Chapter 35: Sacrilegious Revelation
The call from the Vatican had been routed through three encrypted servers before hitting Bruce’s private line. It landed in the hushed aftermath of the terrace, a sharp splinter of the outer world piercing their peace.
They were in the vast sunken lounge of the main villa, a tangle of sun-warmed limbs and soft fabrics. Someone had arranged fruit and cheese. A low, ambient synth track hummed in the background. When Bruce’s encrypted device chimed its specific, urgent tone, all movement ceased. It was the sound of a door closing.
He listened, his expression giving nothing away, a closed ledger. "I see," he said, his voice neutral. "Thank you for the invitation. I will consult my family and return your communication."
He ended the call and placed the device on the low marble table with a soft, definitive click.
“Well?” Lena asked. She was lying with her head in Ketut’s lap, Ketut’s fingers idly tracing the lines of her jaw.
“The office of the Papal Secretary,” Bruce said. He leaned back, linking his hands behind his head, but the gesture didn’t read as relaxed. It was the posture of a man settling in for a tactical assessment. “An invitation. An urgent request, actually. For me and my wives to come to Rome. To the Vatican.”
Elara, perched on the arm of a chair, went still as one of her old statues. “They have heard the rumors, then.”
“They have heard something,” Bruce corrected. “They used the phrase ‘the one they call the Son of God.’ They wish to…speak. To understand.”
Lena sat up. “Trap?”
Bruce’s hazel eyes, shadowed in the low light, scanned the room, meeting each of theirs. “I doubt it. The Consortium’s operational arms are ashes. Their leadership is dead or scattered. The Nephalim were purged. We sent Lucifer back to a judgement I sincerely hope he’s still enduring.” He rubbed a thumb over his chin. “No, this feels…different.Ecclesiastical curiosity. Theological panic, perhaps. They don’t believe it. They can’t. But they have to look.”
“Then ignore it,” Anya said quietly, tucking her feet under herself. Her violet eyes, now permanently flecked with gold, were wide. “It’s just more people wanting a piece of you.”
“What interests me more,” Bruce continued, as if following his own thread, “is how they know who I am.What I am. Where I am.” He looked at Julianna. “Our security is absolute. The public records are illusions, chains of shells within shells. We haven’t exactly been…subtle in our activities, but containment has been total.”
Julianna nodded, her wavy black hair catching the lamplight. “So the leak, if there is one, isn’t from the outside trying to get in. It’s from the inside, reaching out.”
“A believer,” Sophia said, her voice firm. She was doing light stretches on a mat by the window, her honed muscles flexing and releasing. “Someone within the Church’s own labyrinth who’s seen…something. Felt something through all the incense and marble. And they talked.”
Camille shifted, drawing her robe tighter. “What are you thinking, my love?”
Bruce was silent for a long moment. “I’m thinking we accept.”
A ripple went through them.
“Are you insane?” Moira breathed, her Scottish accent sharpening. “Walk into the lion’s den? After everything?”
“It’s not a den. It’s a museum. And a very, very old bureaucracy.” He stood, pacing the length of the room. “They have no power over me. Not of that kind. But they have information networks older than nations. Eyes in every ancient corner. If someone inside knows enough to find me, they might know other things. About the remnants of the Consortium. About other…things like us, hiding. The invitation isn’t a threat. It’s an opportunity to map a new set of walls.”
He stopped and looked at Camille. “I want your opinion. All of you. Not as my guards or my strategists.As my wives. As my council.”
“We go,” Camille said after a beat, her voice calm.“Together. If they want to see the Son of God, let them see his family. His truth.”
“Fuck yeah,” Lena said, a spark in her amber eyes. “Let’s give the Pope a fucking show.”
Four days later, under a bruised Roman twilight, they stood in the Sistine Chapel.
Their entrance had been orchestrated with clandestine precision—a private gate, a silent guide in simple black, through corridors normally echoing with tourist footsteps, now hollow and still. The Vatican was closed. For them, it was open.
The air was cool and heavy, tasting of centuries of stone, candle wax, and faded holiness. The emergency lights were on, casting long, dramatic shadows that made Michelangelo’s sprawling ceiling fresco seem to move. The Creator’s finger nearly touching Adam’s, the sinews straining in the plaster—it all felt suddenly, unbearably immediate.
At the far end, before the Last Judgment, stood a small group of men in simple black cassocks.No pomp. No Swiss Guard. Only one, older, with sharp eyes behind wire-frame glasses, stepped forward. He was the Papal Secretary, Monsignor Curio.
