MLS Chapter 12
by Brie“You haven’t committed any sins yet, Señora. Even if I wanted to report you, I’d have no evidence to do so, wouldn’t I?”
“And since you’re not a priest, you aren’t bound to any duty to keep secrets either.”
Drawing a fragile line between them, Lorena calmed her swirling thoughts.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. The reason she didn’t want to face him was something else entirely.
“No, I’ll stop here.”
Lorena folded the words she had debated saying and buried them deep in her heart. In truth, there was something she had wanted to propose.
The moment she spotted him earlier in the chapel, commanding everyone’s attention, she had felt compelled to approach him. That was why she had followed him to the confessional.
Men like him, standing at the pinnacle of power, were rare. The number of revenge plans she could construct using him was countless. Up until she stepped into the confessional, she had been strategizing ways to win him over to her side.
But now, meeting him again, she realized something.
“Thank you.”
What she truly wanted was to say this.
“Thank you very much.”
To him, it might have been nothing more than an uncharacteristic moment of meddling, but to her, it had been salvation itself.
If he hadn’t shattered her illusions that day, she would still be living in that hell. She was grateful that he hadn’t just passed her by.
For the first time in a long while, her heart raced.
“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have survived. I wouldn’t have been able to start this new life.”
And so Lorena resolved not to reveal her identity to him. She was prepared to use anything and anyone if necessary, even herself. But the one man in this country who had helped her without any ulterior motive—she didn’t want to treat him like a mere chess piece.
“May God’s grace always be with you.”
“…”
“Deus ubique est.”
A Latin phrase meaning “God is everywhere,” paired with its darker counterpart: “There is no God.”
He might not believe in God’s existence, but today, Lorena prayed for him. She prayed that if he ever found himself in the same hell she had endured, God wouldn’t turn a blind eye to him.
“That’s all I wanted to say.”
Lorena hoped her sincerity would reach the heavens.
* * *
It was late afternoon, and the massive crowd that had filled the grand cathedral had receded like the ebbing tide.
As the bishop, returning to the priests’ quarters from the chapel, spotted a man emerging from the underground confessional, he froze in shock.
“Why are you coming out of there, Your Grace the Marquis? That’s the confessional!”
The man, who nonchalantly waved a hand, was not the sort of person who would ever engage in something like confession, even with a knife to his throat. The bishop, on the verge of fainting, stammered.
“A parishioner just left that confessional, so why were you… coming out of the same place?”
Instead of answering, the man posed an unrelated question.
“Who was she?”
“Excuse me?”
“Who was the Señora who just left? She seemed like a noble.”
The man’s tousled golden-brown hair caught the light filtering through the stained glass, shimmering faintly. Standing lazily under the holy glow with his lowered gaze, the man could have been breathtakingly divine…
“I’m asking you, old man.”
…if not for his irreverence.
The bishop sighed in despair. How could someone with the angelic name and visage of Gabriel be so blasphemous?
If only he clasped his hands in prayer and closed his eyes gently, he would look like a living statue of a saint. Alas, the man was a renowned unbeliever.
“She had her face covered with a veil, so I didn’t see her. And even if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”
The bishop’s voice dropped significantly, worried that passersby might overhear.
“It’s a grave sin for someone who isn’t a priest to hear a confession. Do you want to be dragged to the Vatican? You can’t stand that place, and surely you don’t want to relive the penances of the past.”
“Don’t push me too hard. I didn’t listen because I wanted to. Besides, she knew exactly who I was before she came in.”
“…What?”
The cathedral’s underground confessional booths were arranged in a row of three. However, the far-left booth should have been off-limits due to a defect: the metal grate separating priest and confessor had come loose at the hinges.
To the untrained eye, the flaw was invisible, and none of the priests at the cathedral were aware of it.
Unaware of how the confessional had been secretly used for months, the bishop could only make the sign of the cross and remain silent. He figured the woman must be as unhinged as the Marquis.
“Even so, it doesn’t absolve you of your sins, Your Grace. It seems it’s your turn to confess now. Please, go to the confessional. If you sincerely repent, I will recite the Act of Contrition.”
The man waved his hand dismissively, clearly uninterested, prompting the bishop to sigh deeply from his very core.
“…So, are you planning to chase after that Señora who just left?”
“No, I’m simply curious.”
There was something about her presence that lingered, even through the partition. He sensed she was strikingly similar to him in certain ways. He didn’t take her claim about returning from death literally, but that didn’t matter.
What lingered most was the soft sensation of her hand under his lips.
The smooth texture, the delicate nails, the slender fingers. The faint scent of peach that clung to her skin.
“I’m worried you’ll truly be struck by divine punishment someday. It’s not too late—please, go to the confessional.”
“If God wanted to punish me, He would have done so long ago. He should have never let me be born in the first place.”
“Shh, hush…!”
The bishop, aghast, interrupted him. He was the only person alive who knew the man’s secret—a secret no one else in the world could ever discover.
Gabriel had been born as the product of an ill-advised romantic indiscretion, the kind that even God would frown upon.
“If my father’s still alive and well, it must mean my sins aren’t enough to warrant divine punishment just yet.”
Thus, as someone born into immorality, he feared nothing. Stroking his chin, the man drew out his words with a leisurely air.
“What’s the harm in adding one more sin to the list…?”
“For heaven’s sake, Your Grace!”
“Don’t be so uptight. I’m just a little curious, that’s all.”
“Curious about what, exactly?”
The man began walking toward the cathedral’s entrance, and before he realized it, the bishop found himself trailing behind him.
The round shadow at the man’s feet deepened as he stepped into the rays of a sun leaning a handspan westward. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he murmured softly.
“Her voice was…”
“Excuse me?”
“Warm.”
His shaded reddish-brown eyes scanned the bustling street below.
