Chapter 4 Pia
Pia
A Predator in a Holy Maze
The church is louder this morning than it should be.Candles crackle.Coins clatter into donation boxes.Choir kids rush past me, laughing as if the place wasn’t built on bones.
But beneath the noise—beneath the prayers, incense, and false holiness—there’s a pulse. A living, breathing thing stitched through the stone. I feel it the same way I feel danger: a low hum against my ribs, a warning in the soles of my feet.
I move anyway.Slow.Precise.Every step is a calculation.
To anyone watching, I’m just another volunteer—new, harmless, dutiful. The girl who got “lost” yesterday and needed a priest to save her.
But I’m not lost today.
Today, I’m mapping.
Every archway. Every alcove. Every corridor Santino tried to keep me away from.
My fingertips skim cool stone as I walk, memorizing grooves, shifts in temperature. Old churches keep secrets—my father taught me that long before Giovanni ripped him out of my life.
My heart tightens.Not now.Focus.
I pass a line of parishioners lighting candles, heads bowed in prayer. While they whisper to God, I calculate blind corners and surveillance gaps. Someone can easily slip beneath the overhead cameras because they are angled too high. The sacristy door has a new lock. The kitchen doesn’t.
Three exits on the west side. Five on the east.
I catalog it all.
But I’m not alone.
Eyes drag across my back—not heavy like Santino’s furious, sinful stare last night. These are smaller. Quicker. Sharper.
I inhale slowly and glance over my shoulder.
Dante.
Fifteen, maybe.Tall.Stillness carved into him like a weapon.
He’s not pretending to pray or sweep floors like the other altar boys. He’s leaning against a far column, arms crossed, gaze locked on me with an intensity that lifts the hair on my arms.
He’s not curious.He’s suspicious.A Rivas son through and through.
I force a gentle smile—the same one I used to give cops when they caught me trespassing as a kid. Innocent. Harmless. Sweet.
It doesn’t land.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t frown. Doesn’t return anything.
He just absorbs me—every movement, every breath—with the eerie focus of someone who’s already survived too much ever to be fooled again.
Then, without a word, he turns and slips into the southern corridor, swallowed by shadows like he was never there.
A chill slides down my spine.
That wasn’t a child.That was a guard dog with too many scars and not enough trust left to hide them.
I keep walking, but my pulse ticks faster. Dante wasn’t watching casually. He was tracking. Testing. Evaluating.
A warning.A quiet one.A message etched in the air between us:
You’re not moving through this place unseen.You’re walking through a den guarded by cubs who bite.
I tighten my grip on the clipboard I’m pretending to read.
This church isn’t just a holy maze.It’s a battlefield dressed in stained glass and holy water.
And Santino isn’t the only predator inside it.
Not anymore.
The Boy Who Sees Everything
The courtyard should feel open.Safe.Holy.
It doesn’t.
The weak morning sunlight barely tags the stone, scattering pale gold on puddles from last night’s storm.
The air is damp and cold enough to bite.
I step through the archway and inhale deeply, trying to steady my breath after navigating the corridors.
They feel less like hallways and more like a circulatory system—narrow, throbbing with secrets, leading toward a heart I haven’t reached yet.
I tell myself I shouldn’t care who stares at me.I shouldn’t care who fears me.I’ve walked into worse places than this—into mansions with armed guards, into crime scenes, into rooms where the wrong question gets you killed.
And yet—
My chest tightens when I see him.
Guido.
He’s perched on the edge of the courtyard fountain, shoulders hunched, elbows propped against his knees.
His fingers drag across the cracked marble lip of the fountain—picking, scraping, repeating the motion like it steadies him.
The water behind him reflects a warped silhouette of a boy who has seen far more than any child should.
He’s not looking at me.
He’s watching Santino.
And there’s something about the way he watches his brother that hurts to witness.
Santino crosses the courtyard from the opposite archway, moving like a man carrying weight in his bones—thick, invisible, punishing. His collar is slightly askew, dark hair mussed, jaw tight. He looks like he didn’t sleep… or like he fought some demon in the dark and lost.
Guido flinches.
It’s tiny. Barely a twitch of muscle. The kind only someone trained to read fear would catch.
My pulse stumbles.
Why is the kid scared of him?
Is it the collar?The grief?Giovanni’s death ripping the family apart?
Or is it the darkness under Santino’s skin—the one he tried to choke out of himself last night—bleeding through for this child to see as easily as I do?
