The Donati Bloodlines: Part Three

Some days, it felt like Emma had just imagined it all.

Like maybe everything she had been with Calisto was just a dream.

Emma knew it was crazy—it was impossible to forget what she had shared with Calisto Donati. All their love, the stolen moments, their foulness together, and the beauty underneath it all were real.

They were real.

But he didn't know.

He didn’t know any of it.

And little by little, with every day that passed her by, Emma found she was losing those pieces that reminded her they had existed once.

Just like the rosary.

All too soon, Emma knew … there would be nothing left.

Calisto Donati

Emma hadn’t given him a choice.

Her, not him.

Yeah, that’s what Calisto was going to keep telling himself. He refused to feed into the strange curiosity he had about Emma Donati. It had been building from the moment he’d first seen her face after he’d awakened. For longer than he cared to admit, he'd thought there was more behind her false smile, polite words, and the distance she put between her and him—that there might be more to them.

He couldn’t.

Except … he was feeding into it.

Calisto just wasn’t sure what it was.

But tonight he was going to find out.

Whether she wanted to tell him or not.

“Please, just wait a moment,” Father Day begged. “Talk to me a little while longer. Let me help you, Calisto.”

The priest grabbed Calisto’s arm in an attempt to stop him. It barely fazed him at all when he shrugged the man off and continued storming down the aisle.

“You’re too angry, Calisto!”

Words were meaningless.

Unimportant, even.

In his current state—so enraged, confused, and hurting—he didn’t hear them.

Calisto didn’t want to.

“Don’t you remember the last time you were this angry?” the priest called after him.

He did, but it didn’t make a difference.

Calisto flew out of the church and into damp air. He cut through the rain, ignoring the splattering droplets falling from the black sky.

Maybe he shouldn’t have ignored it.

Weren’t black skies omens of sorts?

Before long, Calisto was inside his car and driving down the interstate. Toward where, he didn’t know. But driving felt good—damn good.

He pressed the pedal harder.

He gripped the wheel tighter.

Faster, until the engine roared and gears protested on the last shift.

Rain blurred the windshield, but Calisto’s focus was far beyond the squiggly lines running down the glass before the wipers swiped them away. There was so much agony in his heart, and something akin to betrayal sewing itself into the very marrow of his bones.

Somehow, he just knew …

He had done this to himself.

His car flew past vehicle after vehicle on the interstate. He couldn’t even find it in himself to give a shit about the speed limit, or that he could feel the car losing traction under his control.

Tires slipped.

He hit the pedal harder, and kept the car straight.

Driving was his one sense of freedom.

Wasn’t that what he said?

Wasn’t that what he told—

Calisto’s gaze caught sight of a black SUV in his rear-view mirror, bringing him out of the hell that was his mind. For a moment, he didn’t begrudge the reprieve it afforded him.

But it was a mistake to look.

The second he stared into the rear-view mirror, high beams flashed on from the SUV behind him, blinding his vision instantly. He was driving far too fast for someone to be following him as closely as that vehicle currently was.

It wasn’t accidental, he realized.

It was purposeful.

Calisto’s reaction time was off just by a fraction of a breath as he regained focus on the road ahead of him. Suddenly, it seemed like the dark interstate was empty, but for his car and that SUV just inches from his bumper.

He missed his exit because of the distraction.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Another one was coming, but not for another ten miles or so.

His right hand itched to leave the wheel, wanting to reach out to the side and grab his phone, and make just one call to the only person who mattered to him.

He didn’t dare loosen his grip.

Even the stars were hiding in the sky.

He glanced into the mirror again, careful to avoid the direct glare of the high beams, and quickly noted how the SUV swerved to the left as if they were going to pass him. There was no room to pass with him being in the left lane as it was.

But the action of the SUV swerving was enough to make Calisto react out of nothing but instinct as he forced his own car to the right.

Maybe it was a little bit of hope, too.

Hope that whoever was behind him was no one he knew. Hope that whoever it was might be just another angry, stupid fool like him that was driving too fast on a rainy, dark night.

Calisto’s hope didn’t last long.

He felt the tires slip on the slick pavement as he slid into the right-side lane. There was no stopping the unmistakable twist of the rear-end when his car began to slide sideways. No matter how hard he pushed the pedal or straightened the wheel to bring his car out of the beginning of a tailspin, he couldn’t do it.