“Mr. Ambros,” he said, his voice echoing softly in the vast space. “Thank you for coming.”
“You knew where to find me,” Bruce said, his voice even, filling the chapel easily.
A faint, grim smile. “A bishop in Mumbai spoke to a priest who heard a confession from a dying mercenary who once worked for the Geneva office of a certain defunct consortium. The threads of truth are sometimes very long, and very thin. We have been…weaving them for some time.”
Bruce simply waited.
“The Holy Father is aware of your presence. He is praying. For you, and for guidance.” Curio’s gaze traveled over the women flanking Bruce. He did not flinch. He absorbed them, his eyes lingering on their faces, on the subtle, unearthly gold flecking their irises—Camille’s warm brown, Elara’s icy blue, Anya’s violet. The evidence of a bond no Vatican doctrine could explain. “He wishes to know…what is it you want?”
Bruce laughed then, a short, dry sound that bounced off the depiction of damnation behind them. “Want?From you? Nothing. I didn’t ask for this meeting.”
“Then why come?”
“Because you asked. And I’m curious.” Bruce took a few steps forward, his shoes quiet on the marble. He looked up at the ceiling, at the face of God breathing life into Adam. “You look at this every day. Do you feel it?The proximity? The sheer, terrifying intimacy of creation?”
The Monsignor was silent.
Bruce turned back. “I don’t want your recognition. I don’t want a throne next to yours. I have a family. That is my covenant.” He gestured to the women. “This is my church. They are my scripture, written in flesh and breath and bond. You have your rituals, your sacraments. I have them.”
He took another step, his voice dropping, becoming almost intimate in the cavernous space. “Here is what will happen. You will stop looking for me. You will let the rumors die. You will use those long, thin threads of yours to gather information on any remaining pockets of the organization that hunted people like me, and you will pass that information to me, through channels I will provide. In return, I don’t dismantle the foundation of your faith by taking a shit on the altar of St. Peter’s.”
The blasphemy hung in the sacred air, stark and shocking. One of the younger clerics gasped.
Monsignor Curio’s face paled, but he held his ground. “You speak of power.”
“I speak of reality. My father and I… we had our differences. He runs his shop. I run mine. We have an understanding. You are intermediaries. I am cutting out the middleman.” Bruce’s gaze was merciless. “Do we have an understanding, Monsignor?”
The old man’s eyes flickered to the women again. To Lena, whose expression was one of fierce pride; to Julianna, whose serene beauty held a terrifying gravity; to Elara, whose Nordic features looked carved from the same stone as the prophets on the walls. He saw no fear.No doubt. Only a united, dreadful certainty.
He bowed his head, a minute dip of concession. “We will discuss your… terms.”
“See that you do.”
They left as silently as they came, the heavy door sighing shut behind them, leaving the men of God in the company of painted angels and a silence that now felt accusing.
The tension from the chapel didn’t dissipate; it transmuted. It followed them back to their rented palazzo, a centuries-old building of shadowed arches and secluded courtyards in the heart of Rome. It was a low, simmering frequency in the bond—a mix of adrenalized triumph, lingering defiance, and a raw, territorial energy that thrummed beneath their skin.
They gathered in a grand, dimly-lit bedroom, its walls adorned with fading frescoes of mythic scenes. The only light came from a dozen flickering candles in wrought-iron stands, casting dancing shadows that made the painted gods seem to writhe.
No one spoke of the meeting. Words were useless now.
Bruce stood by the tall window, looking out at the Roman rooftops, his back to them, his shoulders a hard line under his shirt. The weight of the day—the confrontation, the naked assertion of his power in the very heart of an ancient empire—lay on him visibly.
It was Sophia who moved first. The trainer, the woman of discipline and action. She walked to him, her steps silent on the terracotta tiles. She didn’t touch him. She simply began to undress him, her fingers methodical on his buttons, her strength easily removing his jacket, his shirt. Each piece of clothing, a layer of the outside world, was shed and dropped to the floor.
He let her, his breathing steady but deep.
When he was bare to the waist, Camille approached. She brought a goblet of dark wine, holding it to his lips. He drank, his eyes never leaving the night. She then took the goblet, tipped it, and let a splash of the deep red liquid run down the hard planes of his chest. It looked like blood in the candlelight.
Lena was there then, on her knees. Her mouth, hot and hungry, followed the trail of wine. Her tongue lapped at the hollow of his throat, the defined ridges of his abdomen. She wasn’t gentle. She was consuming, claiming. She unfastened his trousers, freeing his already-hard cock, and took him into her mouth with a hungry, gulping motion that made his breath hitch.
