Chapter 7 Santino #2
Instead, he turns—slowly, deliberately—and walks toward the far edge of the crypt.
The air shifts when he moves, like even the shadows know where he’s headed.
My pulse kicks harder with every step he takes.
I follow without meaning to, drawn the way a man inches toward the edge of a cliff he swears he won’t jump from.
He stops in front of one of the marble sarcophagi.
Rests his hand on it.
Giovanni’s.
My father.The king who raised us on blood, loyalty, and fear—who loved us in ways that hurt and protected us in ways that ruined us.
Romeo’s voice drops, quiet and weighted.
“We thought you knew,” he says.
Something cold coils into my lungs.
“Knew what?” My voice comes out sharper than I intend, scraping the air between us.
Romeo doesn’t turn around. He keeps staring at the slab of marble like he’s afraid Giovanni might sit up and answer for himself.
“You were the last one to speak to him,” Romeo murmurs. “You heard his confession.”
My stomach tightens.
Not because he’s wrong.Because I still haven’t forgiven myself for that night.
Giovanni was shaking. He was rambling. Giovanni confessed things. I had told myself it was fevered nonsense. They sounded like the words of a dying king.
Romeo swallows, jaw flexing.
“There was something else that night,” he says. “Something was missing when they moved his belongings. Something Dad always kept on him.”
My skin prickles.
I know that tone.I know that pause.
“And whoever stole it…” Romeo continues, “…knew exactly where to look.”
A pulse cracks through me—sharp, electric.
I push out the question, "What did they take?"
Romeo hesitates.
Then:“A key.”
My world tilts.
Not a house key.Not a locker key.Not a safe-deposit key.
His key.
The one he wore on a chain under his shirt, tucked close to his skin. The one he once told me was, “closer than God, more dangerous than blood.”
A key I’d only seen twice.
A key no one else was supposed to know existed.
Emiliano once warned that you should not turn a key unless you want to watch the world burn.
My throat goes dry.
“Why would anyone take that?” I ask, even though deep down I already know the answer.
Romeo steps back from the sarcophagus, expression flint-hard.
“Because Dad used it to access the vaults beneath the church,” he says. “And someone wanted what’s inside more than they wanted him alive.”
The vaults.
My chest constricts.
I've never been down there.I couldn't go.
Giovanni used to say some doors were built to stay shut — that even kings didn’t open certain doors without consequence.
Romeo doesn’t explain further.
He doesn’t need to.
Because suddenly I’m back in that room on Giovanni’s final night—his voice cracked with pain, breath rattling, eyes glassy with fever:
Sins buried beneath us.The dead never stay dead.Make peace with the darkness, Santino. You were born from it.
I told myself he was delirious.
Dying.
Speaking in riddles.
But now?
The words land like a prophecy.
I step back from the sarcophagus, heart pounding hard enough I feel it in my teeth.
Romeo watches me—quiet, too quiet—like he knows exactly what’s uncoiling in my chest. Like he knows something inside me has just snapped into place.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t have to.
The truth is already bleeding out between us.
Whatever Giovanni hid — whatever he locked away — whoever stole that key—
It’s tied to the threats creeping within these walls.To Pia.To the faction hunting her.To everything unraveling around me.
And the worst part?
If someone stole that key once…
Someone close to us was already inside these walls long before tonight.
The crypt feels colder.The shadows feel closer.The air feels heavier.
Giovanni didn’t take his secrets to the grave.
He left them waiting.
And now — they’re waking up.
Brothers Break
Something snaps inside me before Romeo even finishes speaking.
I don’t think.I move.
My fist grips his shirt, and I slam him backward so hard his spine cracks against Giovanni’s sarcophagus.
The marble rings out under the impact—cold, unforgiving, just like the man buried inside it.
Dust shakes from the carved lid. Romeo exhales sharply, jaw clenched, but he doesn’t lift a hand.
Doesn’t fight. His stillness is worse than resistance—like he expected this. Like he fucking planned it.
“You knew,” I growl.
My voice doesn’t sound like mine.It sounds like Giovanni’s.The part of him I swore I’d never become.
Romeo’s eyes lock on mine. No fear. No flinch. Just something tight, something old, something exhausted.
I snarl, shoving him harder into the stone. "You knew someone took something." “Something important. And you didn’t tell me.”
Romeo’s breath hisses between his teeth. “There were reasons.”
“Not good enough.”
The words scrape out of me like broken glass. My grip twists deeper, dragging him closer. The fabric strains beneath my fingers. I feel his heartbeat thudding against my knuckles—steady, unafraid.
He still doesn’t break free. He just stares at me with that infuriating Rivas calm—the same look Giovanni wore before he ruined someone’s life.
Romeo’s jaw twitches. “If you open that vault,” he says slowly, “you’ll wish you never did.”
The air freezes.
My grip loosens—not because I choose to let go, but because my body reacts before my mind does. The warning lands in the place I don’t look too closely. The place where Giovanni’s dying confession still festers. For years, I pretended that my ribs didn't have that place carved into them.
Romeo sees it.
He straightens a fraction, breath evening out. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, stripped of sarcasm and sharpened to a quiet threat.
“You’re not ready, San.”
The words hit center mass—right where Giovanni’s approval used to sit, right where guilt still crawls like a parasite.
