Chapter 69: Vengeance in the Shadows

MATEO POV

The first time I found the new stained-glass windows shattered, I thought it was an accident. Some drunken vandal, stones thrown by teenagers—anything. But when the first note appeared, pinned to the wooden door with a knife, I understood everything.

“Someday you’re going to pay for this, fucking priest. Because of you she left. Because of you I lost her.”

It was his handwriting. Damián.

The months that followed were psychological torture. He never approached me directly. He never touched a single parishioner. But every week something else was destroyed: a stained-glass window smashed with stones, pews burned with gasoline, the statue of the Virgin decapitated, crosses defaced with obscene graffiti. And always the note—insults, veiled threats, reminders that his hatred was more alive than ever.

I reported it to the municipal police. They came, took photos, asked routine questions with visible disinterest. They never did anything else.

“Without direct evidence, Monsignor, there’s very little we can do. You know how things are here.”

I knew it was him. Everyone in the neighborhood knew it. But there was no arrest, no restraining order—nothing. The fear Damián inspired in San Cristóbal was more powerful than any law.

The cathedral was repaired each time, and I with it. I showed calm before my parishioners, firmness in Sunday homilies. But inside, I boiled with helpless rage. Not out of fear of him, but from the frustration of being unable to protect even this sacred place.

That man was a dark shadow in my life, a constant reminder of my sin.

The months passed between repairs and vigils. The routine of the church kept me sane: catechism classes with the children, endless confessions on Saturdays, helping in the neighborhood soup kitchens. I was monsignor, and everyone saw me as an unbreakable rock.

But at night, when I was alone in my room at the episcopal residence, the wall collapsed.

I closed my eyes and saw her again. And needed her with a physical desperation.

That night marked exactly one year since I had lost her. One year since the last time I held her in my arms during that storm. I fell asleep with her farewell note folded inside my Bible, her words stained by my tears.

And then the dream came.

I saw her in my room, as if she had passed through the stone walls. She was naked, her black hair cascading down her back, her honey-colored eyes fixed on me with hunger. She didn’t speak; she only looked at me as if I belonged to her.

“Come,” she whispered in that voice that drove me mad.

I didn’t think. I grabbed her by the waist, pulled her against my chest, and kissed her like a man who had been starving and thirsting for a year. Her mouth tasted of sin and salvation at the same time.

Her nails dug into my neck, leaving marks. She moaned against my mouth, trembled in my arms, and I lifted her effortlessly, carried her to the bed, and sank into her with desperation. Her skin was hot, alive, burning against mine like sacred fire.

Every movement was a brutal collision between accumulated desire and the despair of a year without her.

I took her forcefully, with contained rage, with the urgency that had been eating at me since she left. She screamed my name without the “Father” in front of it—just “Mateo, Mateo”—begged me for more, told me I was hers. And I was. I always had been.

Her sweat mixing with mine, her breath ragged in my ear, her hair stuck to my face. It was all so real, so vivid, that I forgot it was a dream. I forgot I was a monsignor. I was only Mateo, a man devouring the woman he loved more than his own salvation.

I made her mine again and again until the room filled with her moans and mine. The world faded away. There was only her and me, bound together in that forbidden pleasure that condemned me and saved me at the same time.

I woke with a start, drenched in cold sweat, my heart racing like a wild horse. My hands were shaking, my body reacting physically as if she were still on top of me.

I sat up in bed and covered my face with my hands.

“My God…” I whispered, my voice completely broken.

I fell to my knees before the crucifix. I could still smell her, feel her, taste her on my mouth. And I hated myself for it with brutal force.

“Forgive me, Lord, for sinning in thought and desire. Forgive me because I desire her more than eternal life. More than You.”

My tears burned as they fell onto my wrinkled cassock. It was my cross. One I could not let go of, even if it killed me.

At dawn I dressed in a clean cassock. I went down to the sacristy, taught catechism to the children. Their innocent laughter gave me a bit of air back in my lungs. I prepared Sunday’s homily, received an elderly woman who asked for help to pay for her diabetes medication.

That was my refuge: service to others.

As evening fell, a young man I didn’t recognize ran into the cathedral, agitated.

“Father, my mother is very sick. She needs the last rites urgently.”

Without hesitating for a second, I grabbed my coat and the oil case and followed him. We walked several blocks away from the center, toward the La Merced neighborhood. The streets grew darker, more deserted. The cold mountain wind blew hard.

Suddenly, I heard the violent acceleration of a car engine. I turned my head. The headlights blinded me with white light.

The impact lifted me off the cobblestones and hurled me onto the pavement like a rag doll. Pain tore through my entire body like liquid fire. I fell to the side, my breath knocked out of me, coughing blood. I tried to move, but my body did not respond.

I lifted my head just enough, my vision blurred, to see the driver through the windshield.

Damián.

His face twisted with pure hatred, his eyes shining with rage and satisfaction.

The car stopped for a second—just long enough for our gazes to meet. His crooked, triumphant smile was the last thing I saw clearly before he slammed the accelerator and disappeared into the night, leaving tire marks behind.

The young man who had led me there was gone. It was a trap. It had all been a perfect trap.

Blood filled my mouth with a metallic taste. The world spun violently. The voices around me faded like extinguished candles.

I felt hands touching me, shouts calling for help, someone praying the rosary over me.

Darkness pulled me down like black water.

The last thing I thought before losing consciousness was not of God.

It was of her.

Lucía.

And of the twin daughters I would never know existed.

Of the honey-colored eyes I would never see grow.

Of the love that had saved me and condemned me at the same time.

Lucía… forgive me…

And everything went black.