Page 33 of The Seventh Circle (The Lost Cantos #1)

LORENZO

Ilowered the gun, my hand shaking uncontrollably. Even in this, I was a coward. I couldn't follow Antonio into darkness. Not yet.

A soft tap came at my window—so faint I thought I'd imagined it. Then it came again, more insistent.

I crossed the room on unsteady legs and pulled back the curtain. Father Giuseppe's face looked back at me, his expression urgent. I unlatched the window and helped him climb through, bewildered by his presence.

"What are you doing here?" I hissed. "If my father finds you—"

"There's no time," he interrupted. "We must hurry."

"Hurry where? Antonio is dead. I killed him."

Father Giuseppe gripped my shoulders. "No, Lorenzo. Antonio lives."

The world tilted beneath my feet. "What?"

"The bullet struck his shoulder, not his heart. He lost consciousness from the shock and blood loss." Father Giuseppe's eyes burned with intensity. "Your father and Paolo believe him dead. I declared him so. But we must move quickly before someone examines the body more carefully."

Hope, terrible and fragile, bloomed in my chest. "He's alive?"

"Barely. I've hidden him in the groundskeeper's shed, but he needs a doctor."

My mind raced. "How did you get him out?"

"Paolo ordered two men to dispose of the body. I convinced them to let me handle it, to give Antonio a proper Christian burial despite his sins. They were eager enough to avoid the task." A grim smile crossed his face.

I grabbed my coat. "We need to get him away from here. If Father discovers—"

"He won't. He and Paolo have gone to inform Don Vitelli that tomorrow's celebration will proceed as planned. The house is minimally guarded."

I moved to my wardrobe, pulling out a bag I'd prepared days ago—money, documents, clothes. I added the gun, then turned to Father Giuseppe.

"Can Antonio travel?"

"Not far, not quickly. But I've arranged transport to a place you can hide while he recovers."

"Where?"

"The monastery at San Benedetto. The abbot owes me a favor. You'll be safe there until Antonio can travel further."

I hesitated. "And after that?"

Father Giuseppe's eyes softened. "That will be for you to decide. But you cannot stay in Italy. Your father will never stop looking for you once he realizes you've gone."

The gravity of what we were attempting settled over me. Leaving everything behind—name, wealth, position, country. Starting anew with nothing but each other.

"Let's go."

The groundskeeper's shed smelled of earth and oil. Antonio lay on a makeshift pallet, his face ashen, breathing shallow. Bandages wrapped his shoulder, already stained crimson. I fell to my knees beside him, taking his hand in mine.

"Antonio," I whispered. "Can you hear me?"

His eyelids fluttered. "Lorenzo?" His voice was barely audible.

"I'm here. I'm so sorry—"

"You had to." His fingers tightened weakly around mine. "You did what was necessary."

"We're leaving, right now. Father Giuseppe is helping us."

Antonio's eyes found the priest, standing in the doorway keeping watch. "Why?"

Father Giuseppe turned. "Because love is never a sin, no matter what men like your father believe, Lorenzo."

"Can you stand?" I asked Antonio.

He nodded, though I could see the effort it cost him. "Help me up."

Together, Father Giuseppe and I lifted Antonio to his feet. He swayed, leaning heavily against me, but remained upright.

"A carriage is waiting by the south gate," Father Giuseppe said. "The driver is a friend. He'll take you to the monastery tonight."

We moved slowly through the gardens, keeping to the shadows. Each of Antonio's labored breaths felt like a countdown—to discovery, to failure, to death. The night seemed alive with potential betrayal—every rustle of leaves, every distant voice from the house.

At the south gate, a plain carriage waited, a hooded lantern casting just enough light to see. The driver, face obscured by a hat pulled low, nodded to Father Giuseppe.

"This is as far as I can go with you," Father Giuseppe said, helping us into the carriage. "The monastery is four hours' journey. Brother Tomas will be waiting."

"How can I ever repay you?" I asked.

He smiled, sad but genuine. "Live well. Love truly. That will be payment enough."

He pressed a small leather bag into my hands. "Medicines for the journey. Keep the wound clean. Change the bandages every few hours."

"Thank you, Father," Antonio said weakly from beside me.

Father Giuseppe made the sign of the cross over us. "May God protect you both on this journey."

As the carriage pulled away, I looked back at the Benedetto compound one last time—the house that had been my prison, the family that had nearly destroyed everything I loved.

Antonio's head rested against my shoulder, his breathing uneven but steady. I held him close, feeling the heat of fever beginning to burn through him.

"Stay with me," I whispered. "Please stay with me."

His eyes opened, finding mine in the darkness. "Always," he murmured.

The carriage rumbled into the night, carrying us away from everything we'd known, toward an uncertain future. I didn't know if Antonio would survive his wounds, if we would escape my father's reach, if we could build a life together in some distant place.

But for this moment, he was alive. We were together. And that was enough to keep going, one breath at a time, into the darkness.

The world had shrunk to the space of a narrow bunk, tasting of salt and stale air. Two weeks. Fourteen days, a lifetime ago. Now, our sanctuary was this groaning metal belly of a ship, a floating tenement packed with the hopeful and the desperate, bound for America.

