Six weeks before I give my life to God, a dead man takes it instead.
He's waiting at the top of the bell tower at dawn on Ash Wednesday. He marks my forehead with ash and calls me by a name nobody has spoken in ten years.
He came for my father's blood. I offer him mine.
Forty days as his wife. That's the price.
I'm a novice. I've never been kissed. I've never been touched. I've spent my whole life on my knees.
He wants me on my knees too. Just not to pray.
And the worst sin of all is how badly I want to let him.
DAMIANO
Ten years ago her father's men walked into my mother's house and left me for dead.
This city buried me. I let it.
Now I'm back with ten names inked down my ribs and only one left to cross out. His daughter is the only thing he has left to lose, so I take her.
I put my ring on her finger in front of the whole city. I'll teach her every sin she's never committed, and I'll make her beg for each one.
She's my weapon. My wife. My forty days of revenge.
I was never supposed to want her.
I'm a dead man, and she's the most beautiful sin I'll ever commit.
This is the first book in The Altar of Sin Series. Reading