“Like a cotton blanket dried in the sun on a clear, bright day. Clean and soft, almost fluffy.”
The things she had said with such a beautiful voice were remarkable, each word like a gem. Thinking of the audacious woman who had dared to wish him God’s grace, he suddenly found himself in an uncharacteristically good mood.
He hoped she would return to this place. Perhaps he should wait for her.
“Or maybe finding her myself wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”
There was no need to choose between the two—he could do both. Turning back to the bishop, his face brimmed with boyish mischief and unrestrained curiosity. Yet the words he spoke were far from innocent.
“Among the grand nobles with strained marriages, are there any Señoras with voices like soft cotton who are about to divorce? You know, *real* priest.”
The bishop could do nothing but press a hand to his forehead in exasperation.
* * *
After returning from the cathedral, the days passed in the blink of an eye. Lorena spent several days poring over the documents stored in the Duke’s vault, categorizing them, and meticulously typing out the necessary details.
However, one crucial document was nowhere to be found: the deposit certificate confirming the Levantes family’s deposit of fifty million peseca into the Klein Bank. That single document had vanished without a trace.
“I was there when it was written. Right here.”
It was because that document had been prepared alongside their marriage registration.
It had been the day of their grand wedding, which also happened to be Lorena’s birthday. That evening, Vicenzo Klein had drafted the deposit certificate and handed it to Vaye. Vaye had signed both the marriage registration and the deposit certificate, sealing them with the Duke’s crest. Lorena distinctly remembered him placing the sealed documents into his desk drawer.
But even after scouring the Duke’s office, his hidden vault, the underground storage, and practically overturning the entire mansion, the certificate was nowhere to be found.
At that point, Lorena abandoned the futile search. Finding a deliberately hidden document was like searching for a needle in a desert.
That afternoon, new guests began arriving at the mansion.
“Wasn’t it His Grace the Duke who summoned me?”
Stephanie Confino, a pianist who had maintained a close relationship with the Duke until two years ago, looked at Lorena in bewilderment. She was a performer at a high-end lounge on Delgado Street.
Lorena greeted her with a warm smile.
“I called you. There are matters I need to discuss with you regarding my husband’s affairs, Miss Confino.”
And so, the days rushed by, one after another.
Then, on April 10th, exactly ten days after Lorena had awakened, news arrived that the Duke would soon return to Motrel.
That same morning, Lorena dreamed of the past.
* * *
Was it the harsh morning sunlight interrupting her deep sleep?
In her hazy consciousness, the past and present blurred together in a disorienting swirl.
The solitary cell Lorena had used at the Soto monastery was bleak and dark. She had relied on the light of a few modest candles, waiting like a loyal dog for her husband’s arrival.
For the appointed date and hour to bring that familiar knock on the door.
Her waiting was always rewarded. Her husband unfailingly kept their promises.
“Have you been well? You’ve lost weight.”
“That doesn’t matter. How is my father? Is he still healthy? I’m worried he might be…”
Her desperate questions always trailed off unfinished. Without preamble, he would lower his head and devour her lips as if to silence her.
“Whatever is happening outside, we have our duties to fulfill, Lorena.”
His lips would travel down her pale skin.
He was a merciless man. Even as the whole world slandered the Duchess of Levantes as a fraud, he traveled all the way to distant Soto to fulfill their marital obligations.
Though, truthfully, it wasn’t even an obligation. In a union that deliberately avoided conception, all they gained from their encounters were hellish pleasure and fleeting peaks.
Still, seeing his face was the only thing that reassured Lorena.
“Take it off.”
His wine-red eyes, brimming with desire, seemed to command her.
I want you. Now.
Lorena willingly opened her robe and embraced him.
Rushing to meet his lips again, she felt the swelling proof of his arousal pressing against her, a sensation that brought her a strange sense of relief.
Tears came unbidden, confirming that she had not been abandoned. She cried, as if fulfilling his strange demand for her to weep as he welcomed her.
As he buried himself in her fully, he released a deep, heightened breath. Stroking her tear-streaked cheeks, he whispered tenderly.
“It’s time for a child now.”
“Now”?
What did he mean by that?
Before she could even ponder, the relentless thrusts began.
His hot, rough breaths spilled against her ear, and the overwhelming pleasure spread through her like wildfire, feeding on her fear and blind longing.
Lorena clung to his touch, her moans a mixture of sobs and ecstasy. She cried out as he played her like an instrument, collapsing into his arms.
“The cage is broken, Lorena.”
“Ah… Vaye… Ahh…!”
“I need something else to bind you now.”
Perhaps she had wanted to avoid the truth, to cling to the hope he gave her and suppress her rising unease, convincing herself that everything would soon be okay.
The old bed creaked precariously. As his relentless force widened her narrow path, her body shook under the assault. She nodded frantically, as if agreeing with every unspoken demand.
Be on my side.
It doesn’t have to be love. Just protect me. Your world is too cold and lonely for me…
Her gaze lost focus, her green eyes dazed as he stared into them. Then, without warning, he kissed her deeply. Lorena clung to his lips, desperate and pleading.
“Save me. I’m so scared…”
After seven years of a detached marriage, after being half-imprisoned in a secluded monastery, Lorena had become utterly conditioned to her husband. Tremors ran through his body as she clung to him desperately.
That day, he left an indelible mark within her.
Transparent tears soaked her lashes and seeped into the pillow. The oversized blanket shifted and rustled with her trembling.
“…Ahh…”
The unrelenting sunlight cruelly illuminated her distorted, pained face.
“Ahh… Hicc… Ah…”
Her pillow was wet with tears.
Lorena curled into herself under the covers, burying her head as though in a cocoon. Hiding where no one could see her, she cried until she felt suffocated.
For a long time, a very long time.