A group of parish children run by, giggling as they chase each other through beams of light. Santino stops to kneel next to a little girl whose shoelace has come undone. He ties it with steady hands, gives her a small smile, nudges her back toward the others.
He’s trying so hard to be gentle.
But Guido steps back anyway, shoulders tightening like he’s bracing for something he’s learned to fear.
It isn’t logical.It isn’t a misunderstanding.It’s instinct.
An instinct he’s had for a while.
I study the boy—his flinch; the tension held in too-small shoulders; the silence that isn’t shy but protective. Defensive.
He’s not afraid of the priest.He’s afraid of the man underneath.
And the truth hits me hard:
Guido sees the monster Santino is terrified he might become.
A monster Giovanni built with his own hands.
My stomach knots.I saw it too.Last night—when Santino pressed me against the wall, breath shaking, desire and fear warring in his eyes.
But I chose that danger.
Guido never had a choice.
A wave of something sharp and unwelcome cuts through me. Sympathy? Guilt? It doesn’t fit with my reason for being here. I didn’t come to pity the Rivas sons. I didn’t come to protect their broken pieces.
Yet watching this child recoil from his own brother—
I feel it.
Santino stands slowly, dusting off his hands, jaw clenched just slightly too tight. He looks at Guido, then away, as if he doesn’t know how to reach him… or is afraid trying will make things worse.
Guido doesn’t move.He doesn’t speak.He just watches Santino like he’s waiting to see which version of his brother shows up next.
The priest.Or the shadow.
A cold realization spreads through me:
If Giovanni’s secrets are what I think they are — if what lies under this church is as dangerous as the markings suggest — then this family isn’t just grieving their king.
They’re breaking apart.
And whatever brought me here…whatever truth my father died protecting……it’s going to crack them wide open long before I ever get the chance.
Mapping the Church, Mapping Her Escape
The courtyard disappears behind me as I slip back into the stone veins of the church. The air inside is cooler, denser—like the walls are breathing in the secrets I drag with me and exhaling warnings I refuse to listen to.
Good.Let them watch.Let them whisper.Let them try to keep me out.
I move with purpose but dress it in softness: light steps, careful glances, the quiet patience of someone trying to find her place in a building that overwhelms her. A tourist dressed as a volunteer. A lamb in wolf’s clothing.
Except I’m not the lamb.
My fingers trail along the ancient stone as I walk, each brush of skin a silent measurement. Texture. Temperature. Reverb. My father taught me to read walls the way other kids learn to read storybooks—one hidden space at a time.
And this church hums like a fucking crypt.
I stop at the first door, resting my hand lightly on the knob. Open it just enough to slip my head inside.
An empty classroom.Desks stacked.Hymnals piled against the window.Sunlight catching chalk dust like suspended snowfall.
Nothing I need.
I close the door without a sound and move to the next.
It creaks open onto a narrow staircase that disappears downward into darkness. The air tastes of damp earth, mold, and old cleaning supplies. A storage space. Maybe a forgotten exit. Maybe a trap.
Not this one.Not yet.
I back away, breathing through the creeping knot in my stomach. To a casual observer, I look like I’m simply lost again, trying doors at random the way a new volunteer might—curious, overeager, harmless.
But every step is strategic.
Every door is a question.Every corridor is a threat.
My heartbeat picks up when I reach the next one.
Even from a distance, I know.
The air shifts.Temperature drops.A faint vibration breathes through the wood like something living behind it.
I place a palm flat against the surface. The grain is cool—too cool—and beneath it I feel the latent hum of reinforced steel. My gaze drops to the bolted lock drilled straight into the frame.
This isn’t a closet.It isn’t even pretending well.
This is a vault dressed as a janitor’s space.
My pulse leaps, sharp enough to sting.This is it.This is where Giovanni hid the shit he didn’t dare burn.The files. The evidence. The truth my father chased until it killed him.
My fingertips hover over the lock.
God, I want to break it.Rip the door off its hinges.Scream into the darkness behind it until the truth answers me back.
But I don’t move.Not yet.
I force myself to look away, to scan for cameras—top corners, doorway angles, shelf edges. Nothing obvious. Which makes me trust this place even less.
My father always said the most dangerous rooms are the ones that pretend to be empty.
I shift my weight, adopting the posture of someone confused, maybe embarrassed by her mistake. I let my fingers brush the heavy bolt like I’m trying to open it for no reason other than I’m inexperienced.
A flicker catches in the glass frame across the hall from me—the one displaying old chalices and rosaries.
A shadow.A shape.Still.Tall.
Santino.