In 2009, Russian soldiers carry out a genocide in the smaller reaches of Russia, especially those being shielded by the clerics of St. Catherine’s.

Nearly two decades later, when the genocidal Russian general seeks sanctuary inside Vatican City, the Vatican Knights are given an order that tests everything they stand for: keep him alive. Kimball Hayden has spent years atoning for the sins of his past, trading the life of a government assassin for the cloth of a Vatican Knight. But protecting General Andrei Volkov means confronting a truth he has carried for years — he had Volkov once, assumed the job was done, and walked away. It wasn't done. Volkov survived, and six months later, he returned to finish what he started, wiping out every man, woman, and child the Vatican Knights had saved. More than five hundred people. Three villages. A mass grave. All of it traceable to one assumption Kimball should never have made. Now, as Volkov sits across from Kimball in the Sala Regia and smiles — a conversation follows that systematically dismantles everything Kimball believes about himself, forcing him to confront the possibility that the line between guardian and devil is thinner than a Roman Catholic collar...

What follows is a night of close-quarters violence inside the ancient walls as a precision team of Russian assassins infiltrates Vatican City with one objective: to eliminate Andrei Volkov. Caught between his duty to the Church and everything Volkov has forced him to confront, Kimball Hayden fights to keep a monster alive while every instinct he possesses argues otherwise. But stopping the assassins and protecting Volkov are two different things — and Kimball Hayden is a man with a very long memory.