Chapter 10 #2
He nods once, slowly, heavy with conflict.
His hand drags over his face, fingers pressing into his brow like he’s holding his skull together.
“You don’t understand,” he murmurs. “The things my father did—the things he hid…”“I thought I’d already survived the worst of him. I thought I knew the boundaries of the damage he caused.”
He lifts his eyes to mine.“And you’re telling me I didn’t.”
I don’t answer.There’s no right answer.
If I say yes, I confirm something that could break him.If I say no, I lie to protect a man who strangled someone for me without hesitation.
So I stay quiet.
For a long, charged moment, he just looks at me.Not like I’m a threat.Not like I’m a liar.But like I’m the knife that could cut him open… or free him.
He’s wavering.I feel it in the room.In his breath.In the way violence and faith battle behind his eyes.
The man he wants to be is slipping.And the man I’m dragging out of him—with every truth, every lie, every breath—is winning.
And God help me…I don’t know how to stop.
Santino’s Reaction Cuts Deep
Santino sits beside me slowly—like I’m something breakable, something wounded, something he’s terrified of touching wrong. The mattress dips beneath his weight, barely a shift, yet it feels like the entire room tilts with him.
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he asks.
Softly.Too softly.
The gentleness cracks something sharp in me.
“Would you have believed me?” I snap.The words fly out like a blade thrown on instinct.
He doesn’t flinch.
“Yes.”It punches the air out of my lungs.
I look away, swallowing hard against something raw and rising. He shouldn’t believe me. Not this easily. Not after everything I’ve done, everything I’ve hidden, everything I’m still hiding.
“You shouldn’t,” I whisper. “You don’t know the complete story.”
“Then tell me.”
His voice isn’t angry or demanding. It’s quiet, steady—like he’s standing in an open doorway waiting for whatever truth I’m about to drop on him.
I close my eyes.
For one second, I want to tell him everything—every lie, every scar, every betrayal that shoved me onto this path. I want someone else to carry even a sliver of the weight I’ve dragged alone for years.
But wanting is dangerous.Wanting gets people killed.
A shaky breath slips out of me.
No.Not everything.Not yet.
Something brushes my temple.
My eyes snap open.
Santino’s hand.
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear—the same motion he used once when he was furious, shoving it aside so he could pin me with that cold, unrelenting stare.
But now…
Now his fingers are gentle.Tentative.“Pia,” he murmurs, leaning close enough that his breath grazes my cheek. “Don’t make me protect you blindly. Tell me what I’m protecting you from.”
My chest tightens, sharp and sudden.
He means it.
He killed for me tonight.He walked into the darkness for me.He chose me over his own soul without thinking twice.
And I’m still lying to him.
Something fragile inside me cracks—quietly, like ice splitting under weight.
“I can’t tell you everything,” I breathe. “Not yet.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t accuse. Doesn’t recoil.
He just waits.
So, I give him something small.Something true.Something that won’t destroy my plan but might keep him from pulling away.
“I’m not innocent,” I whisper.
The confession drifts between us like smoke.
His jaw shifts—barely.Not in anger.In understanding.
I swallow.
“But I’m not lying about my father.”
Silence folds over us, thick and heavy.
Santino exhaled unevenly, shakily, as the truth hit him. A place Giovanni carved out long before “Father Santino” ever existed.
He looks at me—really looks—and something in him softens.
For the first time since the moment I stepped into his life dripping with half-truths…
Santino believes me.
I see it in the slight drop of his shoulders, the subtle lean toward me he doesn’t notice, the way his gaze holds mine like he’s finally seeing with me, not through me.
“Pia…” he says, my name low and rough in his mouth.It sounds like surrender.
“I don’t want to be blind to you.”
A breath escapes me—thin, trembling, stolen off the edge of panic.
“You’re not,” I whisper.
Not the whole truth.But enough.
Enough to tether him.Enough to keep him close.Enough to make his belief—a dangerous, precious thing—feel like warmth I forgot existed.
His hand drops from my cheek, but the ghost of his touch lingers along my skin.
And for the first time tonight…I’m the one who has to look away.
Because if I meet his eyes again, I might tell him everything.
And I can’t.Not yet.Not until I know whether he’ll save me — or damn me.
The Photograph and the Flame
Santino leaves only when I force him to.
“I need to rest,” I tell him—though rest is the last thing my body understands right now. My pulse is still sprinting, my skin still remembers the heat of violence, the scrape of his knuckles, the sound of him choking a man to death inches from me.
He stands in the doorway as if he doesn’t trust this room to hold me without him in it. One hand on the frame. Jaw tight. Blood dried along his collar like a stain only I can see.
“Lock the door,” he murmurs as he locks the window.
It isn’t a command.
It’s a plea.
Something in my chest stutters. I nod, even though it feels like pushing a stone uphill. “Go, Santino.”
For a second, I think he’ll refuse. I think he’ll stay, hover, burn himself alive for me in the name of protection. But he only nods once—sharp, reluctant—and steps back. The door closes with a soft click.
Silence rushes in behind it.
I stand there a moment, staring at the wood, hand hovering over the lock as though the simple motion might break something. My fingers move at last. I turn it. It snicks into place.
Safe, he’d say.
He’s wrong.
I’m the danger in this room.