He had already lost control.

Suddenly, time slowed.

It seemed appropriate.

Calisto had just a few seconds of suspended breath and waiting to reflect over his time and choices. There was no flash of life before his eyes—just the knowledge that he had been a part of this world once, and that in itself was a mark left behind.

But he was still sorry.

It was the sight of black to his left that made Calisto turn his head. His car was almost halfway turned as the SUV came to pass at his side.

Hope left as the passenger window rolled down. Through the squiggly lines of water running down his window, Calisto could only see black staring back at him.

Black and a flash of brushed silver.

The plume of light was instant, and shocking. In the background, he caught a glimpse of the profile of the person shooting at him, but he was already reacting.

Calisto jerked the wheel of his car at the same time, forcing his car into a harder, faster spin that would probably turn his car over. He heard the bullet shatter glass a second before the roof of his car met pavement.

He wasn’t buckled in.

His shoulder hit the door, his leg crunched under a snapping wheel, and his head hit metal.

Calisto’s night turned even blacker.

*

Like someone had set a firecracker off beside his bed, Calisto jerked out of the nightmare with a shout dying in his throat. He blinked at the bedroom staring back at him, it was lit just enough by the bedside lamp for him to recognize the familiar space as his own.

The nightmare was always the same.

It never changed.

That was how he knew it was real.

It was a genuine memory that he had, one his brain continued to force him to relive every fucking time he closed his eyes. Sometimes, he fought against sleep just for the sake of not wanting to see those last few moments again.

Calisto had regular appointments with a specialist for his amnesia. Over and over, they asked the same thing.

Did he remember anything new?

His answer was the same.

No.

He didn’t remember anything within a seemingly two and a half year time span.

It was just … gone.

Like he had closed his eyes one night, and the next time he had woken up, his entire world had changed around him. The last memory he had, besides the dream of the shooting and accident, was of his mother and her home. He had been rifling through her papers, helping her organize some things so that it would be all done should something happen because of her heart disease diagnosis.

That was it.

Calisto didn’t know why, but it didn’t feel right to him. From the moment he understood that he had forgotten a giant chunk of time in his life, he knew he was missing something.

More than memories.

More than passing days and months.

More than conversations, family, burials, and business.

Something important was missing.

No one could tell him what it was.

They all looked at him like he was fucking crazy. The time that he was without in his memories had been filled in and tied with a neat little bow by those around him. He was smiled at and patted on the back as if to say, “There’s nothing else.”

There was something else.

There had to be.

Calisto fell back into the bed, chest heaving hard. He ran his fingers through his hair, and stared up at the ceiling. He wanted to know what was missing.

His uncle—Affonso—kept telling him not to focus on what he couldn’t remember, but to be grateful he was still alive. And he was—God he was.

But if he pressed Affonso for more, if he asked about specific times leading up to the accident that took away his memories, his uncle became irritated and despondent at the same time.

Calisto held great affection for the man who had stepped in to raise him after his father had died before he was even born. He respected Affonso. And so, he chose not to press his uncle on things that obviously bothered him.

Yet, he still wanted to know what and why.

Pushing up from the bed, Calisto swung his legs out and his feet hit the hardwood floor with a hard smack. He flinched—automatic reaction after months of agony with every little jostle—bracing for the pain in his leg to come hard and swift.

None did.

That broken femur had been hell.

Calisto took in the time flashing on the digital clock sitting on the nightstand. 2:00 AM blinked back at Calisto.

He didn’t even have to look at it to know what time it was.

It was always the same damn time every night.

The dream came like a warning, and a reminder. He pinched the bridge of his nose, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder. While his broken femur had healed with no lasting repercussions, he couldn’t quite say the same thing about his shattered shoulder. The doctors had already warned him that another surgery was probable in the future, if the pain and lack of mobility continued.

Nerve damage was suggested.

Calisto brushed it all off.

He could still drive a car and shoot a gun.

That was enough.

Next to being able to command and control men, driving and shooting were the only things Calisto felt were needed for his job as consigliere to Affonso, of the Donati crime family.

Knowing that sleep wasn’t going to find him again anytime soon, Calisto pulled on a pair of sleep pants and a T-shirt. He grabbed the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, and headed out of the bedroom. He traveled down the long length of the hallway that led to the main floor of his condo. It wasn’t three days after the doctors took the cast off his leg, and Affonso told him to head back to his own place.