I dipped a cloth into the basin of murky water and wrung it out.

Antonio lay with his eyes closed, but I knew he wasn't sleeping.

He hadn't truly slept since Rome. He would lie for hours, staring at the rusted metal of the bunk above us, his face a still mask. At night, he would wake with a choked gasp, his hands clenched, but when I’d ask, he would just shake his head and stare at the dark, lost in a place I couldn't follow. He’d lost weight, the hard muscle of his arms and chest now leaner, the bones of his face more prominent.

His grief was a silent, wasting sickness.

The monasteries had shepherded us here, from San Benedetto to a Franciscan house in Genoa.

There, Sophia’s letter had worked its quiet miracle, securing us passage under false names with contrived documents.

If any asked, we were two close friends, Leonardo and Dante from Milano, fleeing poverty and setting out together for the promise of New York.

Antonio stirred as I began to clean the wound on his shoulder. It was a puckered, violent seam, but it was healing. He flinched, not from the pain of my touch, but from being pulled from the depths of his thoughts.

"You'll rub a hole right through me, Lorenzo." His voice was a low rasp, still weak.

I paused, the cloth hovering over his skin. The guilt was a constant, physical presence, a knot in my gut that never loosened. "Does it hurt?"

His good arm reached up, his fingers circling my wrist. His touch was gentle, a stark contrast to the memory of his hands in a fight, or the memory of my own hand holding a pistol. "The pain is from the hole. Not from the man who put it there."

His eyes opened, dark and clear. They held no accusation, only a profound weariness and something else—a deep-seated understanding that I had not earned.

He had spoken these words, or ones like them, a dozen times in the quiet of the monastery.

He forgave me. Intellectually, I knew this.

But my heart had not yet learned to believe it.

"I could have killed you." The words came out, a raw whisper I could not hold back.

"But you didn't." He squeezed my wrist. "Look where we are. You saved me. You saved us." He pulled my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, the same ones I had used to break other men. "You chose me. That's the only part that matters."

I finished dressing the wound, my movements careful.

He watched me, his gaze unwavering. In this cramped, foul-smelling space, surrounded by strangers, we had built a fragile world of our own.

It existed in these quiet moments—the shared crust of stale bread, the way he would lean his head against my shoulder, the silent pressure of his hand in mine.

"Tell me about the bookshop again," he murmured, settling back against the thin mattress.

It was our new rosary, a catechism of a future we prayed was real.

"It will have a green door," I began, the familiar words a comfort. "And a big window so the sun can get in. Shelves made from dark walnut, all the way to the ceiling."

"And a ladder on a rail," he added, a faint smile touching his lips.

"A ladder on a rail," I confirmed. "So you can reach the high shelves. We'll have philosophy. Poetry. The Greeks. Marcus Aurelius will have his own special place."

"In Italian?"

"And in English. You'll learn. Your mind is too sharp to be confined to one language.

" My own little carpentry workshop would be in the back, smelling of sawdust and shellac, a place where I could build things instead of breaking them.

A life measured in the grain of wood, not the splatter of blood.

The hope of it was a fragile warmth in the constant, damp chill of the vessel. We were sailing toward a new life, a place where our names meant nothing. Yet, the past was a shadow that stretched long, even across an ocean.

Later, we stood on the crowded deck, the wind whipping at our worn coats.

The raw, cold air was a relief after the stale confinement below.

All around us, faces stared west, etched with the same mixture of hope and fear that I felt gnawing at my own insides.

They were fleeing poverty, famine, persecution. We were fleeing my father.

I scanned the faces, a habit I couldn't break. Every man with a certain build, a certain hard look in his eye, sent a jolt of ice through my veins. Was that one of Paolo’s men, sent to follow?

Did that one watch us for a moment too long?

My father’s power was built on fear, but its foundation was his reach.

He had associates in every major port in Europe. Did he have them in New York, too?

"He won't stop looking," Antonio said, his voice quiet beside me, as if he’d plucked the thought directly from my head. "Your father doesn't forgive betrayals."

"He won't know where to look. He can't have known that Father Giuseppe helped us." The words sounded hollow, even to my own ears. A man like my father did not simply allow things to disappear.

Antonio’s gaze met mine. The fear was there, a dark undercurrent in his eyes. But there was determination, too. A resilience that I knew my privileged life had never required of me until now.

"Then we will have to be better at hiding than he is at seeking.

" He leaned against me, a small gesture of solidarity against the vast, unforgiving sea.

The ship groaned beneath us, a weary beast pushing through the endless grey waves.

New York. A new world. It felt like a prayer and a death sentence, all at once.

We were sailing toward our only chance at life, with the ghosts of our past trailing silently, hungrily, in our wake.

FIN

They paid in blood to escape their fate. They crossed an ocean to leave the inferno behind.

But what happens when the violence you fled is not just a place, but a part of who you are? In the desperate struggle for survival, the whispers of the past grow louder, and the instinct to fight, to rule, to sin... becomes a temptation.

Lorenzo and Antonio fought to save each other. Now, they must fight to save themselves.

Their journey continues in Book Two of The Lost Cantos:

The Echo of Sin