Vow of Obedience
Cavalieri Della Morte
Brianna Hale
Copyright © 2019 by Brianna Hale
Published by Brianna Hale
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The following story contains mature themes, strong language, and sexual situations. It is intended for adult readers.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
The Cavalieri Della Morte
The Authors
Blurb
Prologue
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Geraint
Branwen
Epilogue
A Sneak Peek at Martyris
Prologue
The Cavalieri Della Morte Series
Blurb
Don’t cry, little girl. Daddy will forgive you.
The job was meant to be impossible, even for the Cavalieri Della Morte. Kill Adelmo Lange, the reclusive crime boss who murdered my brother.
Until her. Adelmo’s daughter.
Branwen has taken a vow of silence to atone for her sins, but I don’t need her to say a word. She’s the bait that’s going to draw my target out. Now she’s going to swear another vow.
A vow of obedience. To me.
Together, we’re going to take down her father. If she does exactly what I tell her, she may even escape with her life.
Do as daddy says.
There are moments when, whatever the position of the body, the soul is on its knees.
VICTOR HUGO
Prologue
Geraint
San Antonio, Texas
Blood. It washes from my skin as if the heavens themselves are absolving me. Rain falls on saints and sinners alike tonight, but on the day of reckoning, only the virtuous will be raised up to paradise. The wicked will be cast down into the fiery pits of hell and burn forevermore in untold agony.
What a load of bullshit.
I wipe my knife clean on the dead man’s jeans. Looking up through the rain, I see what has put me in a godly frame of mind tonight: a great white cross mounted atop the high brick wall next to me. I’ve killed a man behind a Catholic church.
Snorting with amusement, I stand up and sheath the hunting knife inside my jacket. I really made a mess of my hit. Normally, it would have just been a slit throat—fast and, I don’t know, painless? Probably not. But less painful than what I did to him. Both Achilles tendons cut so he couldn’t run. Tongue sliced out so he couldn’t scream. Several well-placed stab wounds meant he bled out slowly, watching me smile while I watched him die.
This one was personal. You blab about a job, Arthur wants you dead. It’s as simple as that. I have no problem killing people who can’t keep their mouth shut, especially with Trefor preparing to go undercover among Adelmo Lange and his men. This will send a message to anyone else who thinks of double-crossing the Cavalieri Della Morte.
Don’t fuck with us. We fuck back. Harder.
“And don’t insult my mother,” I say to the corpse, giving it a kick for calling me a son of a bitch. “It might have been quicker if you didn’t insult my mother.”
The man’s face is blank and wet and shines in the light from a distant streetlamp. My mother never did anything wrong in this life and I won’t stand for her being insulted by fucking scum now she’s in the next.
As I walk away, I pull my hood up and give an ironic nod to the cross atop the wall. Someone will find the body in the morning and the location will make the news even more sensational. Brutal murder in the dead of night behind Catholic church. Desecration!
This is an old part of San Antonio where the churches are grand and the streets are quiet and empty at two in the morning in heavy rain. I round the corner and see a sign on the high wall: Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church and Convent. The sisters will be all tucked up in their beds, safe and sound, where all good girls should be.
I’m nearly back to my car when something comes tearing out of a side street and barrels into my chest. It struggles but I hold it fast, wondering what small and angry thing is attacking me. I hear a whimper and feel rib bones and wet cotton beneath my fingers.
It’s a girl.
No. It’s a woman. She can’t be much more than eighteen but terror has made her childlike. Her eyes are wide as she stares up at me and her pallor is startlingly white against her straggled black hair.
“Why, hello. Where did you come from?” Her dress is soaked through and clinging to her skin. She has no handbag and her feet are bare. Mud is splattered on her calves. Though she’s skinny, she’s not underfed, and her hair has seen a comb recently. Not a street kid. A runaway? Someone trying to hurt her? I look up and down the street but see no one.
She tries to pull away from me and then seems to give up, sinking down to her knees on the cracked sidewalk. Her arm slides through my grip until I’m holding onto her hand. She crosses herself shakily, her lips moving silently in prayer as she rocks back and forth.
What the hell?
I murdered a man not two hundred feet from here and I’m itching to get out of town. Arthur’s expecting me to report in. The rain continues to fall on us, and she’s so slight the heavy downpour could almost drown her. Her hand tightens in mine and she looks up at me with those big, scared eyes. Any sonova bitch finds her, he could do anything to her.
Ah, fuck.
I glance around and see the church, from the front this time. Soft light glows through the stained-glass windows, a warm, welcoming sight.