Calisto didn’t mind going.

Affonso’s wife—Calisto winced, correcting himself—his new wife, Emma, was pregnant and his uncle was strange about the woman and the upcoming baby. There were little to no details shared, except for the fact that the pregnancy was high-risk, and the less stress the woman was put under, the better.

Calisto tried a few times to get a conversation in with Emma. If his uncle didn’t interrupt and divert him to something else, then Emma herself did so with a forced smile and a vague excuse of needing to do things.

It made him think that perhaps he had done or said something to offend Emma before the accident, and that was why she kept a distance from him.

Calisto tried not to mind—she wasn’t his wife, after all—but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know her at all. He couldn’t remember the deal Affonso talked about between their family and the Sorrento family in Vegas that brought the two together in an arranged marriage. She was his uncle’s wife, and that meant she was family to Calisto. At the very least, he thought they should be friends.

Before long, Calisto found himself standing on his private balcony with a burning cigarette dangling between his fingers. The cold September air barely registered to his senses, except to wake him up a little more. He took a heavy drag, and stared at the inky sky, dotted with stars above.

Not black.

Not like that night.

Despite the difference, his thoughts still went straight back to the nightmare. He only called it that because it came when he slept, and never when he was awake. But given the details he knew about his accident, never mind how he felt when he was in the midst of the nightmare, he knew it was real.

But why did it keep coming back?

Why repeat, when there was nothing new to see?

Why wouldn’t his brain give him something else to remember?

Frustrated, Calisto balanced his arms over the railing and bent down so that his head was resting on them.

You can’t force the memories, they said.

Your situation is abnormal, the doctors explained.

It may never come back, Calisto, his uncle warned.

A deep ache settled in the middle of his chest, making Calisto straighten to a standing position once again. He rubbed at the spot, willing the pain away.

Whenever he found himself overly irritated with his lack of memories, that nagging pain returned right where his heart still beat. A reminder that he was alive and there for the moment, and nothing more.

Be grateful, he was told.

Goddamn.

Didn’t they understand he was still missing something?

Calisto looked back up at the sky, taking in the differences of its current beauty compared to the bleak undertone it held in his nightmare.

When was it that he first noticed the sky in his recollection of that night?

Closing his eyes, Calisto could almost bring back the sensations he felt when he was in the midst of the memory.

All the anger and sadness.

Rain hitting his face.

Light and metal.

Calisto opened his eyes once more—the church. He had been at church, refusing his priest time for something the man wanted from him.

Father Day had long been a confidant of Calisto’s—even when he was young boy. He hadn’t gone to see the priest beyond the occasional Sunday service that he fit in between work and rehab.

Calisto wondered if that’s what he had been missing. Was his brain trying to tell him to go back to the start of that night, to the place where an end had just begun for him, so that he could find what was missing?

He didn’t know.

But he was going to find out.

*

Calisto swung the key ring around and around his finger before dropping the set into his pocket. At the front door of his condo, he grabbed three things resting in the glass bowl set atop a mahogany side-table.

His wallet.

A black rosary with a silver cross.

And a casino chip.

He’d woken up from his accident with all three of those things waiting for him on the bedside table. None of the nurses had any explanation as to where they’d come from, except for his wallet and the rosary. Those had been inside the pants they cut off him before his first surgery. The poker chip had apparently shown up in his room over the course of his short coma.

It didn’t escape Calisto’s notice how the rosary reminded him of two things. One was the rosary of his priest, which was very similar in design. But Father Day’s rosary sported a gold cross instead of a silver one. The second thing was the intricate, realistic tattoo Calisto had at some point, gotten inked on his arm, wrist, and hand.

No one had any explanation for that, either. The tattoo was relatively new, if a few months old, considering the ink was still a heavy black and there was only a slight bit of fading on the cross where it had been permanently tattooed on his palm.

Nonetheless, the rosary provided Calisto with memories from his younger years. It resonated a sense of fondness he held for his religion, for God, his mother’s unwavering faith, and the priest who had once let a small child play with a rosary while his uncle confessed.

So, instead of packing the item away, he stuffed it into his pocket and kept it close throughout the day. It gave him a sense of being grounded to his life, despite the fact he was missing so much of it.

