Chapter 4 Pia #2
Ice shoots down my spine.
He’s at the far end of the hall, silent, unmoving, staring at me with the expression that strips away every excuse I could create.
He saw me touch the lock.
He saw the way I evaluated the door.
He saw everything.
I pull my hand away instantly. I force myself to turn toward the framed parish map on the wall, studying it like that’s what I came here for.
But I feel him watching.
I don’t need to see his face to know what’s carved across it.
Not desire.Not conflict.Not the wild, trembling heat of last night.
Suspicion.
Sharp.Focused.Lethal.
The priest is gone.
The heir is awake.
And now I’m not mapping this church anymore.
I’m surviving it.
Santino’s Shadow, Dante’s Doubt
I force myself back into the main corridor, letting the hum of parish life swallow me. Soft voices, shuffling feet, the rustle of bulletins—normal sounds that should calm my pulse.
They don’t.
Because behind me, stretched thin and sharp as wire, I can still feel Santino’s stare.
Not the stare from the hallway last night—the one dripping with sin and hunger.This stare cuts colder.
Suspicion.Calculation.A slow, quiet undoing of everything I’ve built around him.
I keep my pace steady, steps controlled, the perfect picture of a dutiful volunteer slipping back into her routine. My smile stays soft, my posture relaxed, hands folded neatly at my waist.
But inside, every nerve tenses up.
I pass a row of parishioners lighting candles. A woman nods at me. I nod back.Easy. Calm. Harmless.
Then the air shifts.
A different awareness prickles down my spine.Not Santino’s eyes — smaller, sharper.Young, but weathered in a way no child should ever be.
Dante.
He’s leaning against a marble column like he grew out of it, arms crossed, posture deceptively lazy. Built like a boy trying too hard to be a man—and somehow already succeeding.
But it’s his eyes that freeze me mid-stride.
Not childish.Not curious.Not the gaze of someone guessing at the truth.
He already knows.
He tracks my movement the way wolves study the shift of wind—quiet, patient, ready. His chin tilts just slightly toward the hallway I came from.
The hallway with the locked vault door.The hallway where Santino caught me.
Dante’s gaze slides back to me, slow and deliberate. And in that silent exchange, he delivers a message carved clean as a blade:
I see you.I see your lies.I see the spaces you’re not supposed to be in.And if you hurt my family, I will end you.
My throat tightens—unexpected, unwelcome.
For a moment, just one, my chest aches.
He’s fifteen going on thirty, shaped by grief he never understood. Giovanni is dead. Romeo is unraveling. Santino is drowning in a priesthood he can’t survive. And Guido—
My pulse stutters.
The family fractured in every direction.And I’m standing in the deepest crack.
Dante pushes off the column—not approaching, just straightening. His posture sharpens, weight shifting onto his heels like he’s bracing for a threat.
Me.
I draw a slow breath and lift my chin, refusing to look away. A challenge—silent, razor-thin.
A dare.A warning.
His lips twitch—just barely. Not a smile. More like a knife of amusement slicing into the corner of his mouth.
He knows I’m not who I pretend to be.He knows I’m here for something dangerous.He knows I’m lying.
And worse—
He isn’t afraid of me.
The silence between us tightens, coils, brightens like it’s one spark away from igniting.
I break the stare first—not in submission, but strategy. Let him think he won. Let him think he’s reading me better than I’m reading him. I'll let him underestimate me for a moment.
Because I’m not the only predator hiding inside a holy place.
I stroll past him—controlled, unhurried, every inch the sweet parish volunteer I pretend to be. But as I pass, I turn my head just enough so he sees my eyes.
Cold.Sharp.Unflinching.
I see you, too.
I’m three steps past when I feel it—the faint tug of his attention tracking me, prickling between my shoulder blades.
He doesn’t follow.
He doesn’t need to.
He already carved his warning deeply.
You’re not the only one lying, Pia.You’re not the only one hunting.
And for the first time since stepping into this church…I’m not sure I’m the most dangerous person in this hallway.
The Phone Call She Wasn’t Supposed to Hear
The church feels different once the volunteers clear out.Quieter.Hollower.Every sound slices through the empty corridors sharper than it should.
By late afternoon, the halls settle into a soft hush broken only by the occasional creak of aging wood or distant murmurs from parish staff.
It’s the perfect window to move unseen, to listen without being noticed.So I linger near the stairwell, pretending to study the laminated cleaning instructions on my clipboard.
I even furrow my brow and tap the page, as though I am genuinely debating whether to scrub holy-water fonts clockwise or counterclockwise.
But I’m not reading a damn thing.
I’m listening.
And the moment a voice drifts up from the stone alcove beneath the stairs, my spine goes rigid.
Romeo.
His voice—low, strained, ragged at the edges—is nothing like the sharp-tongued, quick-tempered brother I met yesterday. Not even Santino, in his worst moments, has sounded this cracked open.
I shift one step closer.Then another.Silent. Practiced. Predatory.
“…I told you I didn’t mean to,” Romeo hisses, his voice breaking on the last word.
My pulse kicks hard.
Fear.Genuine fear.The kind that doesn’t belong in the mouth of a Rivas son.
“I wasn’t supposed… I didn’t know he would—”
He stops abruptly. Footsteps scrape against stone as he paces in small, frantic circles. I inch closer, careful not to let my shadow betray me.
Giovanni.It has to be Giovanni.
Romeo’s voice drops lower, trembling as if he’s afraid the walls themselves might be listening.
