Chapter 9 #2
Silent as a ghost.Fast as a bullet.Deadly as every sin buried within these walls.
The Killing Blow of a Fallen Priest
I don’t announce myself.I don’t warn him.I don’t shout his name.I don’t give him a chance to turn.
I move.
Two strides—nothing more—and my hand closes around Rocco’s wrist just as the blade dips toward Pia’s ribs. The metal flashes once, catching the weak chapel glow before I rip it out of his grip and send it skittering across stone.
Rocco jerks, eyes wide, and snarls like a cornered dog. His free hand snaps up fast, knuckles cracking across my jaw with enough force to spark white behind my eyes.
I still don’t stop.
Pain snaps my focus sharper. Cleaner. More real.
I grab the front of his jacket and slam him backward. His spine smacks the floor with a sickening thud that echoes through the chamber, shaking dust from the carved ceiling overhead.
Behind me, Pia gasps—sharp, breathless, terrified.
It pours down my spine like gasoline on an open flame.
Rocco lunges for the fallen blade. His fingers brush the hilt—
Not fucking happening.
I kick it away. The knife vanishes into shadow.
He tries to tackle me next. Idiot.
I meet him halfway.
My fist cracks against his jaw, knuckles splitting on impact. His head whips sideways, spit and blood spraying. Before he can recover, I hit him again. And again. Each blow lands with the cold precision Giovanni carved into me long before I ever picked up a Bible.
“Should’ve stayed dead,” I growl.
Rocco laughs—broken, bloody, wild.
He spits a red glob onto the stone. “Look at you, Padre. Just like your old man.”
Something detonates behind my ribs—black, vicious, feral.
I don’t pray.I don’t think.I don’t hesitate.
I wrap both hands around his throat and drive him into the stone.
He chokes, claws at my arms, boots scraping against the floor. His nails rake down my forearms. I barely feel it. His curses spray my face, flecking my cheek with blood.
I squeeze.
Harder.
His airway collapses beneath my palms. His pulse thrums frantically under my thumbs. His eyes bulge, veins rising beneath the skin like cracked blue lightning. He slams a fist weakly into my ribs—once, twice—then falters.
My grip tightens.
No one touches her.No one threatens her.No one puts a blade near her and walks away breathing.
His movements grow sloppy.Then slower.Then still.
His eyes roll back.His mouth slackens.His body jerks once—twice — and stops.
Silence devours the chapel.
I don’t move.My hands stay clamped around a dead man’s throat, fingers sunk deep enough to bruise bone.
My breath tears rough through my chest, too loud in the stillness, too human for what I just did.
Behind me, Pia whispers my name.
“Santino…”
I can’t look at her.Not yet.If I turn around now, I’ll see exactly what I’ve become.
Giovanni’s son.His legacy.His monster.
And the worst part?
It felt good.
My heart hammers, adrenaline flooding me, vibrating through muscle and bone like a storm I can’t outrun.
I killed for her.I would do it again.
And something in me—something I should fear—wants more.
Finally, I release Rocco.His head thuds against the stone with a hollow, final sound that shakes through me.
My hands hover above him—trembling, blood-slick, unrecognizable.
Pia’s uneven breaths fill the quiet behind me.
I close my eyes.
There’s no going back now.
The Moment He Realizes He Can’t Go Back
Panting, I finally loosen my grip.
My fingers peel off Rocco’s throat one by one, stiff and reluctant, like they don’t want to let go. His head drops back against the stone with a flat, ugly thud that echoes through the chapel and burrows under my skin.
I sit back on my heels, chest heaving, sweat cooling at the base of my neck.
For a moment, all I can hear is my breathing.Harsh.Ragged.Wrong.
Then I look at my hands.
They’re shaking. Split knuckles. Blood smeared in dark, uneven streaks.
These aren’t a priest’s hands.
Priests bless.Absolve.Lay hands on the dying and offer mercy.
These hands don’t know mercy.
These are Giovanni’s hands.Hands that kill for the family.Hands that fix problems in blood.
My heartbeat slams against my ribs like it’s trying to break out. Nausea rolls through me so hard I have to brace one palm against the floor to keep from folding over.
Because I know what I’ve done.And I know what it means.
I crossed a line I swore I’d never touch again.
And yet—
Under the sickness, under the shock, beneath the thin shell of Father Santino and his pretty vows…
I feel powerful.
That’s the part that terrifies me.
The rush is still there, buzzing under my skin. The certainty. The brutal simplicity.
He was a threat.I removed him.She’s alive.
Nothing in confession, nothing in scripture, nothing in the catechism has ever felt that clean.
Behind me, Pia’s uneven breaths break the silence.Soft.Shaky.Too loud in the still air.
I don’t turn around.
