Page 76 of The Seventh Circle
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 mywrist. 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."
