“Brass knuckles?” Milady asked. “That’s cheating.”

“It’s my game. My rules.” Nora wiped her bloody brass knuckles off on Milady’s pristine white dress. “Look at that. The White Queen becomes the Red Queen,” Nora said to her with a grin she hoped looked as maniacal as it felt. “And you have something that belongs to me.”

“I do?”

“You do.” Nora reached out, wrapped her fingers around the locket that contained Søren’s hair and yanked it off.

“I want her removed,” Kingsley said from inside the open iron elevator. “I watched her ignore a submissive’s safe word during a whipping. She’s henceforth banned from any of my clubs. Au revoir, Milady.”

Two of Kingsley’s bouncers, nearly the size of Trent, came forward.

“I can tell the world about your priest,” Milady said. “And I will.”

“You think Søren’s stupid enough to come down here using his real name? What are you going to tell them anyway? That you paid two thousand dollars for a lock of his hair? Unless you fucked him, he didn’t break any vows.”

“He’s fucked you.”

“I’ve been gone for over a year. You’ve been here a year. You haven’t seen him break any vows, have you?”

“Everyone here has seen you two together.”

“I’m not afraid of you and neither is he,” Nora said. “But you’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you. You’re a nobody.” Milady laughed. Nora moved as if to punch her in the nose, brass knuckles bloody and shining. Milady squealed, turned and covered her face. Instinct, of course. Anyone would have done it, even Nora. But Nora hadn’t done it. Milady had.

“Kidding,” Nora said. “See? It pays to be an ex-submissive. We know how to take a hit without flinching.”

Now the crowd around them laughed and laughed and laughed as the once-formidable dominatrix was reduced to squealing and hiding her face from Nora. From Mistress Nora.

Nora smiled. Milady looked afraid. Leaning in, Nora whispered a final farewell.

“Now we’re even.”

21

A Confession

DEFEATING MILADY HAD been a breeze compared to what Nora had to do the next day. She borrowed a car from Kingsley, drove to Wakefield, Connecticut, and walked through the heavy wooden front doors of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. She passed through the lobby—narthex, Eleanor, it’s called the narthex—and headed to his office.

“Elle?”

Nora froze at the sound of a familiar voice. She turned and found Diane, Søren’s secretary, striding down the hall toward her.

“Diane,” Nora said, bracing for a hug. Diane could hug the life out of someone.

But Diane stopped three feet from her. No hugs were forthcoming.

Fuck.

“How are you, Elle? Haven’t seen you in a while.” Diane put her hands in her pockets. As if the lack of a hug wasn’t tell enough...

“I went away for a year. Traveling.”

“I see. And you’re back now?”

“For a quick visit.”

“I see.”

“I see you see,” Nora said. “You know, since that’s the second time you said ‘I see.’”

That tugged a small smile out of Diane.

“Something tells me you have something to say to me?” Nora waited, bracing herself.

Diane raised her hand to her head and breathed out hard.

“You were in my wedding.” She said the words as if she were accusing Nora of committing a crime.

“The wedding he officiated,” Nora reminded her.

“You could have told me.”

“Sounds like somebody told you.”

Diane took her by the arm and escorted her into the small office next to Søren’s.

“He told you,” Nora said in a whisper since Diane’s office didn’t have a door.

Diane turned to the window and nodded. She was ten years older than Nora, a wife, a mother, and so loyal to Søren that Nora already knew where this conversation would go.

“I love him,” Diane said. “You know that.”

“I do,” Nora said. Diane had been one of Søren’s first minor scandals at Sacred Heart. It was a snow-white conservative congregation and Diane was black and divorced. She’d had forty dollars in her checking account when Søren had hired her and the only thing that exceeded his loyalty to his secretary was her loyalty to him. “He loves you, too. I don’t know how many times he’s told me he couldn’t run the church without you.”

“I almost had to. Last year, he comes into the office looking like someone died, and he wouldn’t tell me why. Not for a week. Not until I begged him on my knees—and that is not an exaggeration—did he tell me what happened. Twelve years I have worked for that man and I had no idea—none—that he had...you. Until you were gone.”

“So are you mad at me or are you mad at him?”

“I wasn’t mad at either of you. You’re both adults. He said nothing much happened between the two of you until you were twenty.”

“I was a virgin until I was twenty. Until him.”

Diane winced.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said, although she wasn’t. “You probably don’t want that image in your head. Look, I know you care about him and it must have been hard for you to learn he had a...”

“Mistress?”

“You wouldn’t be the first person to call me that. Anyway, I know it was a shock for you, but he’s—”

“Are you coming back to him?”

“What? Are you serious?”

“I am. Are you coming back to him?”

“I hadn’t planned on it. Why?”

“Because he misses you. And he’s not the same without you.”

“Let me get this straight—you, a priest’s secretary, are telling a priest’s ex-lover to start sleeping with him again?”

“I don’t judge him for having a relationship. The Bible says it is not good for man to be alone. But I... I don’t. I don’t want to see him in pain anymore.”

“I don’t want to be in pain anymore. Do you know how hard it is to be in love with a Catholic priest?”

“I can’t imagine it’s easy.”

“It isn’t. And before you decide I’m the bad guy for leaving him, you should know he pushed me away. He crossed a line with me, and I had no choice.”

“He crossed a line with you?” Diane sounded dubious.

“He did.”

“You were twenty when you slept with him the first time. A grown-ass woman. When I was twenty I was already on my first marriage. If you’d been fifteen, maybe I could sympathize here. But when it comes to talking about crossing lines, an adult woman who sleeps with a priest has no room to talk.”

Nora smiled. “You know, Diane, he warned me the night of your wedding that if we ever got caught, I’d take the lion’s share of the blame. Guess he was right.”

“All I’m saying is that he needs you. He loves you. He says—”

“What do I say?”

Søren stood looming in the doorway.

Nora sighed. “You should let your secretary have a door to her office,” Nora said.

“She doesn’t want one. I’ve offered,” Søren said.

“If I have a door, people will want to come in and close it and tell me things I don’t want to hear. His job is taking care of those people and their problems. My job is taking care of him.”

“Which you do admirably,” Søren said to his long-suffering secretary. “Too admirably perhaps.”

“Someone has to take care of you, right?” Diane asked. The question was a knife in Nora’s stomach. The message was clear—Diane had to take care of him since Nora wasn’t doing it anymore.

“Eleanor? I assume you’re here to see me?”

“If you have a minute.”

“I don’t, actually. I have a date with some repentant sinners. But if you’d like to wait in my office, I’ll be finished in an hour.”

He turned on his heel and walked down the opposite hallway.

“He’s hearing confessions now,” Diane said. “Like he said, you can wait if you want.”

“No. I don’t want to wait. Excuse me.”

She left Diane in her office and followed Søren down the hall. Sacred Heart had a traditional-style confessional booth, two doors on opposite sides and a screen in between. Once it had sat in the corner of the sanctuary but Søren had it moved to an alcove at the end of the west hallway that had once been a Chapel of Perpetual Adoration. It was a safer, quieter, more intimate spot for baring one’s soul than the sanctuary. She stepped into the old chapel and shut the wooden door behind her. An engraved plaque on the door warned not to enter if the door was shut. No one would disturb them until she’d had her say.