RAPHANIÈ STARED INTO HER BLUE EYES; there was an inscrutable mixture of sadness, anguish, and restrained fury in them, a fury that burned like heated iron. He remained motionless for a while, as though weighing every word before speaking.
— Yes... I killed Francisco.
Those three syllables struck the air like a sudden blow. Jessyca felt the world sway beneath her.
— Why did you do it? — she asked, the words emerging between sobs, her voice barely more than a broken whisper.
— Because... — he hesitated, searching for some explanation that might justify the unjustifiable.
— You damned murderer! — she screamed and, in a surge of fury that had been building long before that night, drove her fist into the priest's chest.
He neither stepped back nor attempted to defend himself. He allowed her to pour everything out — the anger, the pain, the confusion. Then, when the verbal storm began to subside, he wrapped his arms around her in an embrace as strange as it was necessary. The warmth of his body could not dispel the coldness of the revelation.
— Forgive me. It was the greatest mistake of my life — he confessed, his voice breaking, the words scraping from his throat as though it had been wounded. — Only now can I see all the harm I caused you.
Jessyca shook her head, every movement an attempt to drive away the images already haunting her.
— Why? — she insisted, not out of cruelty, but from a desperate need to piece together a puzzle that was now falling apart.
— He sacrificed a child, Jessyca.
The statement sounded like distant thunder, and then, suddenly, the past opened before her in a whirlwind that swallowed her whole.
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY, but the memory carried the sound of raised voices, as though the entire backyard had become an altar of screams. She ran toward the back door, the wood warm beneath her palm, and witnessed the scene as though looking through fogged glass: people gathered around a stone table, shadows shifting beneath flickering lanterns. At the center stood her father, wielding a machete, its blade gleaming beneath the distorted light.
There was blood, so much blood, flowing everywhere, and something that was not an animal lay upon the makeshift altar. Entrails, wet and raw, spilled from an open abdomen. A red-stained mask covered part of the victim's face. Yet when Jessyca finally understood the horror before her, she realized the body did not belong to any animal: it was a child her own age. Dead. Lifeless. Empty eyes stared toward the night sky.
She raised her head, dizzy, and saw a figure near the backyard wall. A man with a strangely incongruous expression, a languid way of speaking, and a sinister charm — it was Raphaniè, the priest who always seemed out of place whenever he revealed himself through conversations in a foreign tongue. His lips moved in a plea that seemed unable to reach the air: Help me, please... His eyes begged for something Jessyca could not give.
A neighbor, overcome by panic and an old-fashioned sense of responsibility, rushed toward her. With large, trembling hands, he covered her eyes and pushed her back inside the house, as though protecting her meant suffocating reality itself.
— WHAT WERE THEY DOING to that little girl? — she asked, the raw question of a child forced to grow up far too soon.
— It was a goat, sweetheart — someone explained, with the condescension of those who attempt to erase brutality with a euphemism.
— It was a child — she retorted, with a conviction born from trembling bones.
— You dreamed it.
— But I'm awake — she protested, and at that very instant, she felt a powerful blow to her head. Then a thick darkness swallowed everything — and when her memory returned, pieces were missing, fragments that would never again fit together completely.
OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS, it had ceased to be an isolated nightmare; it had become a pattern, growing stronger with each nocturnal visitation that seemed to crawl across her skin. Jessyca drew a deep breath, struggling to regain her composure and organize her thoughts, desperately trying to anchor herself in the present. Then she saw Sammy's face in the dimness of the suite: a face belonging to someone who had always known how to arrange contracts and destinies. His words cut through her like a blade: Fame comes at a price. Your father has already paid part of it. Before he died, we signed a contract.
There, inside that suite at L'oscar London, standing before the man who had played an active role in the machinery that consumed her father, those words suddenly resonated — and something tightened painfully deep inside Jessyca's chest. The betrayal had been written into a contract, and now she could see the invisible threads connecting everything.
Jessyca abruptly opened her eyes. Awake. Determined.
— Please, get out of here... — she said coldly, demanding that the very air around her become hers again.
— Forgive me, and give yourself a second chance — Raphaniè pleaded, almost begging. The remorse in his words sounded genuine. Or at least that was how he wanted it to appear.
She clenched her teeth. Indifference was not a weapon she enjoyed using, but at that moment, it was the only protection she had left.