“You showed them,” she muttered, her lips stretched wide around him. “You showed them all what a god really is.”
A low growl rumbled in Bruce’s chest. He tangled a hand in her wild curls, not guiding, just holding on.
Julianna and Elara closed in from either side. Julianna pressed against his back, her sinuous curves molding to him, her teeth biting his shoulder. Elara faced him, her pale eyes glacial fire. She captured his mouth in a kiss that was all teeth and tongue, a stark, possessive invasion.
Anya and Moira and Ketut surrounded Lena, their hands roaming over Bruce’s thighs, his stomach. They watched her work, their own arousal a palpable scent in the room, mixed with wax and stone and wine.
Bruce’s control, the icy mantle he’d worn in the chapel, began to crack. A fracture line of pure, dark need.
“On the bed,” he said, his voice ragged.
They moved as one.
He turned, his cock glistening from Lena’s mouth, and his gaze swept over them. They were disrobing now, fabric sighing to the floor, revealing flesh painted gold and russet by the firelight. They arranged themselves on the vast, velvet-draped bed—a living tapestry of offered flesh.
He didn’t choose.He took.
He crawled onto the bed, his focus landing on Sophia. She was on her back, her athletic body taut with anticipation, her dark eyes daring him. He gripped her thighs, spreading them, and drove into her without preamble.
She cried out, a sharp, guttural sound of pure satisfaction, her back arching off the bed. He fucked her with the same relentless, declarative force he’d used in the chapel—each deep, pounding thrust a stamp of ownership, a rejection of every power that was not them, not here, not this.
“Is this… divine enough for them?” he gritted out, his hips pistoning. The wet, slick sound of their joining was obscenely loud.
“Yes!” Sophia gasped, her legs locking around his waist, her nails scoring his back.
But he wasn’t done. He pulled out of her, his cock dripping, and turned to Elara. He pushed her onto her hands and knees, mounting her from behind. He entered her in one brutal stroke, her tight channel gripping him like a vice. He held her pale hips, his fingers digging into her flesh, and rode her hard, the slapping impact echoing like a challenge in the stone room.
“Tell me… what you saw… in their eyes,” he demanded, his rhythm unforgiving.
“Fear!” Elara moaned, her face pressed into the velvet. “Awe! They know… they know nothing!”
He moved again.To Anya. He lifted her tiny frame easily, pressing her against the carved bedpost. She wrapped her thick legs around him, and he impaled her, her small, tight body yielding to his size with a gasp that turned into a sob of pleasure. He pinned her there, fucking her with short, deep, relentless thrusts.
“Whose are you?” he snarled, his face buried in her blonde hair.
“Yours! God, Bruce, only yours!”
He was a force of nature, a storm passing over each of them. He took Ketut from behind, her lithe body bent over a pile of cushions, her ethereal beauty contorted in ecstasy. He laid Moira on her back, her red hair fanning out like fire, and filled her, watching the freckles on her pale skin flush with heat. He pulled Julianna beneath him, their powerful bodies moving in a fierce, matched rhythm that shook the bedframe, a clash of titans.
Through it all, Camille and Lena watched, touched, guided. Camille kissed his shoulders, whispering praise in Spanish. Lena would lean in, her mouth finding his, sharing the taste of his sweat and their combined arousal.
The bond was wide open, a screaming channel of sensory overload. The stretch, the burn, the blinding spikes of pleasure, the profound emotional purge—it all cascaded through them, a feedback loop of absolute possession. They weren’t just being fucked. They were being reconsecrated.Reminded.
Finally, breath ragged, muscles trembling, he found himself over Camille. His wife.His foundation. Her curvy body was slick with sweat, her eyes soft with understanding and fierce love.
He entered her slowly this time, a deep, claiming slide that made them both groan. He buried his face in her neck, his hips beginning to move in a rhythm that was less about fury now, and more about a profound, desperate union.
“This,” he panted against her skin. “This is the only holy thing.”
Camille clutched him, her body rising to meet his, her heels digging into his ass. “Show me,” she breathed. “Let it all go. Give it to me. Every last bit of it.”
It was the permission he needed. The last vestige of the Vatican’s oppressive sanctity, the ghost of the Monsignor’s fearful eyes, the weight of a title he never wanted—it all coalesced into a raw, physical need for release.
His pace became frantic, desperate. “Fuck. Camille. I’m gonna… I can’t…”
“Do it,” she commanded, her voice husky with her own rising climax. “Fill me up. Mark this place as yours. Ours.”