I know what the guys would say if they could see me now. That I’m a fucking idiot for putting my life in jeopardy for a stranger. That if this girl can’t keep herself alive then maybe she doesn’t have any business living.
That I only feel the need to do a good deed after seeing all this Jesus shit everywhere tonight.
But I’m not a believer and it’s not that. We’ve all got our weaknesses and girls on their knees is mine. Couldn’t leave one down there begging me silently, even if I had a gun to my head. I can spare exactly sixty seconds and then I’m out of here.
“Church it is,” I say, scooping the young woman into my arms. She barely weighs a thing. I shoulder through the creaky gate and find the door to the church is locked, so I kick it with my steel-toe boots. A booming sound echoes within. Fuck me sideways.
I just murdered a man behind this church and now I’m announcing my presence as clearly as if I’d climbed the tower and started ringing the goddamn bell.
There are sounds from within, shuffling footsteps approaching. The slide of a bolt and then the door opens a crack.
I keep my head bowed, peering through the gap from beneath my hoodie. “Found this girl. Needs your help.”
The door opens wider and I see a frail old woman in a thick black dressing gown and slippers, her white hair twisted up and pinned tightly. I can tell she’s a nun even though she’s not wearing a habit.
Her watery blue eyes fasten on the girl in my arms. “Oh, poor child. Bring her inside.” The nun turns away and disappears into the church. I consider dumping the girl on the doorstep and getting the hell away from this place, but she seems to have fallen into unconsciousness in my arms, her cheek resting against my shoulder. Too tired to run. Too tired to fight or even care what happens to her.
Inside, the church is quiet and warm and steeped in shadows. I can make out the pews and the altar at the far end, and off to one side is a row of burning candles. Votive candles, lit by those who’ve come to pray.
The nun takes me through to a side room that looks to be an office, and waves me over to a sofa against the wall. I place the young woman on the cushions and she makes a small sound before clutching at my jacket, as if reluctant to let me go. I smooth her dark hair back from her face. At least she’ll be safe here and the sisters will look after her until she’s strong enough to go back to wherever she came from. If she can go back.
When I straighten, I see the nun is eyeing my clothing and I wonder if she can see the dark stains of blood even on the black fabric. I wonder if she can smell it. My face is in shadows beneath the hood, but she looks me right in the eye.
“God sees everything you do, and He is merciful.”
It’s like she knows. Not about the murder, but that helping this girl is my first good deed in a long, long time. As soon as this nun hears tomorrow there’s a body behind the church, she’s going to know I did it. There won’t be much she can tell the police though, and by the time she talks, I’ll be over state lines. Six foot three or four. Caucasian. Didn’t say much, wore black, kept his face in shadows.
My eyes land on the gold crucifix on the wall, the tiny, grim effigy of a slowly dying man. Untold suffering in this life, but that’s okay because the next life will be better. I never saw the comfort in that. I’ll take what I can get in this life.
I turn to leave, and take one last look at the girl. Her eyes are closed, dark lashes resting against her pale cheeks. She’s so damn small and sweet and I feel the urge to snatch her up again and take her with me. Except where I’m going, she can’t come with me.
The nun calls after me, “I’ll pray for you.”
My footsteps sound through the empty church as I head for the door. “Yeah. Don’t bother.”
Geraint
New Orleans, five months later
“It’s Trefor, isn’t it. He’s dead.”
I say the words flatly, holding back the flood of anguish that threatens to break through my icy control. Arthur watches me from behind his desk, his face thrown into strange relief by the lamplight. His eyes are hard and cold. No different to any other day but now, more than ever, I wish I could read his mind.
Instead of answering, he passes me an ornate silver crucifix on a chain. It’s Trefor’s. Before that, it was our mother’s, and he wore it ever since she was killed. I rub my thumb over the shiny metal, remembering all the times I saw it slung around his neck. My baby brother.
Dead.
I close my hand so tight around the crucifix I can feel the metal imprinting on my flesh. When we got put into care, I swore I’d always protect him. I failed him then and I’ve failed him now.
“His body?” I ask. Trefor would want a Christian burial with a church service. Something that honored what he believed.
“No body. Just that.” Arthur pulls a box out of a drawer and pushes it toward me. “And this.”
It’s a small box, about the side of a pack of cigarettes. It sits ominously on the empty expanse of desk and I know whatever it contains isn’t going to be fucking pretty. I reach out and pull the lid off.
It’s a finger, tattooed with a crucifix between the first and second knuckles. The flesh is torn and pink, with shards of shiny, white bone.
