Chapter 81
NARRATOR
The days in Sicily passed faster than Mateo would have liked. Each dawn awakened by the twins’ cries, each afternoon spent contemplating the Mediterranean from the ancient stone balcony, had returned him to a calm he hadn’t known for years. But the calm was deceptive, fragile as glass.
Deep down, he knew time was running out relentlessly.
The fifteen days of leave were coming to an end, and reality awaited him on the other side of the ocean. The Church was not only his vocation: it was his refuge, his sacred promise, his unpayable debt to God. Yet now he had something that bound him to the earth, to flesh, to the world he had tried to leave behind.
Lucía noticed it before he said a single word. For days he had been quieter, walking alone through the vineyard gardens, praying endlessly before the silver cross in the bedroom. One night, while the girls slept deeply, she found him on the terrace, his gaze lost on the black horizon.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
He didn’t look at her.
“I have to go back to Mexico. My leave ends tomorrow.”
Silence fell between them like a gravestone. Only the sound of the wind moving the palm trees filled the unbearable void.
“And what will you tell the bishop?” she asked in a thread of a voice.
“The truth,” he replied. “I’ll speak to him directly. I’ll look for a way. Maybe I’ll step down voluntarily, or maybe I’ll be mercilessly excommunicated. I don’t know. But I can’t keep hiding.”
She swallowed with difficulty.
“So… you’re leaving alone?”
“Yes.” A painful pause. “You and the girls will be safe here. My brothers will protect you with their lives if necessary.”
Lucía felt something break irreparably inside her. She knew that decision tore him apart as much as it did her, but she couldn’t stop him. She loved him, and for that very reason she had to let him go.
“I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “But I know I can’t ask you to give up who you are.”
He finally looked at her. In his eyes there was a devastating mixture of faith and defeat.
“I’m not giving up on you. I just… need to understand what God truly wants from me.”
Lucía nodded, holding back the tears that threatened to spill. She didn’t insist. She simply stepped closer, took his hand tenderly, and rested her forehead against his chest.
That night was different.
Mateo couldn’t sleep. He paced the room with his heart tangled in impossible thoughts. He closed his suitcase, folded his black cassock, and placed it inside with almost reverential care. He was going back. To his parish. To his former life. Or at least, he would try with all his strength.
When the clock struck midnight, he heard a soft knock on the door. He didn’t need to ask who it was. He opened it slowly, and Lucía was there. She wore a dark silk robe, her hair loose over her shoulders, her moist eyes shining in the dim light.
She said nothing. She only looked at him.
He understood perfectly.
Mateo closed his eyes for a moment, fighting himself. She was not just any temptation. Lucía was fire and faith intertwined, sin that smelled of prayer, desire that moved with the grace of a sacred chant. But tonight there would be no penance. No confession afterward.
Only them. And the inevitable.
She took the final step forward and rested her forehead against his chest, right over his racing heart.
“Don’t ask me to stop,” she whispered. “Because if you do… I won’t be able to look at you tomorrow when you leave.”
He swallowed hard. His hands trembled as they brushed her bare arms beneath the thin robe.
He took her by the wrists—gentle but firm—and slowly lifted them until they rested against the dark hallway wall, where no one would see them from the girls’ rooms.
Then he lowered his lips to her ear:
“God is going to punish me for this…”
She smiled sadly before turning slightly to say:
“Then let Him. Because tonight I’m going to sin with you too, and I want to feel every second.”
A rough groan rose from deep in Mateo’s chest as he slid both hands along her waist, feeling the warmth of her skin through the silk.
Their bodies met with a need that went beyond simple desire. Mateo was no longer praying. Now he only felt: the brush of her skin, the warmth of her breath, the urgency of holding her close before everything ended.
Lucía arched her neck back, vulnerable and powerful at the same time.
“Don’t stop… even if tomorrow I curse myself for this…”
He whispered against her skin:
“I’ve been damned… since the first day I saw you…”
They moved together in the darkness of the hallway, in absolute silence except for their broken breathing. Every touch was a shared heartbeat. Every sigh, an act of willing heresy.
They knew this was a farewell. That tomorrow he would board a plane and she would stay behind caring for their daughters in a foreign mansion. That perhaps they would never be like this again.
That was why they gave themselves completely, without reserve, without regret—yet.
When it was over, they remained embraced against the cold wall, breathing with difficulty, feeling the silence settle back over the mansion.
Lucía was the first to speak, her voice hoarse:
“Go tomorrow. Fulfill your duty. But remember that you will always have a home here.”
He nodded without words, unable to promise anything because he didn’t know what awaited him.
They separated in silence. She returned to her room. He stayed in the hallway for endless minutes, staring at the silver cross visible from his room.
And for the first time in his life, he didn’t know whether to ask for forgiveness… or to give thanks.