples pierced with tiny silver rings.

She held a fifth camera—digital and modern, live-streaming to a dark-web server.

Behind her: a wall of screens, set into the stone, glowing with dozens of feeds.

Dozens of women.

Bound.

Fucked.

Confessing.

Some in this crypt.

Some in other cities—Boston, Rome, Buenos Aires.

All wearing the silver collar.

All his.

Luca kissed my forehead, gentle and almost tender.

“Welcome to the archive, Elara,” he said, voice soft as velvet and sharp as a blade.

“You’re not the journalist.

You’re the story.”

The red lights on all five cameras blinked in perfect beat.

The ropes tightened—automatic and motorized, inescapable.

The crypt door sealed shut with a final and grinding thud.

Mara smiled, slow and cruel.

“Confession is just the beginning,” she purred, stepping closer, and her fingers trailing over my bound breast, pinching my nipple until I gasped.

“The real sacrament is exposure.”

Luca stood, trousers refastened, cross tucked away.

He lifted a sixth camera—this one handheld, 8K, and pointed at my face.

“Smile for the congregation, Elara,” he said.

“The world is watching.”

The screens flickered.

Live view count: 47,312 and rising.

Dark-web bids: $10K per minute of raw feed.

Title: “THE JOURNALIST’S FALL – LIVE FROM CRYPT 7”

I struggled—rope biting, skin burning, and pleasure and panic twisting into one.

Luca leaned in, lips brushing my ear.

“You wanted the truth,” he whispered.

“Now you are the truth.”

The candles guttered.

The cameras rolled.

The crypt sealed me in.