WHEN I WAS A CHILD, my mother would take me to Mass every Sunday.

I remember being fascinated by the priests in their solemn robes, the beautiful stained-glass windows, the vaulted ceilings. I recall hard-backed pews and squirming in them as I listened to the ancient Latin words wash over me while my mother sat enraptured every week, understanding every word of it since she had once been married to a classics professor before meeting my father. She had been widowed, not divorced, which allowed her to take the "Corpus Christi" or the body of Christ. If I close my eyes now, I can still taste the Eucharist wafer, still smell the incense, see the wax of the candles as they glow in a dark room full of hushed prayers.

If I close my eyes now, I am back in that magnificent cathedral, doing my best not to let the whispered gossip drown out the priest's intonations. The nonni would murmur in Italian, saying phrases like she killed her first husband to be with a criminal or that poor child, who knows how he will turn out with parents like those? When I tried to talk to their bambini, their parents would be dragged away as if I had a disease, something infectious like chicken pox. Sometimes I wished I were sick, just because illnesses had cures, vaccines. A soiled reputation and a set of criminal parents did not.

When I confronted my mother about the rumours, she neither denied nor confirmed them, only folding me into her arms and saying, "Nos eos non egemus, meus filius."

We don't need them, my son.

And I wanted so desperately and completely to believe her, did my best to take her words as gospel, around the growing crack that had split open my heart and kept on widening. That is exactly how I feel right now, with Christina standing in front of me, with her brown eyes wide and expectant: trying to patch up my heart with hollow words, fighting the judgment I know is to come.

"Why did you stay, Christina?" I say lowly, evenly. "And why the hell won't you leave?"

She doesn't flinch, doesn't cry, doesn't break down. She barely blinks at me as she maneuvers her body onto the counter, crossing one leg over the other and I am momentarily distracted by the realization that her nails are painted the same colour as her mouth was last night: a stark, blinding red. Right before I kissed her and wiped it off.

Finally, she breaks into my recollection and speaks. "I think you need to ask someone else that question, Antonio. I just follow orders."

I suck in a breath like I've been shot. Maybe it would feel better if I had been. This girl is nothing like I expected in all the best and worst ways possible. "Sweetheart, who the hell are you working for?"

Is it the FBI? Is that why her ex was there last night—she texted him? Maybe this is some long undercover sting for her to take down my business...

Now she does blink, rapidly, her fluttering lashes hiding her brown eyes from me. "What do you mean?"

"You only do as you're told." I take a step closer to her, watching her lips part wordlessly. "But who is telling you what to do, Christina Martell?"

"Notre père dans le ciel," she answers without hesitation. The French words, as well as their meaning, surprise me, but it is close enough to Italian and Latin that I can understand it: Our Father in Heaven.

"Deo, me adiuva," I mutter beneath my breath.

Though I have not thought of God in years, have not bothered to utter any prayers until now... I need some kind of divine interference because I have a feeling that I had highly underestimated Christina Martell. I have a feeling that I had thought there was far more to her than the information I had originally gleaned from a dating profile and a carefully curated dossier. I almost wish she had told me she did take her orders from some higher-up at Quantico. Because... God? How could I fight, how could I escape God?

"I see," I say, my voice audible this time. "Do you still want to know why I brought you here, Christina Martell?"

She cocks her head at me, glossy waves of dark hair falling onto one shoulder. "Why do you keep saying my full name?"

"One question at a time, sweetheart."

I had moved closer to her without realizing it. I should move back—it would be the polite thing to do. But I am done being polite, done playing games when the truth is about to come out. Reaching for the mug of coffee next to her thigh without really meaning to drink it, I place my other hand on the cold stone next to her. Just to see how she would react.

And her gaze drops momentarily to the placement of my hands, one of them gripping the counter inches from her leg before she met my eyes again. "Then please just tell me... why did you bring me here?"

I sigh, taking a sip of coffee. "You're not who you think you are, Christina. You are... Did your mother ever tell you who your father is?"

She freezes, her body paralyzing with fear. Somehow I don't think she would normally freeze, but I really have pushed her into a corner. She can't back up. She can't move forward because it would mean touching me. I should let her go...

"What does my father have to do with anything?" From the shrill tone of her voice, I can tell it is a soft spot for her. Sadly, I can relate. "He is dead."

"Yes." I suck in a deep, ragged breath, then exhale. "But he made you the heir to his—"

The window in the kitchen explodes into thousands of glass shards.

I have no time to process anything that he's said about my father or my family when all of a sudden, broken glass is strewn across the floor and Antonio has pulled me off of the kitchen counter and tackled me to the ground, landing on top of me. Breathing heavily, I try to brush the hair from my face but my arms are pinned to my sides by a six-foot-five Italian guy. I shift, attempting to roll over on the hardwood so that my nose isn't smashed against the ground. The window was broken on the other side of the kitchen, so all the broken glass is across from us, not near us. My breaths come in shallow pants, all of it too much to take in. First, the conversation. Now... now, this.

"Let me go," I say quietly, my heart thudding against my rib cage with so much force that it feels like it might shatter. For some reason, even though he is right on top of me, I think that he might not have heard so I repeat myself more loudly. "Antonio. Let. Me. Go."

"No," he says simply. "I don't know if the danger has passed."

"What was that? A brick or something?" I snap, wanting to turn over so that I can see his face, feel less like a damsel in distress. In his arms, safer as it might be, I feel really, really... small. Helpless. Weak, caged beneath his much larger frame as I am. "Antonio?"

He is staring at the wall directly opposite the window. A red dot, like that of a laser beam, is centred on it. Is that...

"A sniper," he says calmly. How is he so calm? Of course, he's calm. Lucas's words from this morning echo in my head: he's a criminal! "I need to get out of here."

I need to get out of here. Not we need to get out of here.

"What—What about me?" My voice is muffled when he carefully eases his weight off of me, accidentally putting his hand over my mouth with an apologetic "excuse me."

I can't excuse him. We just got shot at, for Christ's sake!

"Christina, you're barely associated with me. I trust you, no one is trying to kill you." He pushes himself into a planking position, his body hovering inches from mine. "What you need to do is go home, and pretend last night never happened, and you'll be just fine, okay? I promise you."

Antonio looks down at me, his grey eyes boring into mine with an intensity that forces me to trust him. His forearms are on either side of my shoulders, the heat and scent of his skin cloaking me: cloves and some sort of musk--masculine, oddly reassuring.

I swallow hard, my chest rising and falling against his. "Okay. But your promises had better be unbreakable."

That's a foolish line to spout when I know that only God's vows are unbreakable. That people are the ones who keep damaging those covenants.

"I don't say things I don't mean."

Somehow that line itself seems to be a double entendre and I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to understand what is going on. When my eyes open, Antonio's body no longer covers mine and I feel naked, vulnerable, and unprotected. He carefully avoids being in the line of sight of the sniper who must be shooting from the window and backs slowly out of the kitchen. I follow him, feeling awkward as we make it to the relative safety of the living room and relax. Until a noise registers in my brain.

"This is the FBI! Open up!"