Crimson Thrones

Chapter Four — The Devil’s Confessional

Alessia

“Inferno” wasn’t a club—it was a heartbeat.

Low lights, red as blood through glass, the bass pulsing like veins under skin. The Moretti empire hid its dirtiest dealings in plain sight, under chandeliers and champagne.

I’d slipped in wearing a waiter’s jacket and confidence I didn’t feel. Cameras blinked above, dancers shimmered on the stage, and I could smell money and danger in the air.

Somewhere beneath all of it, Dante Moretti was doing business.

That was why I was here: to listen, to see, to find something my father could use.

But the truth was, part of me just wanted to see him again.

I passed a guard, kept my head down, and turned into the VIP corridor. The music dulled to a hum. I stopped at a door marked Private Chapel.

A club with a chapel. Of course. Dante always had a sense of irony.

I slipped inside.

Candles burned against dark stone walls, the old confessional booth left standing as décor. It felt wrong and right at once, sacred and sinful.

Footsteps echoed behind me.

I turned.

He was there.

Dante

I’d seen her before she saw me.

Alessia Toricceli, moving through my club like a whisper. Everyone else would have missed her; I couldn’t. The moment she stepped past the main floor, I followed.

She stopped in the chapel, her hand brushing a pew as if she could steady herself on ghosts.

“You could’ve just asked for an invitation,” I said.

She spun, eyes sharp even through the shadows. “You don’t invite enemies.”

“Enemies?” I walked closer. “Is that what we are tonight?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes darted once toward the curtained confessional booth.

“What were you hoping to find in there?” I asked.

“Secrets,” she said simply.

“Mine?”

“Yours are always worth the risk.”

Alessia

He moved like the room belonged to him—because it did.

“You should leave,” I said, trying to sound calm.

“I could say the same to you.” He stopped just short of touching me. “Except you’re trespassing. That makes this my game.”

“Then play.”

The word came out before I thought it through. His eyes darkened, not with anger but with something far worse—amusement.

“Flirtation as warfare,” he murmured. “That’s dangerous ground, bella nemica.”

“Better than dying of boredom.”

He stepped closer, enough that the candlelight hit his jaw, the faint scar that cut through the stubble there.

“You came here for information,” he said. “So ask.”

I met his eyes. “Who ordered the hit at the cathedral?”

He tilted his head. “What makes you think I’d tell you?”

“Because you owe me your life.”

He smiled faintly. “And you’re here to collect?”

Dante

Her courage fascinated me. She stood there like she belonged in danger.

“I’m not your confession, Alessia,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You’re my distraction.”

That landed like a challenge. I moved until our reflections blurred in the polished wood of the booth.

“Careful,” I said softly. “I’m better at this game than you.”

“Then teach me,” she whispered.

Her voice wasn’t pleading—it was a dare.

The air shifted.

I reached up, brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “You shouldn’t tempt me in a room like this.”

“Why?”

“Because temptation’s meant to be resisted.”

She smiled. “Then resist.”

Alessia

He didn’t.

The space between us vanished, tension wound so tight it hurt.

The club’s noise felt far away, swallowed by candlelight and the faint hum of the bass through stone. I should’ve been afraid. Instead, I felt alive.

“You think you can use me?” I said, breath unsteady.

He leaned in until I could feel his words against my skin. “No. I think you already are.”

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.

Then he took a step back, forcing me to follow with my gaze, keeping that maddening distance.

“This is how it works,” he said quietly. “You and I—always a step away from disaster.”

“Then maybe disaster’s what we want.”

That broke him.

Dante

I caught her wrist before she could move past me. She didn’t pull away.

“Tell me,” I said. “If I kissed you again, do I win—or lose?”

She looked up, defiant. “You’d find out the same time I do.”

The candles hissed in the draft.

For a second, everything stopped—the music, the noise, the war outside this room.

And then I kissed her.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t supposed to be. It was the collision of everything we’d been holding back since that night at the masquerade gala: fury, desire, defiance.

Her hands came up, not to push me away but to pull me closer.

For one impossible moment, it felt like the world tilted toward peace.

Letting out a soft moan, I held her chin with my right hand while my left hand remained on her ass

“Your beautiful”, I muttered

Her hands ran across my chest and suddenly lower…..

Alessia

I’d imagined what it would be like, but imagination had been a pale thing compared to this.

He tasted like danger and forgiveness. Every instinct screamed at me to stop; every part of me ignored it.

I slid down to my knees feeling the heat in my p***y I reached for his zipper

Slowly caressing his c**k my desire pulled further. I reached for his belt, loosened it…..

There it was. It wasn’t big, it was huge! And it was just semi hard

I didn’t know what was wrong with me but I did reach out to his huge c**k, gulping down as hard as I could

I was definitely going crazy! But this also…it felt so good

When we eventually broke apart, I was breathless, dizzy, furious with myself.

“That was a mistake,” I said.

He smiled faintly. “The kind worth repeating?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Who’s flattering?”

He reached past me, resting his palm on the booth behind my head. I could feel the heat of him, smell the faint spice of his cologne.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I managed.

“It changes everything.”

Dante

Her eyes said no; her heartbeat said yes.

“If you wanted to spy,” I said, “you failed.”

“Maybe I got what I came for.”

“What’s that?”

“Proof that you bleed like the rest of us.”

She started to leave. I let her make it to the door before I said, “Next time you sneak into my club, I won’t stop at just that.”

She turned just enough for me to see the curve of her smile.

“Then maybe next time,” she said, “I won’t stop you.”

Alessia

The music swallowed me again as I stepped into the main floor.

People danced, laughed, clinked glasses, unaware that something had just shifted in the shadows beneath their feet.

I’d come here for answers. I left with a secret that burned.

That had been reckless. Dangerous. Necessary.

Outside, the night air hit cold against my lips.

I told myself I wouldn’t see him again.

But I already knew that was a lie.

Dante

I watched her from the security balcony until she disappeared into the street.

She thought she’d come here to spy, but what she’d really done was leave a mark I couldn’t shake.

Inferno pulsed below, red light flickering against the confessional door where we’d stood.

For the first time in years, I didn’t care who saw.

If war was inevitable, at least it would be honest now.

Because after that, we both understood something dangerous and true:

In this life, love and death share a bed.

Tonight, they’d finally touched.