“You think you’re the saint in this family,” Romeo says. “But Dad didn’t build this place for saints.”
The truth slices, clean and merciless.
I know he's right. I hate that he's right. Part of me is terrified he's always been right.
My fingers slip from his shirt. Slowly. Reluctantly. Like peeling my hand away from fire. The anger doesn’t fade—it condenses, sharp and heavy in my chest.
Romeo watches me with an expression I can’t place. Not pity. Not anger. Not even hatred.
Resignation.
The look a man gives before he walks out knowing whatever happens next might damn everyone still standing behind him.
I take one step back.
He doesn’t move.
For a long, suffocating moment, we just breathe the same stale crypt air, surrounded by the bones of the king who raised us to break each other.
Romeo moves first.
He pushes off the sarcophagus. Brushes dust from his jacket. Turns toward the door like we didn’t just threaten to tear each other—and this room—apart.
At the threshold, he pauses.
Doesn’t look back.
Doesn’t need to.
His voice pierces the darkness:
“Whatever you’re looking for… you won’t like what you find.”
The words echo down the stone walls, across Giovanni’s carved name, straight into my spine.
The crypt door slams behind him.
And I’m alone again — with the dead king and every secret he left rotting beneath our feet.
The Missing Key
The crypt feels bigger once I’m alone.
Romeo’s footsteps fade up the staircase, each one lighter than the weight he just dropped on my shoulders. The door shuts with a distant thud, sealing me in with stone, dust, and a man who haunts me more dead than he ever did alive.
My breath comes ragged—too loud in the vaulted dark.My heart won’t slow; it hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to break out of me.
I drag a hand down my face. “Fuck,” I whisper into the stillness.
Giovanni’s sarcophagus looms ahead—marble cold, perfect, wrong. Nothing about my father was this clean. The carved likeness of him—firm jaw, hard eyes, that permanent hint of a smirk—stares up at the ceiling like he’s still judging the whole damn world.
“You did this,” I murmur. “You built all of this and buried the truth under it.”
The words die fast, swallowed by the heavy air.
I step closer, that familiar mix of hate and longing clawing beneath my skin. I want to hit the stone. Rip it open. Demand answers from a corpse.
Instead, I stand there—breathing like I’ve sprinted a mile, head pounding with Romeo’s warning.
If you open that vault, you’ll wish you never did.
I look away, forcing myself to think like the heir instead of the son.
That’s when I see it.
At first, it’s nothing—a tiny oddity in the shadows. A sliver of something that doesn’t belong on old stone and older dust.
A glint.
Metal.
My eyes narrow, pulse kicking harder.
It's half-hidden under the stone bench. It's in the shadow at the base. It looks like it slipped out of a pocket. Or, someone placed it there on purpose. They didn't want it found quickly.
An icy feeling crawls up my spine.
I walk toward it slowly, each step heavier than the last. The closer I get, the colder the air feels—like the crypt itself knows what I’m about to touch and doesn’t approve.
I kneel.
The floor bites into my knees, cold seeping through my slacks. I lean forward, reaching under the bench, fingers sliding across rough stone until—
Metal.
My fingertips brush it first: a cool, solid edge. I close my hand around it, and the weight makes something inside me lurch.
I pull it out.
A key.
Old.Heavy.Darkened with time and touch.
My stomach drops.
It’s not just any key. The symbol pressed into the bow is faint, worn with age—yet unmistakable.
Giovanni’s seal.The lion and the crown.
My father’s key.The missing key.The one Romeo swore was stolen.
My blood runs cold.
I stare at it in my palm, breathing hard as the crypt tilts at the edges. This small, unassuming piece of metal carries more power than half the men in this city. It opens doors that should never have existed. Vaults that were never meant to be touched.
Emiliano’s voice drifts through memory—mocking, too calm:
Some sins, padre, you don’t lock away unless you’re afraid of what happens when they get loose.
Someone put it here.
Someone walked into this crypt,stood in front of Giovanni’s tomb,and left the one thing Romeo believed was gone.
They wanted me to find it.
The realization hits hard—hot and vicious.
This isn’t an accident.Not something dropped.Not something forgotten.
This is a message.A move.A fucking invitation.
I straighten slowly, still kneeling, the key clenched in my fist. My gaze lifts to Giovanni’s name carved deep into the stone. The marble doesn’t move. Doesn’t bleed. Doesn’t crack.
But everything inside me does.
“You son of a bitch,” I whisper. “What did you leave us with?”
My thoughts snap to Pia.To the fear in her eyes.In the way Rocco said Boss has been looking for you.To the shadow that slipped through my church like it knew every inch.
If the key was never truly gone — if it’s been inside these walls the whole time — then someone else has had access.
Someone who knows the vaults.Someone who knows us.
A chill snakes down my spine as I look toward the staircase — the same one Pia disappeared up, her footsteps still echoing in my memory.
Romeo believed the key had been stolen.
Which means someone lied to him too.
My fist tightens around the metal, edges biting into my palm. The sting grounds me.
One key sits in my hand.
But Giovanni… he never trusted one lock. One safeguard. One piece on the board.
If this key wasn’t stolen — if it’s been here waiting — then the question that freezes my blood is simple and deadly:
If the key wasn’t stolen…who has the second one?