Arthur doesn’t say I’m sorry. He doesn’t say, I wish there was something I could do, or, He’s in a better place now. Despite what Trefor believed, all that’s bullshit. Arthur knows it, and I know it. The only thing that’s worth anything now is blood.
Every drop belonging to the man who killed Trefor.
It’s all going to be mine.
“Lange,” I growl. It’s not a question. Adelmo Lange has been a thorn in the ass of the Cavalieri Della Morte for years now, and he’s as shady as he is dangerous. He owns Avallonis, a fortress-like compound in California’s wine country. Six weeks ago, Trefor infiltrated that place on Arthur’s orders. He was a new face Lange wouldn’t connect to us, and Trefor was so keen to prove himself.
I’ve wanted to go after him for weeks but Arthur made me sit tight. Trefor was undercover, and the Cavalieri charging in would only get him killed. Now he’s dead anyway, and a finger is all I have to bury.
I see my brother as a fourteen-year-old boy, the day I had to leave the system. There were tears in his eyes he was ashamed of, and he was angry with me that I was leaving him behind. But I had no choice. I was eighteen and I was going into the Army, while he was stuck in care. Life would get better for him once he got out of the system. I promised him that. He just had to hold on a bit longer.
His life never got any fucking better.
“Let me be the one to take Lange out,” I growl.
Instead of answering, Arthur reaches into his desk and pulls out a bottle of whisky and a couple of glasses. He takes his time, unscrewing the cap and pouring two measures, then passing me a glass. I throw the whisky back in one mouthful and feel it burn down my gullet. I want it to burn harder. I want to go up in flames and burn everything down around me.
“Sit down, Geraint.”
I sit, though my body is clenched tight. Nothing good ever happened after being told to sit down.
Arthur pours us more whisky and leans back in his chair with his glass in his hand. “There’s no one I can send with you. No way to get you into the compound. Lange will be expecting retaliation.”
I narrow my eyes at Arthur. He better not be fucking saying no. “What about the rest of his family?”
“Heavily protected.” Arthur flips open a tablet and shows me a series of photographs of a wealthy, stylish family. The men are in sharp suits while Mrs. Lange wears heavy gold jewelry and designer dresses. “His wife never leaves the compound. His sons don’t go anywhere without six security guards. And his daughter… Who the fuck knows where Branwen Lange is. She disappeared months ago.”
My gaze snags on the photograph, a high school girl in a graduation gown. Her black hair is styled into a neat bob, there’s a silver crucifix around her neck, and she’s smiling.
I snatch the tablet up, remembering that night in San Antonio. Those big, dark eyes looking up at me. The quivering lower lip.
It’s her. I had a Lange spawn in my arms and I didn’t even know it. I could have wrung her fucking neck right then.
Arthur is eyeing me curiously and I hand the tablet back. “She’s in a convent in San Antonio. Or she was, five months ago. She ran right into me after I took out my hit, and I dumped her there.”
He nods. “Find her. Use her. Kill him.”
All the tension leaves my muscles and I feel a sharp pain in my hand. Opening it, I see the crucifix has left an angry red imprint in my flesh. If Arthur had told me to stay away, I would have, no matter how much it hurt not to avenge Trefor. My loyalty isn’t easily won, but Arthur has earned it, one hundred times over. He’s my boss, but he’s more like a fath
er and I respect him a whole load more than I did my real old man, and any man since who’s tried to rule my ass. In the Army, there was a fuckload of them, all worthless shits.
But not Arthur Calthorpe.
It’s not Arthur’s fault Trefor died. It’s mine.
I kiss the cool metal crucifix, as I saw Trefor do so many times, then slip the chain around my neck and settle it beneath my T-shirt. Not for God, or Jesus, or the Madonna. For Trefor. Only for Trefor.
I shove the box with the finger into my pocket and head out of the office and to my car. It’s an eight-hour drive from New Orleans to San Antonio and I’m getting straight on the road.
I’m coming for you, Branwen Lange, and I’m going to get what I need from you. Even if I have to give you to your father piece by fucking piece.
Branwen
Dear Lord, forgive me for what I’ve done.
The cold stone floor is as hard as ice beneath my bare knees. I’ve been here for hours, praying silently, the rosary beads falling one by one through my fingers.
Forgive me. Forgive me.
I keep waiting for it to happen, like they say it will. For God’s love to fill me and for all my sins to be cleansed. If I repent, then He will forgive me.
When, though? I’m trying so hard to be sorry. I should kneel on a sharp stick tomorrow night. A few hours in severe pain. Yes. I think He would like that. It’s what I deserve.
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