Chapter 10
Pia
The Walk Back in Silence
Santino doesn’t say a single word when he pulls me out of the tunnels.
His hand stays wrapped around mine—not gentle, not rough, just tight in a way that feels deliberate. Like he’s anchoring me to the world. If he lets go, the floor might crack open and drag us both back into the dark.
The air shifts the moment we leave the underground. Stone gives way to wood. Cold to stale warmth. The sanctuary opens around us, lit only by a few half-melted candles trembling in their holders.
But he doesn’t stop walking.
His stride is sharp, decisive. I can see his muscles twitching because he has locked his jaw so tight. Blood—Rocco’s, his, the truth of tonight—dries in dark patches on his collar. His knuckles scraped raw.
His rosary swings with every step.
Like a warning.
Like a confession he hasn’t spoken yet.
I should be afraid of him. I should be fucking terrified.He killed a man inches from me. With his bare hands. With a certainty that should’ve shattered every instinct I have left.
But all I feel is a twisted, wrong warmth under my ribs—relief laced with guilt and something darker I refuse to name.
We climb the narrow stairs behind the altar—his grip never loosening, his breath uneven enough that I can hear it catch every few steps. I don’t think he realizes how hard he’s holding me.
Or maybe he does.
Maybe this is him trying not to fall apart.
We reach the corridor leading to my small apartment above the south wing. Every shadow feels heavier. Every floorboard creak echoes like something followed us up from the tunnels.
He stops in my doorway.
Like crossing the threshold would break a rule he hasn’t written yet.
His hand slips from mine slowly—so slow it almost hurts. Losing his touch feels like a sudden drop in temperature.
“You’re safe now,” he murmurs.
His voice is rough… shredded… nothing like the controlled priest he pretends to be.
I swallow hard. “Am I?”
It comes out small—smaller than I meant it to—like a secret leaking through the cracks in my ribs.
He doesn’t answer right away.
He just looks at me. Really looks. His eyes drag over my face with an intensity that could bruise. His pupils widened. He looks like a man dragged out of a fire only to realize the flames followed him.
Finally, his voice drops lower.
“You are with me.”
And God help me… I believe him.
Not because he’s a priest.Not because he’s a Rivas.Not because he can kill with his bare hands.
I believe him because something inside him broke open for me tonight.I watched it happen.Because I caused it.
And that truth sits heavy in my chest—sharp as the blade Rocco pressed against me.
He steps back, giving me space, giving himself space—like he needs distance to remember how to breathe. He drags a hand over his mouth, smearing blood across his cheek without noticing.
He looks wrecked.
He looks dangerous.
He looks like a man terrified of himself.
And somehow… that scares me less than the thought of him letting go of me again.
I grip the edge of my doorway, steadying myself.
“Go inside,” he says quietly. “I’ll stay until you lock the door.”
It should sound like protection.
It feels like a promise.A warning.A confession all its own.
I step inside.Before I close the door, I look at him one last time.
The candlelight flickers across his bloodstained collar.His eyes track mine, dark and unreadable.
And I can’t tell if he saved me…or if I’ve dragged him somewhere he’ll never climb out of.
I close the door.
Inside Her Room, the Mask Cracks
The moment the door closes behind us, the silence changes shape.
Down in the tunnels, it was thick and heavy—full of echoes and fear and the sound of a man’s last breath.Up here in the cramped little room I pretend to live in, it feels tighter.Closer.Like the walls have been waiting to hear what we bring back with us.
Santino doesn’t step forward right away.
He stands just inside the threshold, one hand still gripping the doorknob like he’s unsure whether to stay or fucking bolt. The corridor light behind him slices a thin halo around his shoulders before the latch clicks and seals us in darkness lit only by the single lamp on my nightstand.
Then it’s just us.
His eyes sweep across the space—small bed, plain dresser, empty chair, nothing personal, nothing lived-in. The room a ghost would rent. A room for someone who plans to run.
I feel the moment he understands.
His gaze pauses on the bare dresser. The blank walls. The single bag shoved half under the bed.The vein near his temple pulses once. He’s reading me like Scripture he doesn’t trust, but knows is important.
“You live like someone who expects to run,” he murmurs.
My spine locks.
The words hit me like an unexpected knife. Clean. Quiet. Dead-on.
“I—”I try to be casual, but my voice betrays me—thin, crooked, unconvincing.
He doesn’t move away. Doesn’t soften. Doesn’t shift back into that priestly mask I’m used to seeing.He takes one slow step toward me, and everything in the room shrinks around him.