With a shout that was half-roar, half-prayer, Bruce came. It was a deep, pulsing eruption that seemed to draw from the very core of him, a surrender and a triumph all at once. Camille cried out beneath him, her body clenching around him in wave after wave of her own orgasm, triggered by the scalding flood and the emotional tsunami crashing through the bond.
The climax didn’t stop with them. It ripped through the shared connection, a psychic detonation.
Elara, who was being touched by Julianna, jerked and screamed, her body bowing. Anya, who had Ketut’s mouth between her legs, sobbed as she shattered. Moira and Sophia, tangled together, climaxed in a shared, wordless cry. Lena, watching, her hand between her own legs, came with a sharp gasp, her amber eyes rolling back.
Slowly, the tremors subsided. The room was filled with the sound of labored breathing, the smell of sex and spent candles. Bodies were strewn across the lavish bed, glistening, boneless.
Bruce lay collapsed partly on Camille, his head on her chest, listening to the frantic beat of her heart slow. His mind, for the first time since the call had come, was quiet. The fortress was not just manned; it was satisfied, its borders fiercely, intimately reaffirmed.
Camille stroked his sweat-damp hair, her fingers tracing the shell of his ear. She looked up at the fresco on the ceiling above their bed—not God and Adam, but a scene of bacchanalian revelry, satyrs and nymphs entwined.
A faint, satisfied smile touched her lips. She pressed a kiss to Bruce’s forehead.
“Let them have their chapel,” she murmured, to all of them, to the night. “We have this.”
The silence after Camille’s words was a warm, shared blanket. It was broken by the subtle, insect-like buzz of Bruce’s private phone vibrating on the nightstand. He didn’t move from where his head rested on her chest. The buzz persisted, a stark, electronic counterpoint to their languid breathing.
“Persistent fuckers,” Lena mumbled into a pillow.
Bruce sighed, a deep exhalation that stirred the air. He reached out a hand without looking, fumbling for the device. He brought it to his ear. “Ambros.”
The voice on the other end was aged, softly accented, and carried a quiet, unassuming authority that bypassed all secretaries and intermediaries. “Mr. Ambros. This is Father Matteo. I apologize for the directness of this call.”
Bruce’s body went still. Camille felt the shift, her hand pausing in his hair. The other women, attuned to the bond’s sudden alertness, grew attentive in the dim light.
“I’ve been briefed on Monsignor Curio’s… conversation,” the Pope continued, his tone weary. “He is a good man, but his methods are those of a diplomat. I find myself unconcerned with diplomacy at this moment.” He paused. “I’d like to speak to you in person. Really, it’s almost a compunction. I don’t wish to quarrel with you. I wish to understand. Is that acceptable?”
Bruce sat up slowly, the sheets pooling around his waist. He looked at Camille, at Lena, at the circle of faces watching him. He saw their caution, their protectiveness glowing in their gold-flecked eyes. He also saw a flicker of curiosity.
“You seem an open and honest man,” Bruce said into the phone, his voice neutral.
“I try to be. The office… complicates that. But this is not the office calling.”
“Where are you right now?” Bruce asked.
“In my private study. Why?”
“Concentrate on your surroundings.”
“How do you mean?”
“Visualize where you are,” Bruce said softly, his gaze turning inward, focusing on a point beyond the room. “The walls. The desk. The texture of the wood. The light from the window.”
Through the bond, the wives felt him gather his will, not with violence, but with a precise, needle-thread focus. The air in their bedroom didn’t tear. It simply parted for a moment, a silent ripple of displaced reality.
In the Vatican, Pope Matteo focused on the grain of his oak desk, the green shade of his lamp, the quiet hum of the ancient city outside his window. He blinked.
Bruce was sitting in the armchair opposite him.
The Pope started, his phone clattering onto the desk. He stared, his wise old eyes widening. A beat passed. Then, a rich, genuine laugh bubbled up from his chest. It was a sound of pure, unfeigned astonishment.
“Well,” the Pope said, recovering his breath, a smile etching deep lines into his face. “That answers a great many of my questions quite definitively.” He looked at the empty space where Bruce had just, impossibly, appeared. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”
Bruce settled into the chair, the worn leather creaking. He took in the humble room, the shelves of books, the simple crucifix on the wall. “I’ll have what you’re having.”
The Pope nodded, his hands only slightly trembling as he poured two glasses of water from a crystal pitcher. He pushed one across the desk to Bruce.
