Chapter 11
Santino
The Key That Won’t Leave His Hand
Idon’t sleep.
I don’t even try.
I sit on the edge of my bed, elbows braced on my knees, the storm outside thrashing against the stained glass like it wants to rip the entire church apart. Thunder rattles the old wooden frame. Rain hammers the roof. The entire building feels like it’s shivering.
I should be praying.
I should cleanse the blood from my hands.
I should do anything except… this.
But all I can do is stare at my hands.
My left palm is stained with dried blood—Rocco's or mine, I can't tell—which smears my rosary's wooden beads. The crucifix hangs loose between my fingers, heavy, accusing, like it knows exactly what I did tonight.
My right hand grips the key.
Giovanni’s key.
The metal is cold enough to bite. Too ornate for a church. Too heavy for innocence. Carved with the Rivas crest—the same crest I swore I’d never carry, never claim, never bow to.
And here I am, clutching it like a lifeline.
I drag a hand over my face, pushing back damp hair, grounding myself in the burn along my knuckles. My skin is split open, bruised from slamming into bone. From killing a man.
For her.
Fuck.
Pia’s face flickers through my mind—the way she looked at me after I strangled Rocco, like she didn’t know whether to run from me or toward me. The way her voice shook when she said I saved her. The way her hand touched my cheek — like she had any right to.
My chest tightens, a deep ache crawling up my throat.
I don’t know how to process what happened down there.
I don’t know how to process what I did.
I told myself I’d walk away from violence.
I told myself I’d be better than Giovanni.
I told myself I’d be the one Rivas who didn’t drown in blood.
“Fuck,” I whisper, the word dragging out of me like a confession. “I’m becoming him.”
The storm cracks again, violent enough to shake dust loose from the ceiling beams.
Somewhere beneath the church, the tunnels pulse in my memory like a living vein—dark, twisting, hungry. I can still feel the cold air down there. Still hear the echo of Rocco’s last breath. Still taste the iron in the back of my throat.
I stare at the key again.
The vault.
Giovanni’s vault.
The one he always said was “for the King’s eyes only.”
He protected it as if it held the heart of his empire.
Pia came dangerously close to one tonight.
My fingers tighten around the metal until it digs into my skin.
I can’t run from this anymore.
Not from the kill.
Not from Pia.
Not from my father’s sins rotting beneath this church like a buried carcass.
Everything is unraveling.
Her lies.
My mask.
Giovanni’s legacy.
And I’m sitting here like a coward, pretending prayer will fix any of it.
I stare at the crucifix tangled in my other hand.
I try to recall the prayer, which is in Latin and I've said since I was a boy, but I can't. Nothing except the memory of Giovanni’s voice, dripping with authority:
A king never fears what’s his, Santo.
I shake my head hard, rejecting it, rejecting him, but the echo still clings to my skin.
My hands are shaking.
I can’t stay here.
If I keep sitting in this room, breathing this air, feeling the ghosts press in around me, I’ll lose my fucking mind.
I rise slowly, every muscle tight with a resolve that feels ancient, inevitable.
This isn’t a choice anymore.
It’s instinct.
A pull I can’t ignore.
The key glints in my fist.
I grab my coat, shove my feet into my shoes, and step into the hallway.
The church is silent except for the storm, shadows stretching long across the stone floor.
I move quickly, quietly, past the empty sanctuary, past the altar dripping candle wax, past the confessionals that suddenly feel like lies in wooden boxes.
I reach the hidden stairwell.
I descend into the underworld beneath my father’s church.
The key burns in my hand the entire way down.
The Door That Should Never Be Opened
The tunnels feel different tonight.They always smelled of damp stone and old incense—a graveyard’s breath trapped underground. But now the air has weight. Pressure. Like something is holding its breath with me. Like the walls know exactly where I’m going—and what I’m about to wake.
I move fast, but my steps stay controlled. Each footfall echoes in sharp, rhythmic bursts along the curved stone. The storm above sends vibrations through the ceiling, rattling dust loose from the archways. The whole church feels like it’s groaning.
Or warning me.
The key in my hand drags my arm down, heavy as sin.A serpent coiled around a crown, that's Giovanni's crest, and it gleams when lightning flashes. His favorite symbol. His philosophy carved into metal:
Power belongs to the one willing to hold the knife.
My throat tightens. I swallow hard and push deeper.
The air thickens.The temperature drops.The silence stretches.
And then I see it.
The vault door.
It rises from the stone, fossil-like—huge, arched, and carved with the serpent-and-crown emblem. With surgical precision, Giovanni's initials etched the center plate beneath the crest.