“Yes,” he says simply.
That single word strips every wall I thought I’d built between us.
He’s still in the clothes he killed in—collar skewed, blood drying along his jaw, a rust-red trail curving up toward his cheekbone. His lip is split. His knuckles are raw and torn. He looks dangerous, disheveled, half feral.
He looks honest.
And God help me… that’s the part that scares me most.
His gaze finds mine again—less suspicious than before, less cold. What I see now is something worse. Something gentler. Something searching.
“I need to know who was down there with you,” he says, voice lower than before. “Why they want you. What they think you’re hiding.”
My heartbeat spikes so fast it hurts.
I look away—at my boots, at the faint trail of dust we tracked in from the tunnels, at anything that isn’t him. But it doesn’t matter. His presence fills the room. I feel him everywhere, even without his hands on me.
I didn’t plan on telling him anything.But he killed for me.He chose me without hesitation.And now the lies I’ve been carrying feel too heavy to hold.
My legs give out first.
I sit on the edge of the bed, forcing a slow breath, trying not to tremble. Santino follows, stopping close enough that I feel the heat at my side—just out of reach, but crowding every inch of the air.
“Pia.”My name leaves his mouth rough, unfinished, like he’s still trying to understand it.
I stare at my hands until the tremor becomes too obvious to hide.
“My father,” I whisper. “It’s about my father.”
The shift in him is immediate.
His shoulders tense. His breath catches—just barely—but I feel it, the way you feel a door slam down a hallway. The word father hits him like a fresh bruise.
He doesn’t sit.He doesn’t speak.He waits.
“Start there,” he says finally.
Two words.Soft.Unyielding.
I lift my gaze.
Santino is looking at me like I’m a confession he hasn’t forgiven… or devoured. The priest mask he wore when I first arrived cracked wide open, revealing the man who strangled someone for putting a blade to my ribs.
A man who hasn’t decided if saving me was his salvation—or his damnation.
My chest tightens until breathing feels like bleeding.
If I tell him the truth, even a piece of it…he’ll never walk away.
And if I don’t — I’ll lose the only man who would burn the world to protect me.
The Partial Truth
I draw a breath that barely makes it past my ribs.It shakes on the way out.
“I told you I wasn’t here for God.”My voice is thin, scraped raw. “That part was true.”
Santino doesn’t move.He stands there as if he’s carved out of shadow—broad shoulders, jaw locked, blood drying on his collar like a warning only I can read. The small lamp on my nightstand throws his profile into sharp planes, dividing him between light and dark. Salvation and sin in the same man.
His rosary glints against his chest.Accusation.Temptation.Both.
My fingers twist together in my lap. I force myself to look at him.
“My father worked for Giovanni once,” I say. “Not directly. Just… on the edges. A numbers man. Quiet. Careful. He handled ledgers for a small faction under the Rivas.”
Santino’s expression barely shifts.
“What did he find?” he asks.Straight to the blade.
I swallow, anger tightening behind my ribs—not at Santino, but at memory sinking its claws in again.
“He found something he wasn’t supposed to see.”
The lamp flickers. The shadows crawl up the wall as if they’re listening.
“He found proof Giovanni framed him,” I whisper. “Proof my father didn’t steal from the Rivas. Proof he didn’t betray anyone.”
This part always cuts deepest.
My throat closes. When the next words come, they barely sound at all.
“Giovanni had him killed anyway.”
The room goes still.
Santino exhales slowly—like the truth punches straight through bone. He looks toward the wall, but I can tell he isn’t seeing it. His gaze goes distant, past the room, past the present. Toward ghosts only he knows.
“My father…” He swallows, voice low. “Did many things I didn’t know about.”
A bitter laugh slips out of me, hollow and small.
"They took everything from us," I say. “My home. My future. My father’s name.”
My arms wrap around my ribs. “After he died, they called him a thief. A traitor. They spat on his grave.”
Santino turns his head toward me—slowly, like the truth weighs more than he expected.
My voice softens into a whisper.The kind you only admit when there’s no turning back.
“I came here to get it back.”
The words sit between us—fragile and sharp enough to draw blood.
One truth.Not the whole one.
Santino watches me, shoulders tense, eyes dark with something torn between pity and something far more dangerous. He looks like a man split in half—the priest who wants to rise above violence, and the son shaped by it.
He steps closer. Not touching. Not sitting. Just shifting into my space, tightening the air between us.
“Pia,” he says—my name rough in his mouth. “If what you’re saying is true—”
“It is.”