Secrets And Sins Part 3: Happy ever after

Chapter 1

~Beatrice~

"Like I said before Cardinal, the OCS is quite happy to complete the mission...for fair compensation." Mother Superior said calmly.

"It...it...it is your duty!" Cardinal Marcus spluttered in reply.

"It was our duty." The nun corrected.

To say the transition away from the Church's control had been a bumpy one would be an understatement. The currently Pope-less officials dug their heels in at every turn, but Mother Superior had stubbornly persisted, dragging them kicking and screaming into the new regime. Though they had started to accept the Order's stance, learning that they would need to pay the OCS to complete the proposed mission of wiping out a faction of the Brotherhood holed up in Florence, things had quickly gone backwards.

"If you wish to use our services, our Warrior nuns..." She gestured towards Beatrice who awkwardly waved, "Then this is what you must do."

The room erupted as the group of Cardinals all began speaking at once, arguing both with each other and with Mother Superior. The two women sat silently; they had been talking in circles for hours now. Beatrice really didn't know how the matriarch was staying so placid in the face of the Church's ire, but somehow, she never lost her temper or even raised her voice.

She had told the sister warrior, after a particularly difficult meeting last week, that they held all the cards, that the Church needed them more than they needed the Church. It was a good way to look at it and Beatrice often reminded herself of those words when she was being talked down to by one of the pompous old men who couldn't get past the old ways.

She could definitely see why Ava had never been requested to be present at these meetings; the younger woman, who had very little trust in the Church to begin with, now openly despised them. Which was more than fair considering how many times the previous Pope had tried to have them killed as well as literally cutting one of Ava's wings off. The ascent of the next Pope had even been put on hold after all the damage Agusto had done.

"After everything the Church has done for you..." Marcus was turning an interesting shade of red now.

The Cardinal was a favorite to take the papacy, and he knew it. Out of all the so called 'Princes of the Church', Marcus had taken a leading role in negotiating the new alliance between the Order and the Vatican. He was relatively young, probably early forties, and had a rather high opinion of himself. Beatrice wasn't his biggest fan, in fact she thought he was misogynistic pig, but understood the need for professionalism in these proceedings.

"Now, now, Marcus. Need I remind you why the Order has decided to split from the Church in the first place..." Mother Superior interrupted stubbornly before the Cardinal could get another rant going.

But he countered instantly, "We were infiltrated by that insidious cult, the Church never had an agenda to take down the Warrior nun..."

Beatrice sighed, looking down at the roughly hewn gold band on her ring finger. They had already talked about the Brotherhood's breach of the Vatican, multiple times, during this meeting. The Church refused to take ownership of the mistake it had made by letting so many of the Cultists into positions of power in their ranks and it was really starting to get on her nerves. Besides that, it was getting late; Ava was going to be pissed if she was too much longer. Beatrice had promised her fiancé that she would be done by six, just in time for the surprise the younger woman had apparently planned.

She ran her thumb over the smooth metal, smiling to herself. It had been two months since Ava had asked her to marry her but between her own nearly constant church negotiations while trying to learn to control her new powers, and the Halo bearer's new role in the day-to-day training of OCS recruits, the two women had barely had any time to themselves.