— It's too late for either of those things. Now leave. — The words escaped through teeth clenched with an anger that had endured for years.
— Jessyca... I... — he began, like someone desperately attempting to build a bridge between two vessels separated by an abyss.
— There's no going back... Not for me, and not for you... Get out of here! Or do you want me to call security?
Raphaniè took a deep breath. There was a weariness in his shoulders that not even his religious conversion could conceal. He glanced at his rolled-up sleeves and, with a resignation that startled Jessyca herself, revealed his wrists: two uneven cuts, from which a thin trickle of blood still flowed, glistening beneath the artificial light. The gesture was a portrait of despair.
— What... what the hell have you done? — she asked, her voice trembling at the shocking sight.
— I just want to prove that what I'm telling you is true. — The firmness of his words stood in disturbing contrast to the horror of his actions.
— How would that prove anything? — she asked, uncertain whether she was seeking an explanation or a condemnation.
He answered with a confession that seemed intended to tear an unbearable weight from his chest:
— This afternoon, when you confronted me, I was a coward. I tried to run away from myself, and I tried to slit my wrists, Jessyca.
The revelation fell between them like a shard of glass. Jessyca approached him hesitantly, and what happened next was unexpected: she embraced him. It was a brief, stiff embrace that did not absolve him of his crime but, for one fleeting moment, softened the screams raging inside them both.
— I forgive you for what you did to my father... — she whispered into the priest's ear. The words seemed to erase the distance between hatred and compassion.
— Thank you for that — he murmured, his voice choked with quiet tears. — But I don't forgive you for what you did to me.
Jessyca stepped back a few paces, staring directly into his eyes as though searching for the ending of a story.
— You've said what you came to say. Now get out of here! — she declared, each word sharp and final.
— Demons were once angels, Jessyca — he replied in a sorrowful, almost poetic tone, buttoning his shirt cuffs as he prepared to leave. — I was once an angel too, until heaven, in the form of you, closed its doors to me.
THE ARCHANGEL, hidden in the shadows of the corridor, had not fully understood the intimate complexities of the conversation between the model and the Italian priest. There was no time to decipher subtleties; his only duty was to gather information. When Raphaniè left the suite, the spy checked his watch: eleven fifteen at night. To him, those numbers represented a series of small logistical victories. Thank God that bastard hasn't arrived yet... he thought, relieved. But his relief was short-lived.
Footsteps approached through the bushes in the park — measured, almost inaudible to anyone who was not paying close attention. Three meters away, a figure stopped and looked directly toward the Archangel. Through his night-vision goggles, the agent distinguished the elegant silhouette of someone wearing black formal attire and a strange medieval mask — one of those dark masks reminiscent of the physicians who treated victims of the Black Death, with its long, disturbing beak.
The Archangel froze, desperately trying to buy himself time to think.
I'm hidden. There's no way he can see me here... he told himself, his thoughts racing.
The stranger then removed his mask with a theatrical gesture and smiled — a smile that never reached his eyes.
It was LaVey.
The same man the Archangel had followed on countless occasions, cunning and always one step ahead. A thought boiled inside the spy's mind: How does he know I'm here? The question was not rhetorical; it carried the weight of imminent danger.
— Son of a bitch. He's going to try to escape through another exit. I need to find a way to catch that bastard... — he muttered, his anger hardening into determination.
LaVey raised his mask in a sarcastic salute, as though combining secrecy with provocation.
— I'll be back at half past midnight so we can settle the score! — he shouted, his voice reverberating in the Archangel's ears like a sentence being pronounced.
Then he put the mask back on and glided toward the hotel, his footsteps silent against the asphalt.
The Archangel cursed under his breath:
— Shit! I've lost the element of surprise. That idiot plays dirty.
Without losing control, he opened his tablet and watched the hotel's side entrance through the screen. He observed the activity from an angle his team had previously mapped out: the bastard — the man everyone was searching for, the epicenter of promises and threats — entered through the door on the left side, at the rear of the hotel.
The night, which until then had unfolded with predictable choreography, had suddenly changed its rhythm.
At that moment, the silence acquired a new weight. Every breath, every footstep, every creaking door could become the spark that ignited a fire impossible to extinguish.
And while Jessyca remained inside the suite, her face still marked by revelations and incomplete forgiveness, the city outside continued turning, indifferent to everything, preparing the stage for the encounter that, he knew, would arrive with the merciless precision of a Swiss watch.