Chapter 9
Santino
The Silence That Means She’s Gone
Ican’t fucking sleep.
I’ve stared at the ceiling for an hour—maybe two. Time doesn’t mean shit when it feels like someone’s tightening a wire around your ribs, one slow twist at a time.The house is quiet. Too quiet. And being left alone with the quiet is the worst fucking thing for a Rivas.
Quiet leaves room for memory.
Giovanni’s dying confession.Romeo’s half-truths.The missing key.The vault.The darkness under the church.Pia’s mouth—fear and defiance tangled together—still on mine.
I drag a hand through my hair and curse under my breath.
The rosary digs into my palm, small wooden beads biting deep until the sting centers me. Good. Pain is grounding. Pain reminds me I’m not Giovanni.Not yet.
But something is wrong.
I feel it—deep, low, primitive. A pressure lodged beneath my ribs. A burn in my throat I can’t swallow down. My body recognizes danger even if my brain hasn’t caught up.
I pace the length of my room, bare feet silent on the floor, shadows stretching long across the walls. The storm outside rattles the windows. Thunder rolls through the house.Still… nothing moves.
Too quiet.
“Fuck this.”
I crack my door open.
The hallway is empty—dim, still, with the silence that means everyone’s asleep… or someone should be here and isn’t.
I step out.Check the common room.Empty.A coffee mug sits on the table—cold, untouched.The back door: locked.Romeo’s room: closed.Dante’s: dark.Guido’s: quiet.
But hers—
Her door is cracked.
Just a sliver, but enough to show the soft glow of the lamp inside.
My pulse spikes, sharp and sudden.
“Pia?” I push the door open.
The room is still.Too still.
The bed is untouched.Blankets are smooth.Pillows in the exact, neat line I left them when I tucked her in earlier—before everything went to hell in the alley.
A cold sweep washes through me.
She’s gone.
Not stepped out for air.Not hiding to avoid me.Gone.
My stomach drops like a stone.
“She’s avoiding you,” I mutter—but the lie tastes weak and sour, and I know it.
She wouldn’t leave without a reason.She wouldn’t leave without a weapon.She wouldn’t leave without telling someone.
Unless she wasn’t leaving at all.
Unless she was going somewhere.
Somewhere she shouldn’t be.
I scan the room again.No bag missing. No clothes disturbed. No sign of a struggle.
But — the window latch is loose.A faint smudge stains the sill.Dirt sits near the bed that wasn’t there earlier.
Every instinct Giovanni carved into my bones—every violent lesson, every unspoken rule—flashes through me at once.
Danger.Movement.Tracks without sound.A ghost slipping into the shadows.
She’s not just gone.
She’s gone where she shouldn’t be.
And, fuck me—I know exactly where that is.
Vicious anger flares up fast and sharp, burning through my chest.
“Pia… what the hell are you doing?”
I step back into the hallway, heart pounding, adrenaline sharpening the edges of my vision. Something ancient, something violent, something that sounds a hell of a lot like my father wakes in my blood.
If I don’t find her, someone else will.
Someone who won’t think twice about dragging her back in pieces.
I stop at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, staring into the darkened church below.
She’s under my feet.
I know it.I feel it in the ribs Giovanni cracked.In the instincts he beat into me like scripture.
She’s not avoiding me.
She’s in danger.
And God help the man who thinks he’ll touch her before I get there.
The Pull Beneath His Feet
The church feels wrong the second I step inside.Too still.Too cold.Too fucking empty.
My footsteps echo across the marble like they don’t belong here anymore — like the building itself is holding its breath, waiting for something to break. I move fast, scanning pews, side chapels, every shadowed alcove where she might’ve hidden or cried or prayed.
Nothing.Not a whisper of her.Not a footprint.Not even a faint trace of her scent.
The courtyard is the same. Silent. Dead air hung heavy beneath the storm clouds.
“She didn’t just walk out,” I mutter — a rough growl swallowed by the cavernous space.
Something pulls me back inside. A low tug in my ribs, like instinct has wrapped a fist around my spine and dragged. I follow it without thinking.
The altar looms ahead in the dim candlelight. Familiar. Reverent. And suddenly threatening.
Giovanni’s words slam back into my skull:
The sin lies buried beneath us.
I stop.Frozen.
My gaze drops slowly — to the floorboards near the base of the altar. The floorboards don't align correctly. Barely. Subtle. But undeniably wrong.
I feel it before I move toward it — the certainty coiling in my gut, dread crawling up the back of my neck.
“Don’t tell me you were this fucking stupid,” I breathe.
But I already know she was.
Pia doesn’t scare easily.Pia doesn’t stop when she should.Pia doesn’t listen.
And she went somewhere she shouldn’t have.