They drank in silence for a moment, two men in a quiet room, the weight of millennia between them.
“So,” the Pope began, placing his glass down carefully. “Do we have everything wrong?”
Bruce swirled the water in his glass. “No. The life of Jesus—who I guess is me, in a past life—I don’t really understand that part myself—is accurate enough. The broad strokes. The message. The angels, the Nephalim, Lucifer… all real. Although different. Lucifer was evil, but not the devil of your catechism. A tyrant. A parasite. I ended his reign on earth and sent him to the Father for judgment.”
Pope Matteo took it all in, his face a mask of profound concentration. He steepled his fingers. “Simply amazing,” he whispered. Not as a priest, but as a man confronted with a fundamental truth. “Can you… walk on water? Turn water to wine?”
Bruce gave a slow, single nod. “I can.”
A childlike wonder broke through the Pope’s solemnity. “Could you demonstrate?”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Bruce’s lips. He looked at the glass of water in his hand. “What kind of wine?”
The Pope blinked, then a delighted grin spread across his face. “I’m fond of a dry red. A Brunello, perhaps.”
Bruce held the glass up, looked into the clear water. He didn’t speak. He simply… intended. The molecules within the glass shivered, rearranged. The color deepened from clear to a rich, translucent garnet. The scent of oak, dark cherry, and earth bloomed in the room.
He handed the glass back.
The Pope took it with reverence. He sipped. His eyes closed. A long moment passed. He opened them, and they were bright. “Simply magnificent,” he breathed. He took another savoring sip, then looked at Bruce, not as a supplicant to a deity, but as one man to another who has just shared a profound secret. “Would it be possible, my Lord, to indulge an old man? To meet with me, from time to time? I enjoyed this conversation very much.” He chuckled, a dry, warm sound. “I never thought I’d meet the man to whom I’ve devoted my whole life praying.”
Bruce studied him. He saw no guile, no hidden agenda, only a deep, scholarly curiosity and a faith that was now struggling to reconcile itself with fact. “You can call me Bruce,” he said finally. “And yes. We can talk.” He finished his wine, the flavor impeccable. “But not here. The walls have ears, and eyes. I’ll know when you’re ready for another… talk.”
Before the Pope could reply, Bruce stood up. He gave a small, respectful nod. “Enjoy the wine, Father.”
Then, between one breath and the next, he was gone. Only the empty chair remained, and the lingering aroma of a perfect Brunello.
Pope Matteo sat alone in the sudden silence of his study. He looked at the wine in his glass, then at the empty space. He finished the drink slowly, savoring every drop of the impossible.
Back in the Roman palazzo, the air in the bedroom rippled once more.
Bruce stood beside the bed, the scent of old books and sanctity still clinging to his clothes for a second before evaporating.
“Well?” Lena asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
“He’s just a man,” Bruce said, his voice distant. “A good one. Curious. A bit lost.” He began to undress, his mind elsewhere. “He asked for a demonstration.”
Elara raised an eyebrow. “Of what?”
“Water into wine.” Bruce crawled back onto the bed, the weight of the encounter leaving him. He sought Camille’s warmth again, burying his face in the curve of her neck. He needed the scent of her skin, of them, to overwrite the incense and aged stone.
Anya giggled. “Did you do it?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?” Julianna asked, a playful smirk on her lips.
“Brunello.”
Sophia laughed, a low, rich sound. “Of course. Nothing but the best for the Pontiff.”
The tension dissolved, replaced by a softer, weirder intimacy. The absurdity of it all—the divine power used for a party trick for the Pope—mixed with the raw, animal reality of their tangled bodies on the disheveled bed.
Ketut traced a finger down Bruce’s spine. “Did it scare him?”
“No,” Bruce murmured, his lips against Camille’s skin. “It delighted him. I think… I think he’s been waiting his whole life to see a miracle that wasn’t in a book. To have a real conversation with his God, even if his God doesn’t want the job.”
Moira shifted, curling into his side. “So what now?”
“Now,” Bruce said, his hands beginning to roam again, relearning the landscape of Camille’s hips, “we go home. We live. And I have a feeling an old man in Rome will be calling for a chat sooner than later.” His touch grew more purposeful, a different kind of miracle sought in the familiar heat of his wife’s body. “But that’s tomorrow.”
Tonight, there was only this. The slide of skin on skin, the hitch of a breath, the language of touch that needed no translation. The Pope had his wine. Bruce had his sacrament here, in the soft cries and eager hands that pulled him back down into the only divinity he cared to know.