The poker chip, however, was a different story.

Calisto flipped the chip with his thumb. He watched it spin in the air, and fall back into his grasp easily. The name embossed on the chip belonged to a hotel in Las Vegas. He’d checked one day when he was bored, only to find the hotel was owned by Emma’s father.

Emma—his uncle’s wife.

Affonso was always quick to pass over the details of Las Vegas—and the marriage that followed—whenever Calisto asked. He still wasn’t even sure if he had also gone to Vegas when Affonso did, but he assumed that he had, considering he had a poker chip, and people assured him that he had, in fact, gone to Vegas.

It probably came from his stay.

But why that casino?

Why this chip?

Calisto wasn’t the type of person to hold onto things for no reason. The chip had to have meant something to him in a private way, especially considering how insignificant it seemed.

Was it insignificant?

His mind drew a blank.

His chest grew tight.

Each time he thought about something like the poker chip, Calisto was left with more questions than answers. No one ever questioned him on the poker chip.

Calisto didn’t bother to ask others about the chip because from what he knew, he had been the only person left behind in Vegas to keep an eye on Affonso’s soon-to-be bride. How would they know the significance of the chip or why he had kept it?

They weren’t inside Calisto’s fucked up mind.

A mind that failed him daily.

Still, he kept the chip on him because like the rosary, it did something for him. Not quite the same thing as the rosary, but something just as important and poignant. Where the rosary almost set him back into a time that he could remember, when he held onto the poker chip, he was suspended.

Suddenly, unwaveringly, stopped in time.

The poker chip was nothing more than a simple item. A thing he must have picked up along the way, but decided to keep for one reason or another.

But it wasn’t an item that had been found on him.

It was an item that was brought to him.

Yet he knew—somehow—that he had been the one to have it first.

The tighter he held it in his palm, the better he felt. That was how he knew it was a part of that one piece he was still missing—a piece he just knew he had to look for.

His memories weren’t going to give it to him. No one else had the answers. It was something Calisto was going to have to do on his own.

Church seemed like a good place to start.

Calisto was just pulling out onto the highway when his phone rang in the cup holder. He wasn’t as nervous driving in a car now as he had been when he first started after the accident. Still, he now took more precautions when driving, and took the road slower no matter the weather. Keeping his eye on the road and one hand on the wheel, he reached for the phone and put it to his ear as he answered.

“Ciao?”

“Cal,” came the familiar greeting on the other end.

Calisto smiled. “Zio.”

“Beautiful day.”

“It’s not too bad for September,” Calisto agreed. “The leaves haven’t started falling yet.”

“I have nothing immediate today, correct?”

Calisto did a quick run through of Affonso’s meetings and business for the upcoming days. As his consigliere, it was Calisto’s duty to make sure Affonso ran on time everywhere he went. He was also his uncle’s middleman where la famiglia was concerned, keeping men happy, and everything peaceful. Calisto was the go-between for those wanting a seat in front of the boss.

“Nothing today,” Calisto said. “There is that meeting tomorrow with Dante Marcello and his wife.”

Affonso grunted something under his breath, clearly unhappy.

It wasn’t Dante that Affonso had the problem with, Calisto knew. It was the man’s wife. Calisto hadn’t even been aware Dante Marcello had gotten married, since his lost memories went back farther than even that event, but he had been quickly caught up to speed by Ray, Affonso’s underboss, when Dante called, wanting a meeting with Affonso.

But Dante’s wife … well, she was a special breed.

A Queen Pin, from what Calisto understood. The woman dealt drugs to the highest profile people she could get her claws into. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if it weren’t for the fact her Cosa Nostra Don husband allowed her to work within his own family, too.

Women were not to be involved in the business. Dante didn’t seem to believe he had to follow that rule where his wife was concerned.

Honestly, Calisto didn’t know what the damn problem was. The woman made money—a lot of it. She was good at her job, obviously. It wasn’t as if her husband had given her a button into the family, and she surely wasn’t like most other men’s wives.

The girl was a dealer—high-class, high-paid.

He just didn’t see the issue.

“Is she really as difficult as they say?” Calisto asked, chuckling.

“More so,” Affonso muttered. “She doesn’t seem to understand her place as a woman because she believes her position is just as good as a man’s.”

