Page 2 of Blood Debt

He shrugs. “You’re not wrong.”

At least he’s honest.

I lean back into the steam. He strokes a hand down his soapy chest, rinsing slowly.

“You’re up for more?” he asks

I lift my chin. “Are you?”

His smile deepens. “Okay.”

He steps closer. And then he leans in.

Chapter 1 – Serafina

June 2025 Trastevere Military Cemetery, Rome

The bells toll once—and the cobblestones beneath my heels seem to flinch with the sound.

We move in silence.

Rows of black uniforms line the chapel stairs, gloved hands pressed to crisp trouser seams, polished medals glinting like guilt in the sun. A sharp gust of wind lifts the corners of my coat, but I don’t move to fix it. The cold doesn’t touch me.

Ahead of us, the pallbearers slow their pace. Six of them. All handpicked from Divisione Ombra—the covert branch of the Italian Internal Security Bureau. Our shadow unit. The same one that sent Isla to Australia.

The same one that sent her to die, seven months ago. Only her body was retrieved, charred beyond recognition.

The flag draped over her coffin is heavy with rainfall and years of service. Its tricolor edges hang stiff as iron.

No one speaks. Behind me, I hear the faint breath of someone trying not to sob. Another breath catches. Muffled. Stifled. A hand tightens around mine—I barely register it.

Luca.

He’s barely standing. Pale, hollow-eyed, skin waxy under the pressure of mourning. His jaw trembles as he stares straight ahead. Not at me. Not at the crowd. Only at Isla.

His fiancée.

The chapel doors creak open, and we step inside.

The light shifts, stained glass bleeding gold and crimson across the pews. The organ groans beneath someone’s touch—quiet, aching notes that don’t even try to fill the space. They simply exist, like us. Drowning under protocol.

We walk behind the coffin as it’s placed on the bier. Candles flicker against the stone columns, wax dripping down like quiet time. At the altar’s base, Isla’s photo rests inside a steel frame. Uniform pressed. Lips soft with a smile she never used around strangers.

She always saved that one for me.

The priest murmurs in Latin. The scent of frankincense curls through the air. And then I hear my name.

It’s time.

I step forward. My boots echo down the aisle— sounds that remind me I’m alive and she’s not. A microphone waits at the pulpit. I don’t touch it.

My fingers are ice.

I meet no one’s eyes.

“I met Agent Isla Conti nine years ago in Torino,” I begin, voice even but low. “She was faster than me. The kind of person who could break into your house and leave it cleaner than she found it.”

A soft sound ripples through the back—someone choking on a breath, or maybe trying not to laugh. That’s fine. Isla would’ve wanted both.