I kneel, breath tight, chest burning with something too close to panic. My fingers slide into the thin gap beside the board, and even before I lift it, I know what’s waiting underneath.
I lift.
Cold air blasts up from the dark — wet, old, heavy. It smells of stone soaked in blood long washed away.
A tunnel yawns below me, the steps disappearing into blackness.
My heart slams once — hard enough to make my vision pulse.
“Of course.”
Of course, she came down here.Of course she went chasing ghosts and secrets and whatever the hell she’s hiding behind those big, wounded eyes.Of course, she walked straight into Giovanni’s graveyard of sins like she’s immune to the monsters that live in the dark.
I grip the edge of the opening, leaning over the pit.
The darkness stares back at me — thick, impenetrable. A living thing. A warning.
My pulse thunders.She’s down there.Alone.Untrained.Unarmed.Being hunted.
I feel it — a wrongness in the air, a vibration under my skin, the echo of something violent moving through the tunnels beneath my feet. Something close. Something closing in.
My jaw locks.
No hesitation.No prayer.No thought.
Just movement.
I swing my legs into the opening and drop onto the first step; the chill sinks instantly into my bones like a threat. The candlelight above flickers, stretching my shadow down the narrow passage as if it’s trying to warn me back.
Too late.
“You should’ve stayed in your room,” I mutter, descending into the dark.
But that’s the problem with Pia.
She never fucking stays where it’s safe.And now the dark has her.
The Tunnels and the Trail of Fear
The tunnels hit me like a memory I spent years trying to bury — cold air thick with the taste of rusted secrets and old blood. The air sticks to your throat, reminding you what happened down here and who did it.
Giovanni built these tunnels as his kingdom beneath the kingdom.He trained us here.Beat us here.Made us into Rivas here.
And I fucking swore I’d never walk them again.
But Pia is somewhere in the dark.
So I walk.
The lantern swings with each step, its light carving jagged shapes into the stone walls — shadows that lurch and twist like they’re alive. The floor is uneven, dust shifting beneath my boots as if the earth itself doesn’t want me here.
It smells of damp stone.Old sins.And something sharper — adrenaline, fear, maybe hers.
I move fast. Too fast. My pulse is a drumbeat in my throat, pushing me forward even when my training screams slow down, breathe, think.
I can’t think.Not when she’s down here.
A faint scuff cuts across the dust ahead.
I stop cold.
There — a dragged footprint, sliding sideways like someone stumbled. I crouch and brush my fingers through the disturbed dust. The grit clings to my skin.
“Good,” I whisper. “Just stay alive, Pia.”
I keep going, lantern raised, breath tight.
The tunnel narrows, the ceiling dipping low enough that my hair brushes cold stone. The shadows stretch longer. Deeper. My free hand stays flexed at my side — ready to grab, block, strike, kill. Whatever the hell waits for me up ahead.
Another smear catches the lantern’s glow. Dark. Shiny. Fresh.
Blood.
“Fuck.”
I lift the lantern higher.
And that’s when I hear it.
A voice — low, sharp, familiar enough to send a bolt of black anger straight down my spine.
“…you didn’t think we’d stop looking for you, did you?”
Rocco.
Rocco fuckin’ Rocco.
Every muscle in my body goes still. My breath dies in my throat. The flame of the lantern shivers as if it wants to hide.
I snuff it out.
Darkness swallows me whole.
Good.
Let the monster come out.
I blink until my eyes adjust, until shapes sharpen in the faint glow spilling from somewhere up ahead — a side chamber, carved into the stone decades before I was born. Giovanni always called it the chapel of debts.
They settled debts with blood down here.
Rocco has her inside it.
I move silently, hugging the wall, breath slow, controlled, every instinct sharpened to a lethal point. The closer I get, the louder their voices become — the scrape of boots, the tremor of Pia’s breath, the uneven rhythm of fear she tries to hide.
I reached the threshold.
And the world narrows to one sight.
Pia.Pinned against the wall.Rocco’s hand gripping her shoulder hard enough to bruise.A knife gleaming near her ribs.
Her breath shivers.But her eyes — those fucking eyes — burn with fight.
Rocco leans in, voice dripping venom.
“You’re worth too much to too many people, sweetheart.”
My vision pulses black.
A pressure detonates behind my ribs — a warning, a threat, something ancient and vicious rising inside me like it’s been waiting.
Waiting for this.
The priest fractures.The son of Giovanni claws to the surface.The killer he raised steps into my bones like a shadow slipping into its rightful place.
I don’t feel fear.I feel nothing but a clear, deadly purpose.
No more running.No more restraint.No more fucking mercy.
My heartbeat stops being a rhythm.It becomes a countdown.
One.Two.Three.
Something snaps inside me so hard it might as well be bone.
And I move.