Chapter 3 Santino #2
Why can’t I stop wanting you?Why do you look at me like you know every fear I’ve ever buried?Why does this feel like destiny instead of sin?
But I don’t say any of that.
I don’t have to.
The shift in her expression tells me she read every unspoken thought anyway.
And that — that terrifies me more than any Rivas enemy ever did.
Outside, the storm lashes against the stained-glass windows.
Inside, another storm cracks open in my chest.
And Pia stands at the center of it, unflinching.Watching me come apart.
Knowing she caused it.
Pia Pushes Too Far
She moves before I can stop her—one slow, deliberate step that erases the last of the distance between us.
Heat radiates off her skin, seeping through the thin, damp fabric of my shirt, sinking into me like a brand.
My pulse spikes so violently I have to brace a hand on the wooden cabinet behind me just to stay standing.
I should step back.I don’t.
I stay still like a fucking idiot—a priest with the self-control of a starving animal—letting her stand close enough to read every fracture running through me.
Her voice drops, soft and lethal. “You think I’m here to hurt you,” she whispers. “You’re wrong. If I had wanted to, I already could have.”
The words hit with quiet precision—sharp, honest, impossible to dismiss.My breath catches somewhere between threat and truth.
Because she’s right. If she meant me harm, she’s had a dozen openings.
She could’ve screamed after what I did in the hallway.She could’ve gone to the archbishop.She could’ve run.
Instead, she walked straight into the room where I was drowning in shame.
That alone should terrify me.It does.
Her eyes soften—not in manipulation, not in that careful, calculated way she uses on everyone else—but in something real. Something unarmored. Something that cuts deeper than any of her lies.
And that shakes me more than anything she’s said tonight.
I move before I even realize I’ve made a choice. My hand shoots out and closes around her wrist—not rough, not like the hallway—just… desperate. A drowning man grabbing the only thing keeping him above water.
Her breath stutters—just enough to tell me she didn’t expect it.
Good.For once, I want her off-balance.
“What do you know about my father?” I demand.
The words scrape out raw. Not a priest’s question. Not calm.A son’s demand.A threat sharpened by fear.
Her lips part.A tiny, startled inhale slips out—the first crack in her mask.
And fuck, I see everything in that split second:
The truth she’s been sitting on.The hesitation she hoped I wouldn’t notice.The war behind her eyes she can’t hide in time.
She snaps the mask back on too fast, but I already saw the damage.
The truth scares her.Not me.Him.
“Enough,” she says quietly. “Enough to know you’re not ready to hear it.”
The sacristy seems to shrink around us—stone, shadows, incense, and rain-soaked skin pulling tighter with every breath. The tension spikes—electric, volatile, braided with something I refuse to name.
Desire curls through it, dark and immediate.Danger coils around it, sharp as glass.
I stare at her.She stares back.
Both of us unsteady for different fucking reasons.Lying to ourselves is something we both do.Both of us are too close to something that feels like fate sharpened into a blade.
She should step back.She doesn’t.
I should release her wrist.I don’t.
And in this breath… this heartbeat… this inch of space between sin and confession—
I realize she hasn’t pushed too far.
She’s only just begun.
Discovery of Giovanni’s Hidden Trail
Pia finally steps back.
It shouldn’t feel like oxygen leaving the room, but it does.
Her heat slips from my skin, her gaze loosens its grip on my ribs, and for a second I swear the whole sacristy expands around me again.
I straighten, force my lungs to move, force my pulse to slow.
I need distance.I need clarity.I need to fucking remember who I’m supposed to be.
But as she turns toward the doorway, something slides into the corner of my vision — a faded curl of parchment sticking out from beneath an old, dust-coated missal on the sacristy counter.
A book Giovanni used.A book no one has touched since he walked these halls.
My body goes still.Completely.
The world narrows to that uneven sliver of parchment—yellowed, frayed, waiting like it has been holding its breath for years.
Pia notices the shift in me instantly. Of course she does.She pauses mid-step, her eyes narrowing just enough to tell me she sees more than I want her to.
I ignore her.For once, I actually manage to.
I reach for the missal and slide the parchment free.
My heart stops.
The handwriting—sharp, slanted, carved into the page with pressure only Giovanni used—hits like a punch to the sternum.
My father’s.Undeniable.Unwelcome.
I haven’t seen it since I was a teenager — since he shoved forged statements under my hand and told me to “sign like a man,”since I learned that loyalty meant lying to the courts to protect a ghost he claimed he’d never met.
Ink ghosts from my past bleed straight into the present.
At first, symbols fill the page—crude sketches of the church’s foundation, hallways missing from any official blueprint, a crawlspace beneath the sacristy, and a passage marked beneath the altar.
