Page 98 of The Business of Blood

He ignored me. “I could not bring the others here to face their Lord as they died.” He gestured to the life-sized crucifix hanging like a sword above the sanctuary. “But the Hammer makes a perfect offering. An eye for an eye. One of the same people who nailed our Lord to his cross will die upon it.”

I pinched my brow. “But wasn’t it technically the Romans who—?”

“He’s one ofthem, too.” Aidan made a dismissive gesture. “Half Italian and half Russian Jew.”

There was that word again.Them. It sparked a memory of what Aidan had referred to earlier.

I’m martyring them.

“Whoelsehave you visited vengeance upon? Who else did you martyr?” Why did I ask when I didn’t want to accept it?

When I already knew.

Crossing himself, he raised his arms to the crucifix as though making an ancient, Abrahamic offering.

“Answer me!” I demanded. “Did you kill Frank Sawyer? Katherine Riley? Did you make martyrs of them, as well?”

He didn’t have to say yes when he turned to face me. I read it all over him. I saw pride in his stance, in his secretive smile.

So many emotions flooded through me, I choked on them. Gagged. Struggled to draw in the life-giving breath I needed. I retreated a step, well aware of Jorah at my back. “They were innocent.”

“They were damned!”

“You do not know that. You are not the judge of their eternal souls.”

He swept his hand up at the cross. “Hetold me to send them to their reward.”

“You’re speaking madness!” I gasped. “Blasphemy. You cannot know what is in a man’s heart any more than you can know what a God thinks.”

“By hisactions, ye will know them.” He stepped closer, and I began to decipher what was behind the devotion in his eyes. Rage. Desperation. A lethal combination. “I knew their sins.”

Another hot tear tracked down my cheek. “We are all sinners. Will you kill everyone? Would you compel us to be obedient? Doesn’t that make you the devil?”

At that, his shoulders slumped. “Of all people, I’d hoped you’d understand me. You always have.”

“Ineverhave.” I didn’t understand why he’d kissed Mary when he loved me. I didn’t understand why he left me to join the church. And he was certainly making no bloody sense right now. Maybe he’d always been mad…and I’d been too naïve, too blind with love—to see it.

Perhaps he just made a sport out of breaking my heart.

“Do you remember the last time you were here?” he murmured softly. “When you tempted me? When you kissed me?”

I said nothing. He’d been just as culpable in that kiss as I, but now was certainly not the time to press such a point.

“Do you remember the little girl I held in my arms that day?” he continued. “All of nine?”

I did. I remembered the sadness in her eyes.

“Shewas Frank Sawyer’s temptation. And not his first. The man never fought his wicked urges as I do. He admitted that to me when I confronted him.” I saw the disgust written all over Aidan’s face. One mirrored in my own heart. “What if the child Agnes carries were a daughter? What if he’d turned his perversions for little girls to her?”

I had nothing to say to that.

“Frank confessed eventually.” Aidan turned from me to stare into the flames. “He begged, sobbed, and pleaded with me to take his weakness from him. To grant him absolution. And so help me, Fiona, Idid.”

Holy God. Despite my heresy, my own disbelief, I crossed myself. Aidan had unsexed Mr. Sawyer. He’d taken from him the weapon he used against a nine-year-old girl.

“You sent him to Hell,” I whispered.

“Like you said, I’m not the judge. I only do what I’m told. I sent Frank to St. Peter.” He gestured to the stained-glass window beneath which we had kissed. To the martyred man hanging upside down. “A man who knew his unworthiness. Who only received his reward in the afterlife.”