Calisto frowned at his uncle’s words. “Is that all you have a problem with, the fact she’s a woman in a position you think should belong to a man?”

“Entirely.”

That seemed … wrong.

Considering what Calisto had learned about this Catrina Marcello, she had more than proven she could pull her weight in the drug sector of the crime business.

The fact that she had a vagina hadn’t exactly hindered her.

“Even if she’s good at what she does?” Calisto asked quietly.

“Women are not meant to be in our business, never mind working alongside a man like she’s just as much of a boss as he is while cooking his food and sleeping in his bed,” Affonso replied frankly. “It’s … unnatural.”

Or perhaps Catrina and Dante Marcello’s ability to act as a husband and wife as well as a Don and Queen Pin side by side was just something that was out of Affonso’s realm of understanding. Calisto wasn’t sure if his uncle disapproved, or was simply confused about the dynamics between the man and woman.

It wasn’t like it mattered.

Another man and woman’s choices were not everyone else’s business.

If it worked for them, who cared?

“Do you want me to cancel the meeting tomorrow? I can make some kind of excuse for you that Dante will find acceptable, but only if I give him a bit of notice. That, or I can go in place of you. I’ve known him for years—he would be comfortable with me showing in your place.”

Affonso hummed and hawed before finally saying, “No, he’ll have a fit and say it was disrespectful of me.”

Which it would be.

Dante wouldn’t be wrong to call Affonso out on it.

Shirking a meeting with another boss never ended well, really. It certainly wouldn’t help Affonso’s case, given that Dante was the boss of the Marcello Cosa Nostra, which dominated the streets of New York, and the Commission.

It wasn’t good for a man to piss off a man higher in power than himself, even if that man was twenty years his junior and had a wife he disapproved of.

Sometimes, in Cosa Nostra, it was not all about age and experience, but rather, the amount of power a man had. Dante Marcello had far more pull power in his pinky finger than Affonso had in his whole famiglia.

Calisto respected his uncle as a boss, but bigger families made the calls when the time came for it. And therefore, he had more respect for Dante when he sat down with the man.

“Smart choice,” Calisto said, trying to hold back the amusement in his tone.

“Still irritates me to no end,” Affonso replied. “No bother, that wasn’t my point for calling you this morning.”

“Then what was?”

“Where are you right now?”

Calisto checked the street he’d just pulled onto and rattled it off to Affonso. “Why?”

“Curious.”

“Heading west right now.”

“Why are you going in that direction?”

“I wanted to grab some breakfast and then go chat with Father Day,” Calisto said, hoping his uncle wouldn’t pry more.

He shouldn’t have bothered at all.

“Why?” Affonso pressed.

Calisto sighed, knowing damn well Affonso wouldn’t be pleased that he was seeking out answers to his lost memories again. “It’s been a while since I chatted with him.”

Affonso was quiet for a long while before finally saying, “You always were close to the priest. He’s been your confessor for …”

“Years,” Calisto finished for his uncle.

It was one of the reasons why Calisto wanted to go see Father Day. If things had been going on in his life, emotional upheavals or other things that made him question his own morals, Father Day would be the man Calisto went to.

He didn’t have the first clue if that’s what had been happening to him leading up to his accident, but without a doubt, his mother’s death would have been difficult on him. It was now—he couldn’t even remember her passing.

Father Day should have answers for at least some questions Calisto found himself wondering about on a daily basis.

Affonso cleared his throat, bringing Calisto out of his thoughts.

“I was hoping he could fill in a few blanks for me, especially about my mother,” Calisto said.

“You know how your mother died. Her heart gave out because of her disease. We visited the grave, Cal.”

Calisto rapped his fingers on the steering wheel, hearing the annoyance in Affonso’s tone as clear as day. Each time this subject was brought up between them, Affonso became irritated and cold. It was almost as if he wanted Calisto to simply forget about it all and move on with what he had left.

He just couldn’t do that.

“Not Ma, exactly,” Calisto said. “More me. I want to know about me during that time.”

Affonso grunted, and a glass clinked on the other end of the line. “You were … distraught.”

That sounded right.

But it still felt like a lot was left out.

“I think …” Calisto’s brow furrowed as he wondered if he should admit to the one memory he knew he had leading up to the accident.

“What, my boy?”

