All Chapters of CONFESS TO ME: For God Until Him: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

MICAHThe bus smelled like diesel and the scent of fish lingered in the air. I pressed my forehead against the window and watched Haloshul reveal itself slowly in pieces. First the coastline, catching the last of the afternoon light. Then the billboards, loud and bright, advertising things I didn't recognize. A new nightclub where the old pharmacy used to be. A casino with a name written in aggressive neon. A boxing gym promising to make men out of boys, which struck me as both hopeful and vaguely threatening.Not like I cared. Then the church.Even from the highway, the steeple rose above everything else like it wanted to announce itself. The Cathedral of Saint Anselm had always looked like it was daring the rest of Haloshul to be better than it was. Standing against a skyline that had clearly changed in every other direction, it was the one thing that looked exactly as I remembered it.My chest did a flip. I hadn't been back. Not properly at least. Not in the way that required me

MICAHI did the Sunday Mass with a split lip and a bruise the shape of a fist along my left cheekbone.I stood at the altar of the Cathedral of Saint Anselm in front of six hundred people and delivered the homily on the road to Emmaus and I watched the congregation try to be polite about the state of my face and mostly fail. Three old women in the fourth pew exchanged a look that could have stripped paint. A man near the back stared at my cheekbone for the entire offertory. A child in the second row pointed and her mother pulled her hand down.Deacon Farris got me after the service, in the sacristy, with the look of a man who had been waiting to say something since he'd first seen me that morning."What in God's name," he started, looking at me confused and concerned."I fell.""You—" He stopped and looked at the shape of the bruise. "Micah. That is not a falling injury. That is a someone's-fist injury.""The first night in a new city. I took the wrong shortcut. I'm fine."He looked

BLAZE.“Get the car,” I ordered Sergio. He nodded and we were in the car in minutes. I had left extra orders for the remaining men at my suite. I could have sent my men alone to do the work but I had doubts and risking Micah’s life wasn't an option.I switched off the headlights two blocks away from Pendle Street and continued on to the street in neutral. The driver seat was occupied by my trusted Sergio who inspected his gun as if he were afraid it would let him down. The other two were sitting in the back seat and did not breathe heavily at all.Micah's voice kept ringing in my head from the call. He sounded distressed, desperate: "They have Farris." It was obvious that he asked me for help, practically pleading with me before I hung up. "Please, Blaze. Don't make me choose between my deacon and your code."I refused to explain anything to him then and I was not going to do that right now.The plan was already made. Bowscut believed they had some power over the new priest. But obvi

BLAZE.The needle went in again and again, stitching the sides of the gash together. I was seated without my shirt on a steel table in the dark backroom of the clandestine clinic, my gaze glued to the wall as if it were supposed to explain everything. No flinching, no grumbling. Just the wet sounds of needle and thread as the doctor took deep breaths. Pain was an old enemy; I was very familiar with it by now.Sergio was waiting for me, his arms crossed. Once he tied the final knot and wrapped the wound up, I stood up, cracked my shoulder and grabbed my shirt. It didn’t matter that the doctor tried to warn me about resting; he knew what I was capable of.Ten minutes later, sitting in my office with the streetlights filtering through the blinds, I opened the bottom drawer and found the picture inside it. Fifteen-year-old Micah with his chubby cheeks smiling in a posed family photograph, taken by force, as usual, by Lupita. I had ripped him from the picture years ago using a pocket knife

BLAZEMy jaw tightened. "Someone I can't have.""Then pretend. Think of me as him." He shifted, angling his body in such a way that his hips were raised above the bed, his ass on display; smooth, white skin framed by a crevice that was dark and alluring. "I'm good with that too."A feeling of dark possession stirred inside of me. One that I knew how to control after all these years; one that had no place in business, territory arguments, and the brutal logic of survival. But in this room, with this pale creature offering himself up as a sacrifice—Control could be an option. But it wasn't mandatory. I grabbed his ass, my hand flattening on the firm muscles beneath his t-shirt, and heard him exhale. He pressed against my touch and made a noise that was honest and authentic; not fake in any way. The warmth from his skin seemed to spread into my hand, and I could feel the slight tremble of his body — fear, perhaps, or the start of submission."You haven't touched anyone recently?" I ask