The Pious Priest’s Sinful Collection - Chapter 55

“Phew…”

Her chest rose and fell as the tension finally bled out of her limbs. For a moment there, she’d truly thought she was doomed.

‘That was too close.’

Still, whatever scared Bishop Caleb off like that, she wasn’t about to question it. A lucky break was a lucky break.

Straightening her spine, she took in the room.

Just as expected, the Cardinal’s bedroom was empty. That didn’t surprise her. While it had been odd for him to be absent from his office, she had guessed he wouldn’t return to his quarters until all outside obligations were finished.

So she would wait here.

As crude a tactic as it was, it was also the most effective. There was no better place to corner Cardinal Theodore Valentino alone.

“Hmm?”

But something felt off.

The room, already spare in its usual state, looked even more barren than she remembered. It didn’t take Daphne long to spot why.

The bed — usually dressed in layers of soft, silken linens wide enough to drape down like a cloud — was stripped to its bones. Only a thin sheet stretched tightly across the mattress. In a chamber graced with ornate ceiling frescos and bathed in gilded light, the nakedness of that bed stood out like a bruise.

And that wasn’t all.

The wardrobe once stationed by the far wall was gone. The little drawer chest beside the bed, where she’d once stolen a glance or two while lying half-asleep had also vanished. In this cavernous space, only the grand bed remained. Everything else had been scrubbed away.

There was a single table tucked into the corner by the window. Small, plain, and devoid of charm, it clung to the uneven stone wall as if trying not to be noticed. Unlike the elegantly carved bed frame, the table looked like it belonged in a monk’s cell, not a cardinal’s suite.

Daphne slowly swept her eyes around the room again, and the realization clicked into place.

Every piece that had once touched her bare skin — every object that had cradled the memory of her presence — was gone.

“What in the world…”

Had he purged every trace of her?

Her lips twisted. She could feel her chest sink, heavy with something more bitter than she’d expected.

So this was the plan? Lure her in with a brush of piety, let her fall headlong into sin, only to scrub her from his life like a stain?

Or worse, maybe it wasn’t even about guilt. Maybe it was about building a case against her.

If she wouldn’t submit quietly, if she refused to renounce her calling of her own volition… then perhaps he thought to corner her with proof. Evidence of their fall. Her fingerprints on his sanctuary. Her body in his bed.

‘No one would clear out a room this obsessively unless they were trying to erase something — or someone.’

Certainly, confirming the “purity” of her body might be a logistical nightmare, but if Theodore himself stood as witness to her defilement, there would be no need for debate.

And if he volunteered to sacrifice his own chastity for the greater good? If he spun it into some grand moral gesture, ensnaring her in sin so she could be “cleansed” and removed… Well, the temple would surely applaud his noble intent.

He’d be granted penance through confession.

‘And I’d be marched straight to trial.’

From the very beginning, the prophecy said that the one born under three stars would lead a saint into corruption, and that it would take a righteous soul to lead that corrupted saint to repentance. So if the Pope, the holiest being on earth, were to personally receive his confession, it would mean the prophecy had been fulfilled.

“…”

The more she thought about it, the more she felt she understood why Theodore hadn’t immediately reported her after discovering such lascivious evidence — proof that she had penetrated herself in self-pleasure.

Just like the warning from a prophet who once claimed that prophecies, in some form or another, always come true.

If all this were the will of God, then everything lined up too well.

A sudden chill ran down Daphne’s spine and made her shudder. She wanted to believe it wasn’t true, but everything that had happened recently had been too intense, too perfectly aligned to dismiss as mere coincidence.

Even Theodore Valentino, usually so devout, had devoured her body with such greed that she wondered if he had been possessed.

She had thought she’d be the one to seduce the cardinal, who balked in his first experience of such stimulation. But in the end, it had been her who surrendered first.

‘He coaxed and cajoled me, even as I begged him to stop, until he filled my womb to the brim and still kept spilling over…’

He had told her she only needed to enjoy herself, implying that she didn’t need to worry about contraception. And the next day, when she came to, her body was spotless.

‘My body still remembers that burning heat that soaked me so thoroughly my belly felt heavy…’

It wasn’t she who seemed possessed by a demon of lust — but him. He’d acted like a man completely overtaken by carnal desire.

And perhaps… that was what it looked like when a saint, as the prophecy foretold, truly fell.

At the memory of Theodore from that night, Daphne suddenly felt her clerical robes, already tight around her chest, begin to choke her like a noose.