Affonso’s gentle question made Calisto think that his uncle was simply irritated with his questions because maybe he wanted him to be better. Happy, even. And Calisto was focusing on things that were no longer important because they had already happened.

So, he chose to tell him.

“I think I was at the church that night,” Calisto said.

“You were there earlier in the day. The Irish, remember?”

Calisto knew what his uncle was talking about, but remembering was a whole other matter. No, he didn’t remember having a meeting with the New Jersey Irish mob boss, but apparently he had and refused to allow anyone else to come as well.

Affonso blamed the accident that followed on the Irish boss.

A war was still raging between their families on the streets.

“Not then. Ray said that was in the daytime,” Calisto explained.

Affonso sucked in air through his teeth, and a chair squeaked. “Keep going.”

“I remember being there that night, zio. At the church. I was angry about something, and Father Day wanted to talk to me about it, but I pushed him off.”

“Cal …”

“And then I remember being on the highway right after, just before my car was run off the road.”

Silence answered his statements back.

Calisto wasn’t all that surprised at his uncle’s lack of a response. He had kept his only regained memory a secret from everyone, other than his private doctor who was charged with monitoring and recording any returning memories he might have.

It just didn’t feel normal for Calisto to be like he was, so overturned, unbalanced, and confused over one memory that he didn’t understand. He wanted to, and when he did, he planned on opening up to others about it.

“And that is all you have remembered?” Affonso asked.

The question was posed quietly, but it still rang with an undercurrent that Calisto couldn’t quite decipher.

“That’s all,” Calisto confirmed.

Affonso was quiet for a long while.

A heavy weight rested on Calisto’s shoulders the longer he was forced to wait for a reply from his uncle. Affonso was so adamant that Calisto leave what was behind him in the past where it belonged. He repeatedly assured him that nothing was important enough for him to be chasing it when he could be moving forward in his life.

Calisto couldn’t agree.

His mind was saying there were things he needed to know, or he wouldn’t be able to let his curiosity go entirely. His heart felt different every single day that he walked around in a dazed bubble, wondering where in the hell his life was.

Because this didn’t feel like his life.

Calisto knew it was, but it was still missing something. He was without an important piece to his puzzle, but he didn’t even know what that piece was.

How could he explain that?

He felt crazy!

“Cal?” Affonso said.

It took Calisto far too long to realize his uncle had said his name at least three times. While his focus was on the road he was driving down, his attention was somewhere else entirely.

Somewhere on a lost piece of him.

“Yeah, zio?”

“That night—right before—it’s all you remember?”

Calisto scowled. “Didn’t I just say that?”

“I wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

“Yes, obviously. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be trying to find out more.”

Affonso chuckled dryly. “I suppose.”

“I know you want me to focus on the future,” Calisto said quietly. “And to leave all that alone so that I can be happy.”

“Of course, Cal.”

“I need to know what I’m missing, zio.”

Affonso sighed heavily. “Oh, Calisto.”

“What?”

Didn’t the man understand?

“You’re missing nothing,” Affonso said, firm and sure. “Absolutely nothing.”

That couldn’t be true.

Calisto still felt far too empty.

Alone, even when he wasn’t.

That was something.

And something wasn’t nothing.

*

Calisto balanced a bag of bagels and muffins in one hand, a coffee in the other, and bit the rim of his own to-go cup of coffee as he used his back to push the church doors open. He figured that since he was planning on grabbing something to eat on his way over to visit Father Day, and he knew the man spent early morning to late at night at the church, the priest might appreciate a fresh coffee and food to go with it.

No doubt, Father Day brought his own meals, but it was the nice thing to do. People were always more willing to talk when their hands and mouths were filled with something.

The front hall of the church was empty, but that wasn’t unusual for a Tuesday morning. Unless a wedding was happening, the church was typically devoid of parishioners throughout the week, except for Wednesdays, Sundays, and the occasional Saturday service or funeral. Their church wasn’t a large congregation, either, so Father Day was capable of running and caring for the place himself with a few volunteers who came in to clean and such.

Calisto called out for the priest as he walked into the main hall, only to find the pews empty and the altar just as vacant. Unfortunately, with the rim of the coffee cup still in his mouth, it came out as a muffled shout that didn’t make much noise at all.

