Page 46 of Absolution

Hoisting Vinnie up onto my shoulder, I carry him across the room and out of the apartment. As I spin around to make my way downstairs, I see Mrs. Garcia staring at me with one arched brow.

I pause to stare back at her.

Clearing her throat, she rolls her shoulders back. “Tell Iby I hab some lumpia for her. I’ll bring dem later.” Her eyes shift to the bag and back to me. “There’s a door out back to dump garbage.” She purses her lips and slips back into her apartment, as if it isn’t obvious the massive black bag slung over my shoulder is a body.

With a smirk, I keep on down the stairs and exit out the back door of the complex, where I set his body on the stoop like a bag of trash. Observing not a soul in sight, I jog back to the front of the building and drive the car around, drop him into the trunk, and make my way back to the church.

It’s after one in the morning when I arrive, noting the rectory standing dark and quiet behind the church. Like déjá vu, I drive the car around back, my skin prickled with the anxiety coursing through my blood. Nabbing the same shovel I used to dig the hole last time, I work quickly in the moon’s faint light, excavating through fresh dirt to the access lid of the septic tank. Vinnie’s body sits in the garbage bag beside me, and a scant amount of blood from my cut has trickled down my arm in all my toil. One more glance around, and I bend forward to lift the heavy concrete from the tomb below it.

It feels heavier this time, or perhaps that’s the weight of my crimes bearing down on me as I hurry to bury the evidence. I steal a quick breath and hoist the lid off to the side, exposing the reeking hole where Chuck’s body is hardly visible in the darkness. I’m tempted to shine my phone light inside, just to be sure he’s still there, but instead, I drag Vinnie closer to the hole, setting the bag at the edge of it.

“Damon?” The familiar voice from behind ripples down my spine and wraps itself around my chest in one suffocating squeeze.

I turn to find Ruiz standing behind me, a look of confusion painted across his face. Seconds tick off with the pounding of blood inside my ears, as I watch his gaze dip to the black bag and back to me. Breaths slicing through what little my lungs will allow, I contemplate my choices: confess to my crime—crimes—or eliminate my witness, as I would’ve done ten years ago without question.

“What are you doing?” he asks, lifting a slice of apple to his mouth. It’s then I notice the fruit in the palm of his hand, and his unfocused gaze while he chews it.

“I’m … taking out the trash?” The words hardly slip past the dry knot in my throat.

He looks around one more time, the crunching of his apple filling the awkward silence between us. Stepping over the bag, he pats me on the shoulder, as he passes on his way toward the rectory. “See you at mass.”

As I watch him make his way down the path, without so much as a glance back at me, I exhale a shaky breath and keep on.

* * *

It takes an hour to dump his body into the septic tank, where I discarded Chuck’s only just over a week ago. By the time I return to Ivy’s, she’s already cleaned up the mess on the floor, and I double check the grout for any residual specks she might’ve missed, but find nothing. Everything is bleached white and the rug has been removed. I exit the bathroom and find her sitting on the bed, back against the wall with her knees pulled into her chest.

“Damon, I’m so sorry for everything. Will you ever forgive me?” She crawls across the bed and lowers to her knees in supplication before me. “Please forgive me.”

“Only God forgives, Ivy.” She stares up at me with pleading eyes, and, hand set to the top of her head, I feel my body harden. Every cell of my being is on fire with the sins coursing through me. The need to push her away, to ignore the temptation of feeding my cock between those eager lips, is smothered by the weight of culpability already pressing down on me. A suffocating iniquity no God could ever forgive.

Why should I be so virtuous, then?

Unbuckling my belt, I lock my eyes on hers as I slide it from the loops of my slacks, and fasten it around her neck like the white collar at my own throat. “But your penance is my pleasure. And you have much to atone for.”

One small tug, and her mouth gapes, her chest rising and falling with what could be fear, or excitement. Or both.

“Your lust and temptation. You must expiate these sins in equal measure to the way you’ve made me suffer for them. Will you accept this punishment, Ivy? Will you give your body over for these trespasses against me, theselicentiousthoughts you breed?”

“Yes,” she breathes, eyes hooded, as she reaches for the belt caught in my fist. “I’ll take whatever punishment you decide.”

“God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Eyes on me, she reaches up to glide my zipper down slowly. “Amen,” she whispers, yanking my slacks to mid-thigh, springing my dick free. Another tug of the belt at her throat guides her forward, and the moment her lips meet the head of my cock, I’m certain there’s no chance of redemption for me. No going back.

Feeding my shaft down her throat, I lay my hands on her head, as if conferring the Holy Spirit upon her, and tip my head back when she sucks me base to tip. “Yes, that’s it. Take all of it, Ivy. Every inch of what you’ve sown.”

Threads of tension wind deep inside my stomach, as she takes me in her mouth again. And again. Moving up and down my cock with such deference, such devotion to the act, while stripping away what little piety is left in me.

“Pécheresse, you’ve damned my soul with these lips,” I say, curling my fingers into her hair. “Fucking hell.”

Hands still pressed to her head, I wrench my cock from her mouth, breaths heaving, every muscle in my body keening with the loss of contact, begging for more of that delectable constriction. I want to punish her for the way she commands my body. How easily she invites me to sin, as if it’s the answer to my every prayer.

There’s no fighting this, though. And the truth is, I was damned the day I was brought into this world. There’s no denying that anymore, either.

As a father, a husband, and a priest, I like to think that, for a short time in my life, I knew what it felt like to be a good man. One of integrity and good intentions, with the capacity to forgive and show mercy. But I’m the son of Anthony Savio, a criminal by my very birth, and no matter how far across the country I travel to get away, or how many times I change my name, killing will always be in my blood.

It’s who I am.

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