My legs give out the second I turn away. I slide down the wall and hit the floor beside the bed, palms stinging as they catch my weight. The adrenaline drains out of me fast, leaving a hollow ache behind my ribs.
For a moment, I let my head fall back against the wall and close my eyes.
His voice echoes anyway.
You’re safe with me.You live like someone who expects to run.Don’t make me protect you blindly.
A humorless breath escapes me—too light to be a laugh, too bitter to be anything else.
Too late.
I lean forward and reach under the bed, fingers searching for the familiar notch in the wood. The box drags out with a soft scrape. Old. Plain. Forgettable. Exactly what I needed it to be.
I flip the latches open with my thumb.
Three things wait inside.
A worn handkerchief, edges frayed from being clutched in a little girl’s fist.A folded piece of paper with a child’s drawing—crooked figures, a house, a sun drawn too big.And the photograph.
My breath sticks in my throat.
I lift the photo carefully; the paper is soft and pliant with age. My father’s smile is still there—young, tired, warm. With his arm around my smaller frame, pulling me close. My gap-toothed grin. My crooked pigtails.
Before.
Before Giovanni.Before the accusation.Before the gunshot.Before the Rivas turned his name into a curse.
“I’m close, Papa,” I whisper. “I’m almost there.”
The words scrape out of me, rough and thin. My fingers curl around the photograph until the paper bends and trembles.
Almost there.
The tunnels, the vault door, Giovanni’s warning echoing in my skull — A RIVAS BETRAYED ME.Santino’s hands around Rocco’s throat.His voice in the dark.His eyes when they found mine.
Everything is sliding into place.
And that’s the problem.
The closer I get,the softer I feel.
Tears burn my eyes—hot, unwelcome. I blink hard, furious at myself, furious at the instinct to lean toward the warmth Santino didn’t mean to give me.
I reach for the candle on the nightstand.
The flame is small, steady. Waiting.
I lower the photograph over it.
My hand shakes once.
I should keep it—proof of who he was, proof of who I was.
But that girl is dead.
Just like he is.
The edge of the photo darkens. Paper curls, black creeping inward. The flame licks across his jawline, his mouth, the edges of his smile. His eyes vanish next. His arm around my small body dissolves into ash.
I watch it burn.
The smell—hot, bitter, choking—fills my lungs. Tears lace my vision, but I don’t look away. I need the pain to be sharp. I need the hurt alive. I need the wound open.
I didn’t come here for a priest with haunted eyes and blood on his collar.
I came here for revenge.For the truth.For him.
The last corner of the photo crumbles, falling in delicate flakes onto the pile of ash on the floor.
A tear slips free anyway.
It lands on the ashes with a soft hiss, turning black to gray.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “I can’t afford to miss you.”
The candle flame stretches tall, then shrinks, casting our shadows—mine and a dead man’s memory—up the wall.
I stare at the ashes, chest tight, fingers hovering over what’s left.
I need to stay angry.I need to stay focused.Because Santino is blurring lines, I swore would stay sharp.
And the moment I let myself soften—
someone will make sure I break.
Someone Is Listening
The last corner of the photograph folds in on itself, curling into blackened ash. I watch it fall—quiet, fragile—like a piece of me collapsing with it. Everything I used to be, everything I’ve spent years trying to bury, crumbles at my feet.
The candle flame wavers.A thin, trembling bend of gold.
That’s when I hear it.
A sound so soft it feels imagined — but my body reacts before my mind does.
A creak.Barely there.A whisper of weight on old wood.
My breath stops.The sound came from behind me.From the window.
I force myself to move with practiced calm, wiping the wet from my cheeks, smoothing my face into something blank. Controlled. Unreadable. I push every raw edge back into its box and turn slowly.
The window is closed.Latched.Exactly as I left it.
My pulse punches upward, sharp and violent.
I rise without a sound. My steps don’t disturb the ash at my feet; my breathing thins to near silence. My hand drifts casually toward the bed—slow, deliberate—until my fingers slip beneath the pillow.
Cold metal meets my palm.
The knife.
I curl my hand around the grip and slide it up my sleeve.
Someone was in my room.
Someone who moved carefully — carefully enough to avoid the floorboards…
Until they didn’t.
Someone watched me burn my father’s face.Listened to every word I whispered.Heard every truth I let slip.
Someone who now knows I’m getting close.Closer than I should be.
The candle flickers behind me, stretching my shadow across the wall. The ruined photograph lies at my feet, a small pile of gray dust—my father’s memory reduced to a whisper.
I keep my eyes on the window.Not blinking.Not breathing too deeply.Waiting.
Another creak.Another shift.Another sign someone is still here.
But nothing comes.
The silence feels wrong.Heavy.I slowly look around the room, and nothing is out of place. No window cracked open. No footprints in the dust.
Whoever was here knew how to leave, leaving nothing behind.
Except the curtains.
A warning.Or a mistake.
I step back until the edge of the bed touches my calves, the knife hidden, my heartbeat sharp enough to bruise bone.
Santino thinks he saved me tonight.
But as I stare at the gently swaying curtains—still moving, still whispering against the air like a ghost’s breath—I realize the truth curling cold in my stomach:
Maybe Santino saved me.
But someone else — someone who already knew where to find me,someone who moves like smoke,someone who has been closer than I ever realized—
might not want me alive at all.
My fingers tighten around the knife.
I no longer believe Santino saved me from danger tonight…