He stuck the bag of food under his arm, grabbing the coffee out of his mouth.

“Father Day?”

Nothing.

Calisto’s call echoed back to his spot.

Usually, the priest would be in the main hall, sitting in one of the front pews, praying or going over papers. Or, he might be up on the altar, preparing another sermon. He had an office in the back of the church, along with the confessional room and another two private quiet rooms for people to use during funerals or weddings.

But the priest rarely stayed shut away in his office.

Calisto remembered him saying once that anything he could do behind a desk, he could do sitting in a pew or standing at the pulpit.

Careful not to drop the coffees on the carpeted aisle between the pews—as it was the only place in the church with carpeting—Calisto made his way toward the back of the church. He called for Father Day a few more times, still not receiving any response.

Something strange settled in Calisto’s stomach.

A weight dropping.

Father Day would never leave his church unattended. If he weren’t available, or gone from the parish, he would lock it up. Yet, Calisto had found it unlocked and all the lights above were on.

It wasn’t right.

Father Day’s office was at the very end of the back hallway. From the very mouth of the hall, Calisto instantly knew something was wrong.

The priest’s office door was opened just a crack.

Father Day would never leave his door like that—it would be either opened all the way, signaling he was available for anyone to walk in at any time should they need to, or closed entirely to say he was busy or with someone.

Never cracked.

Calisto, instinctively, picked up his pace. He didn’t realize his hands had started trembling until a bit of hot coffee splashed on his fingers from the opening on the cover.

He barely felt a thing.

Without a thought, he kicked the office door open.

The bag of bagels and muffins fell from his arm. Coffee spilled to the floor.

Calisto took a step back from the sight in the office, disbelieving and unsure all at the same time. He watched as the brown, murky color of the spilled coffee seeped along the hardwood floor of the office, mixing in with where a trail of red had pooled right in the middle of the floor.

That trail of red led up to where it was dripping down from an oak desk.

Calisto swallowed.

His fists clenched hard enough that his fingernails broke the skin of his palm.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Slow and steady, red droplets fell.

Sickness filled Calisto’s throat.

He’d seen dead bodies before.

He killed before.

This didn’t feel the same at all.

The office looked like a tornado had gone through it. A small table was overturned. Knickknacks had been tossed around, as had books from the shelves on the right wall. The window curtains behind the desk were half ripped down, and drawers had been pulled out and the contents strewn from the desk.

Calisto took another step back, wanting to put more distance between himself and something that seemed entirely too surreal to be true.

It was too late, because his eye had caught the form slumped over the desk. All that blood had stained papers, folders, and the collection of white candles on the very edge. A large spray of blood had also caught the wall off to the left, coating pictures and framed articles.

Jesus Christ.

That much blood …

That much couldn’t be a gunshot.

Calisto would be able to see the wound if it were.

No, he could see plainly—pained as he was—exactly what had caused Father Day’s death. The large, morbid red staining at the collar and shoulders of the priest’s robes spoke of a slit throat. The fact that so much blood had come from it meant that death wasn’t instant, his heart had kept beating for a short while, and he probably died from bleeding out.

Calisto wished in that moment that he hadn’t come.

This was not the way he wanted to remember his priest.

This was not what he came here for today.

His gaze scanned the office again, taking it and the mess in. Despite his shock and pain, he took note of the fact there didn’t seem to have been a struggle between Father Day and whoever had attacked him. Calisto took that to mean the priest must have trusted the individual enough to feel safe in their presence.

A few items on the floor caught Calisto’s eye, too. Some rested on top of the pooling blood, meaning the room had most likely been ransacked after the attack.

What was more disconcerting was the wallet on the desk, and the golden cross still hanging on the wall.

Things that were valuable, or might have value, had been left behind.

A robbery with no theft?

Unlikely.

Calisto didn’t like what his thoughts were leading to, but what else could he think? The place looked staged, Father Day had obviously trusted his attacker, and it looked like Calisto was the only person who was showing up to the church that day.

And Affonso had known …

Swallowing hard, Calisto didn’t want to think it was related, but his heart wouldn’t let the nagging idea go.

There was nothing to know, his uncle had said.

Nothing.

Would Affonso kill a priest?

His own priest?

Was there something worth hiding—something more valuable than the life of a holy man?

Calisto didn’t want to even consider it.

But he already had.