Gus is not a man who waits. He is not a man who wants. He takes. He destroys. He builds empires from the bones of his enemies and sleeps soundly on a mattress of other people's grief. With a child's sweet tooth, a killer's hands, and a self-hatred so profound it fuels him like jet fuel, Gus has spent twenty years becoming the devil incarnate; ruthless, hilarious, unforgiving, and utterly empty. He's never known longing. Not once. Until a rain-soaked night when something cracks. Not dramatically, not with a gunshot a confession or broken knuckles, but with a near-miss in the arms of a woman he pays to forget himself with. For the first time, something fails. The release doesn't come. And Gus, who fears nothing, feels the floor drop out from under him. His feet carry him to a cathedral he swore he'd never enter again. He tells himself it's boredom. An anomaly. A glitch in an otherwise flawless machine. Then he sees her. A nun. Young. Still as a blade. She moves through candlelight like she was born from it, and her gaze when it finds him in the shadows strips him of every lie he's ever told himself. He does not ask her name. Not the first night. Not the tenth. Not the hundredth. He returns to the cathedral again and again, watching her lead vespers, listening to the hush of her robes, burning with a need he cannot name and will not speak. She watches him too. She feels the depth of his silence, the heat of his restraint. Raised to believe desire is demonic she locked her heart in a chapel and threw away the key. But something in her recognizes him. Sees him. The boy no one claimed. The mirror to her own holy captivity. Every visit is a match held to dry timber. Every glance is a question neither dares answer. But Gus's world is violent. His enemies are closing in. His secret about his bloodline a truth that will not stay buried forever. And when it rises, it will force both of them to choose: the lives they've sworn to, or the impossible pull they can’t escape. He does not know her name. But he has already decided: he would burn everything he built to hear her say it once