Not yet.
I’m afraid of what I’ll see in her eyes—fear, disgust, the confirmation that I’ve become exactly what I swore I wouldn’t be. Giovanni’s heir in all the worst ways. A priest who kills when it suits him.
I stare at my shaking hands a moment longer, flexing my fingers, watching dried blood crack across my knuckles.
Who the fuck am I now?
The man with the collar?Or the one who just snapped a neck without hesitation?
“San…”
Her voice reaches me first—small, raw, too close.
I force myself to turn. Slowly.
She isn’t where I left her.She’s steps away from the wall—steps toward me.Just a few feet now. Bare inches from where Rocco lies cooling on the stone.
But she isn’t looking at him.
She’s looking at me.
At the man who killed for her.
Her eyes are enormous, pupils blown wide. Her chest rises and falls too fast, the fabric of her shirt trembling with every breath. Dirt streaks her cheek, and near her collarbone—where the blade almost kissed her skin—there’s a faint smear of blood.
She doesn’t touch it.Doesn’t even seem to notice.
She’s locked onto me like she can’t look anywhere else.
My throat goes dry.
“I—” The word barely forms.
Her lips part. She takes a shaky step closer.
“You…” Her voice trembles, but she keeps going, eyes searching my face like she’s trying to understand something impossible. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
The truth hangs between us.
No, I didn’t.
Not when it mattered.Not when her life was in front of me.Not when every instinct Giovanni forged in me finally sank its teeth into something worth protecting.
“I—” I start again, but what wants to come out isn’t holy.No apology.No remorse.Just the raw, brutal truth pounding inside me.
I’m not sorry.Not even close.
I glance down at Rocco’s crushed throat, then back up at her.
If I had to choose again — if I had to do it a hundred more times — I already know exactly what I’d do.
I’d kill for her.
Again.And again.
The realization slices through me like a blade.
I’m not the man I pretend to be.And I don’t want to be—
Not when it comes to her.
You Saved Me
Pia moves first.
Not me.Not the man still kneeling beside a fresh body.Not the priest whose hands are shaking from the kill.
Her.
She steps toward me slowly, cautiously, like she’s approaching something wounded and dangerous—an animal half-feral, half-starved, half-ready to bite. Her boots scrape softly across the stone. Her breath is uneven. Her hands tremble, barely, but she does not hide it.
Then she kneels in front of me.
Deliberate.Measured.A woman lowering herself before someone who could shatter her or save her—and she hasn’t decided which one I’ll be.
Blood speckles my collar, my face, my hands.All of it feels like a sin I should confess, but won’t.
Her eyes sweep over the mess.
She sees the violent truth.She reaches out anyway.
Her fingertips touch my face—
feather-light,soft in a way nothing in my life has ever dared to be,soft in a way far more dangerous than any blade.
I flinch.
Not from pain—nothing hurts right now.It’s the instinctive recoil from a touch that isn’t violent, demanding, or transactional.
I brace for her to pull away.
She doesn’t.
Her thumb grazes my cheek, smearing a thin line of blood. Her touch lingers—warm, steady—despite the cold tightening around us.
“You saved me,” she whispers.
The words land like a blow.Not dramatic.Not emotional.Just truth—quiet and lethal.
A priest is supposed to save souls.But I saved her by ending a life.
Something shifts inside me—pain tangled with clarity, violence brushed with something tender I don’t have a name for.
Her hand stays on my cheek.Her gaze holds mine.And the fear I’ve been bracing for… isn’t there.
Instead, I see something else — something unsteady,something vulnerable,something that terrifies her more than the blood on my hands.
She’s not afraid of me.
She’s afraid of how much she needs me.
My throat tightens.
When I finally speak, my voice is rough, scraped raw by violence and something dangerously close to confession.
“I killed for you.”
Her breath grazes my skin. Warm. Close. Too intimate for a chapel carved out of stone and old sins.
“I know.”
Two soft syllables—barely air, barely sound—but they settle in my bones like a vow I never meant to make.
With her hand on my face, with Rocco cooling behind us, with the air thick with dust and iron—
I don’t regret it.
Something dark stirs low in my chest. Something honest. Something that’s been starving under the collar and the guilt and the years of pretending I was anything other than what Giovanni made.
Her thumb drags along my jaw, another streak of blood smearing across my skin. It feels like a mark.
A claim.
And without meaning to — without permission — I lean into her touch.
The movement is slight, almost imperceptible, but inside me everything ruptures.
The man who walked into these tunnels is gone.The priest.The dutiful son.The fool who believed he could serve God while denying the violence in his blood.
What’s left is something raw, something dangerous, something she just dragged to the surface with a touch and two quiet words.
And God help me—
I don’t want her to stop.