And in the center — a symbol.
Not a cross.Not a sigil used by clergy.Not anything meant for holy walls.
A mark Giovanni burned into the underside of his desk the night he made Romeo and me swear we’d die before betraying him.A mark he carved into the crates he shipped out of Palermo when I was fourteen.A mark reserved for only one thing — the secrets too dangerous ever to surface.
My pulse spikes so hard I have to grip the edge of the counter to keep my balance.
This isn’t a note.This is a trail.A warning.A confession he never had the spine to say out loud.
Behind me, Pia moves — too fast, too interested, too knowing.
“What is that?” she asks, her voice soft but edged with steel.
I snap the missal shut before she can get closer.
She freezes.Just a fraction.But I catch the widening of her eyes, the flicker of something she rarely shows—fear.
Good.Finally, something real from her.
Her gaze sharpens, mapping the shift in my expression with surgical precision. She knows it’s important. She knows it’s old. She knows it’s him.
She takes one slow step toward me, and for the first time since she entered this church, I don’t back up.
I straighten to my full height — the heir I buried rising under my skin like a ghost I can’t outrun.
Her voice lowers, cautious now. “Santino… what did you just find?”
I don’t answer.I don’t need to.
For the first time since she set foot in this church, she looks at me not like a priest she can manipulate — not like a man she can unravel — but like the threat Giovanni raised me to be.
And as the parchment heats in my palm, one truth locks into place:
Whatever Giovanni hid…whatever lies beneath this church…whatever trail Pia came here to follow — it belongs to me now.
Santino’s First Step into His Father’s Darkness
Pia tries to leave.
Not quickly.Not in fear.She moves with the same deliberate, calculated grace she’s used from the moment she stepped into my life—each step a choice, each choice a strategy she already accounted for.
But she’s not walking out of this room.Not with the parchment burning in my hand.Not with her lies tightening around my throat like wire.
I step in front of the door before she reaches it.
Not out of lust.Not out of anger.Out of revelation.
“Santino—” she starts.
I cut her off.
“Tell me what you know.”
My voice doesn’t echo like a prayer.It doesn’t shake like a confession.It sharpens—low, lethal, unyielding.
The voice of Giovanni’s eldest son.The part of me I swore I buried.
Her breath catches—subtle, but real.
She studies me the way she studies locked corridors and camera angles—precise, calculating, absorbing every shift in power. She sees it. The change. The line I just crossed.
I grip the parchment tighter.It feels like it’s pulsing in my hand, alive with old sins.
“Don’t play with me,” I whisper. “Not now. Not about him.”
Her lashes lower.Not coy.Not manipulative.
Bracing.
She steps closer, and for a heartbeat, I think she might finally tell me the truth.But when she speaks, her voice slips out soft and devastating.
“Santino… you’re not the one in danger.”
A pause.A knife’s edge of silence.
“You’re the one being hunted.”
The words hit harder than any punch I’ve ever taken.
My jaw locks.The room tilts.Cold slides down my spine like a warning I should’ve heard years ago.
“What does that mean?” I demand, stepping closer, cutting down what’s left of the space between us. “Who’s hunting me? Why are you—”
But I stop.
Because her eyes flick past my shoulder.
A tiny movement.A single shift.
Then—
A shadow crosses the stained-glass window.
Not the storm.Not headlights.Human.Still.Watching.
Footsteps echo in the hallway—light, deliberate, not belonging to anyone who should be in this part of the church.
Every muscle in my body freezes.
Pia reacts first.Of course she does.
While I’m still processing the threat, she backs away—not toward me, not toward the main door—but toward the narrow exit on the far side of the sacristy.
“Santino,” she whispers, urgency slipping beneath the softness, “you need to understand—this isn’t about your church. It isn’t even about me.”
I move toward her, but she’s already shifting, already planning, already gone.
She slips through the door with a quickness that screams training, not instinct.
“Pia—wait—”
But the storm swallows her whole.
The sacristy feels cavernous and empty without her, the stained glass trembling under the roar of the wind. The footsteps vanish. Whoever was listening is either gone…
…or hiding somewhere I can’t see.
I force myself to breathe.Slow.Controlled.A lie.
Control is a memory now.
I look down at the parchment in my hand.Giovanni’s handwriting glares back at me.
A map.A code.A door hidden beneath my feet.A secret older than my priesthood.Older than my guilt.
Older than my defiance.
My throat tightens.
“What did you do, Father?” I whisper, the words scraping out raw.
Thunder cracks so violently it rattles the bones of the church.
And for the first time since Giovanni died—
I feel him here.
Not as a ghost.
As a threat.