GPR.Giovanni Pietro Rivas.Father. King. Tyrant.Liar.
The same door Pia had reached for earlier.The same door that refused her touch.
Good.
Because whatever is behind it…It’s not meant for her.
And it sure as fuck wasn’t meant for me.
I stop directly in front of it.My pulse slows.Steadies.
The key slides into the lock as if it has always belonged there—as if Giovanni planned this moment long before I ever arrived.
I rotate it.
The metal resists.
A tension crawls up my arm, the lock bracing against me. Like the vault is alive, jaw clenched around the secrets buried inside.
My teeth grind.
“Open,” I mutter, voice ripping out of me from some place deep—somewhere exhausted, furious, and done with being haunted.
I twist harder.
A sharp click cracks through the tunnel.Then another.Then a third—each one older, deeper, vibrating through the stone, waking gears that haven’t shifted in years.
A grinding groan rolls beneath my feet as chains lift inside the walls. Mechanisms creak to life, metal scraping metal, dust drifting down in gray trails.
The entire tunnel trembles.
The vault exhales.
A cold draft spills from the forming crack—sharp, sterile, untouched by time or breath. It slides over my skin like ice water. My fingers tighten on the key.
I push.
The door is heavier than it looks.A monolith.A tombstone for everything Giovanni hid.
My shoulders brace; muscles burn. Inch by inch, the slab gives way until there’s enough space to step inside.
What I expect is gold.Weapons.Safes, artifacts stolen from rivals.
Everything a mafia king would hoard.
But the room isn’t a treasure.It’s shelves.
And ledgers.
There are hundreds. Black leather spines in perfect rows. Labels inked in Giovanni’s handwriting—precise, elegant, calculating. Pages of numbers, entries, names.
His real empire.
Not bullets.Not territory.Not firepower.
But paper.
Paper soaked in blood.Paper that ruins men.Paper that kills quieter than any gun.
Cold settles into my chest as I step across the threshold.
This room…This vault…This kingdom…
This is where Giovanni lived.Where he reigned.Where he hid every goddamn sin he committed.
The door swings shut behind me with a heavy thud.
I don’t turn around.
I just stand there, staring at the ledgers—my father’s true legacy—with that same cold draft crawling down my spine.
I’m inside now.And whatever truth waits in here…
Records of the King’s Crimes
The silence in the vault isn’t empty.
It hums — a low, electric pressure, like all the ink on these pages is still wet, still moving, still choking the life out of people who don’t even know Giovanni is the one tightening the noose.
I take the nearest ledger from the shelf.
It’s heavier than it looks. Thick leather binding, edges worn, pages fanned from years of use. My thumb hesitates on the cover for half a second.
Then I open it.
My breath catches.
The numbers hit me first—lines and lines marching in tight, disciplined rows. Transfers. Balances. Amounts so large they barely feel real. But the structure is familiar. My father taught me to read this language when I was too damn young to understand what it meant.
Money doesn’t lie, San.People do.
This isn’t a rumor.This isn’t speculation.
This is evidence.
Dates is the header for each column, written in Giovanni's neat script. Account codes. Shell foundations. “Charities.” Stipends. Notes.
My vision narrows as I scan the page.
A transfer from a “widow’s relief fund” into a Cayman account. Another from a “mission outreach” funneled into a private trust. A third routed through something labeled ST. BART’S ALTAR RENOVATION.
Bullshit.All of it.
He used the church like a fucking washing machine.
My stomach twists.
I flip the page—faster now. The pattern continues.
Offshore accounts. Fake charities. “Anonymous donations” sliding in and out of accounts he clearly owned. Money bleeding through the church’s books like rot under paint.
Names appear in the margins.
Priests.Secretaries.Drivers.
Some of them are already dead. I recognize the crosses Giovanni drew through their names once they became “no longer useful.”
They’re listed as conduits.
Not accomplices. Not equals.
Just pipes — the money flowed through. Men too weak to refuse him or too scared to ask where his cash came from.
I see the parishes I grew up around—names from dinners, fundraisers, baptisms. Men who placed a hand on my head and told me I’d make a fine priest one day.
They were laundering blood money while they handed me communion.
A tight burn sears the back of my throat.
I turn another page.
Confessional transfers.Funeral disbursements.“Widow gifts.”
Giovanni used confessionals to get money: cash under screens, envelopes in books. Funeral masses to move payouts under the cover of grief. Communion wine shipments to ferry money and product in and out of the city.
His favorite fucking trick:
Sin dressed up as holiness.