“…If this gets out, everything falls apart. Do you understand me? Everything.”
Everything.The word slams into my chest with cruel precision.
My father died chasing that “everything.”The truth buried beneath it.The men who killed him for getting too close.
Romeo sucks in a shaky breath, then whispers:
“I didn’t kill him. I swear I didn’t. But I was there.”
My blood turns to ice.
There.The night Giovanni Rivas—the King—died.
Every file I stole, every report I dissected, every whisper I followed through the darkest corners of Palermo — all pointed to Emiliano Maritz pulling the trigger.
But if Romeo was present?If he saw it?If he took part?
The truth is bigger.Darker.More dangerous than I had imagined.
Above us, a door slams—loud and echoing. Santino left his office.
Romeo freezes.Panic jerks his silhouette rigid.The phone snaps shut with a desperate click.
Shit.
I retreat instantly, flattening against the shadows behind the support pillar. My heartbeat slams against my ribs so hard I’m terrified the sound alone will expose me.
Footsteps hit the stairs.Slow. Heavy. Controlled.
Santino.
Romeo stands beneath the landing, breathing like he’s about to combust. I don’t breathe at all.
If Santino sees Romeo’s face — If Santino sees mine — This ends here.
Santino descends the last steps.
Romeo straightens, forcing composure over his features like a too-thin mask stretched over panic.
“Everything okay?” Santino asks. His voice is steady, but tension coils beneath every syllable.
Romeo’s throat bobs. “Yeah. Fine.”
A lie. A loud one.
Santino narrows his eyes. Not believing a damn second of it.
I stay frozen in the alcove, lungs burning, shadows wrapped around me like armor.
If I shift even a fraction, if a single breath escapes too loudly — Santino will drag me out by the wrist.And Romeo…Romeo might finish what he started.
I don’t move.
Until Santino steps away, suspicion still tightens his frame.Not until Romeo walks off too fast, too stiff, carrying the weight of a secret that could unmake them all.
Only then do I inhale—quiet and shallow.
Romeo was there when Giovanni died.
Which means the King’s death wasn’t the clean execution the world believes.It means someone else was there.Someone else was involved.
And someone in this church — someone wearing a collar — is about to tear himself apart trying to uncover that truth.
The First Shattered Truth
Santino searches for Romeo or a talk. Romeo’s breathing is still uneven when Santino reaches him—ragged, shallow, the breath that comes from outrunning a nightmare that hasn’t stopped chasing you.
Santino’s eyes sweep the hall immediately, sharp and searching, like he can feel the wrongness vibrating in the air.
“Everything okay?” he asks again, voice tight. Too tight.
Romeo startles—just slightly. Only someone watching him as closely as I am would notice.
“Yeah. Fine.”
Too fast.Too stiff.Too fucking false.
Santino’s jaw ticks. He doesn’t buy that for a single second.
I can see the fracture forming between them—hairline at first, then widening, forging itself through two brothers already held together by grief, distrust, and the ghost of a father who broke them in different ways.
Santino steps deeper into the stairwell. His hand rests on the iron banister—the same place Romeo stood moments ago, whispering guilt into the empty air.
Romeo swallows hard. Too hard.
“You sure?” Santino presses.
Romeo nods again, but it’s not an answer. It’s an escape attempt disguised as a gesture. “Yeah. Like I said. Fine.”
He turns and walks away.
Too fast.Too rattled.Too terrified of what Santino might drag out of him if he stands there another second.
I stay frozen in the alcove, breath trapped tight in my chest. The cold stone at my back feels like an anchor holding me in place while everything I just learned clicks together inside my mind like loaded chambers.
Romeo was there when Giovanni died.He didn’t kill him—he swears he didn’t.But he witnessed it.And the King’s death—bloody, buried, blamed entirely on Emiliano—wasn’t the clean execution the mafia world believes.
Someone else was involved.Someone Romeo is protecting.Someone he fears.Someone who might be—
Santino’s pulse hits my ears before I hear his footsteps.
He turns sharply.
His head snaps toward the alcove where I hide.
My breath stops cold.
Did he hear me?Sense me?Smell the shift of air?
His stare slices through the shadows like a blade—sharp, suspicious, lethal. I press deeper into the darkness, but it doesn’t matter. Something in him already feels me, like instinct.
Santino takes one slow step toward the alcove.
My pulse slams.
Another step.
My lungs tighten.
Another.
The storm outside cracks, lightning throwing a jagged flash across the stone floor—and in that frozen, breathless slice of time, his eyes lock directly onto mine.
He freezes.I freeze.
And in his eyes—suspicion flares into something darker. Hotter. Sharper.
He didn’t see me clearly.He didn’t see everything.But he saw enough.
Enough to know I’m here.Enough to know I’ve been listening.Enough to know I am not who I pretend to be.
His voice drops into a rough whisper, low enough to shake the shadows.
“Who the hell is there?”
I don’t move. Can’t move.
He steps closer, breath taut, shoulders squared, the predator in him rising—one heartbeat away from dragging me into the open and pinning me to the stone until I confess every truth I’ve buried.
One more inch.One more breath.One more second—
And everything shatters.
His voice cracks the silence again.
“Come out.”
My entire body coils—fear, adrenaline, and something dangerously close to desire burning through my veins.
Because if I step into the light now, everything changes.Everything breaks.Everything I came here to do twists into a dangerous, impossible tangle of him.
I hold my breath—
—I hold still hidden in the dark,Santino staring straight into the shadows,both of us seconds from detonating the truth between us.