Page 36 of Veil of Ashes

“I needed quiet,” I say, stepping closer. Dust swirls in the light, settling on ash-covered wood.

He gestures to the ruin. “You came to the right cathedral.” His smirk flickers, then fades fast.

I sit two rows ahead, keeping distance. The pew creaks under me. “I need IDs. Clean ones. For two.”

He leans forward, cigarette dangling. “She the reason?” His eyes narrow, pinning me.

I don’t answer. My hands rest on my knees, steady but tight. Silence thickens between us.

“You want new names?” he says. “Names don’t cleanse blood.” He flicks ash to the floor.

“I’m not looking for absolution,” I say, voice flat. My eyes stay on the cracked altar ahead.

He snorts, short and rough. “Then why here?” He tilts his head, studying me hard.

I glance around—the melted crucifix, the shattered glass. “I’m trying to stop killing everything I touch,” I say, low and raw.

He goes quiet, cigarette pausing. “Redemption’s not a ledger you balance,” he says. “It’s a fire you don’t survive.”

I meet his gaze. “Will you help me or not?” My voice cuts through, firm.

He stands, walks past the pews, slow and deliberate. Then he turns. “Payment’s not cash. I want your name. The real one.”

The one I buried with Benedetto. The one that burns when I say it. I nod, once.

He waits, smoke curling up. I speak. “Kieran Benedetto Santoro.”

Ettore doesn’t ask me to say it again. He holds my gaze, one long second stretching tight, then nods once. It’s not approval, not pity—just a mark scratched into some invisible ledger he keeps.

“Corrado Santoro,” he says, my new name rolling off his tongue like it’s a stranger’s. He clicks open the latch on his weathered case, wood warped from years of desert sun.

Inside, two folders sit—sealed, stamped, blank on the outside. New names, new lives, origins wiped clean. He slides them across the pew toward me.

“They’re clean,” he says, voice rough but sure. “Even the banks will blink first.”

I nod, throat too tight to speak. My fingers brush the folders as I take them, edges smooth but sharp against my skin. No rush of relief comes, just a cold weight settling at the base of my spine.

A warning, maybe. Or grief that’s never found words. I gave him the name I buried thirteen years ago—Kieran Benedetto Santoro—and it felt like peeling flesh from bone.

He snaps the case shut, the sound sharp in the quiet ruin. I clutch the folders, knuckles whitening, staring at the ash-dusted floor.

“You still believe in God, Father?” I ask, voice low, barely cutting through the stillness. My eyes lift to his, searching.

Ettore flicks his spent cigarette toward the blackened altar. It arcs, trailing smoke, landing in the dust with a faint hiss.

“I believe in debt,” he says, words heavy, final. “Yours is long.”

The air shifts, thick with smoke and silence. I sit there, folders in my lap, feeling the weight of that debt press down—years of blood, promises, losses I can’t repay.

The grass hadn’t even grown back yet. I stood at Benedetto’s grave three weeks after they zipped him into a bag and filed him away.

The Veyras called it clean. A tactical error, bad intel, a soldier lost. Not betrayal. Not a knife in the back from someone he trusted.

But I knew the truth. Rizzi sold him out, left him bleeding in a ditch. I carried his ghost like a blade, sharp and close.

I remember the candle—cheap, waxy, the kind you grab at a gas station next to faded flowers and dog-eared Bibles. My hands shook as I struck the match.

The flame caught quick, flickering on the wick. I set it in the dirt, a tiny glow against the gray headstone. “Benedetto,” I whispered, voice breaking.

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