Chapter 14 Pia
Pia
The Door Creaks, the Aftermath Trembles
The vault door shifts.
Not enough to open.Not enough to save me.
Just enough for air to whisper through the seam like a breath stolen from the dying.
I jerk upright so fast my spine screams. The thin trickle of airflow brushes my damp cheeks, lifts the hair stuck to my skin, slips into my lungs like a promise it doesn’t intend to keep.
“Santino,” I whisper, my voice still wrecked, still trembling from everything that just happened through six inches of steel. “Was that you?”
On the other side of the door, his breath stutters once. His voice cuts in—low, controlled, dangerous as a man about to erupt can sound.
“No.”
The single word chills me straight to the bone.
“I only heard one lock,” he says. Simply one. Someone’s testing it.”
Panic crawls up my throat like acid. I scramble backward until my knees hit the table and I fold, dragging my legs up to my chest. The cold metal seeps through my clothes, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the truth sitting in my skull like a gunshot:
Someone is out there.Not opening it.Not rescuing me.Listening.
The door creaks again—barely a sound, just a flex of stressed metal—and makes me flinch as if I had been struck.
“Santino,” I breathe, fingers biting into my sleeves, “I don’t want to die here.”
The words feel foreign. Ugly. Too honest.
I’ve survived too much to talk like this. I’ve swallowed knives and learned to call them meals. I’ve slept in the shadows and learned to breathe quietly.
But this—this steel throat around me, this waiting—
It’s different.
“You won’t,” he says instantly. No hesitation. No lies. “I’ll get you out.”
I close my eyes.
And I hate that I believe him.
That’s the part that terrifies me more than the chamber.
I slide down the wall and press my forehead into the cold door, lining myself with the warmth of where I know his breath must fog the other side. My skin remembers him like a bruise—still humming, still aching in the shape of his voice.
“You sound so sure,” I murmur.
“I am,” he answers. “Whoever it is — they’re not faster than me. They’re not stronger than me.”
A lie.
Not the comforting kind.
The terrifying kind that means he’s already prepared to bleed.
Something slips loose in my chest. I curl tighter, suddenly aware of how small this room really is. How close the walls are pressing. How my lungs feel too big for my body.
“What if they open it?” I whisper.
“They won’t,” he says, like he’s daring fate to challenge him.
“And if they do?” I push.
A beat.
His voice lowers. Changes.
"They will need to deal with me before anything else."
The image hits too fast—Santino in the tunnels, blood on his hands, rage in his eyes, his body between mine and something worse—and my stomach flips in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t say that like it's nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” he replies. “It’s everything.”
The door creaks again.
Closer this time.
Intentional.
I pull in a silent breath and press my lips to the steel where I know his face must be, even if I can’t see him.
“Santino,” I whisper. “If I get out of this—”
“You will.”
“If I get out,” I repeat, stubborn. “I won’t forget this. I won’t forget you.”
Silence stretches between us, tight as wire.
Softly, through steel and shadow:
“Good.”
The door does not move again.
But the air still whispers.
And somewhere beyond the vault, something is already waiting.
Pia Wants to Tell Him Everything… But Can’t Yet
Silence settles between us, thick enough to taste.
Not the kind that feels safe or soft.
This one is heavy. Watching. Waiting. Listening to everything I’m not saying.
My head rests against the steel, eyes closed, breath still unsteady from…
all of it. The chamber smells of metal and old blood and my fear.
My clothes cling to my skin—damp with sweat, with tears I swore I wouldn’t shed, with the ghost of everything I just let happen between us through six inches of steel.
His voice cuts through the dark—low, rough, close enough that I feel it in my bones.
“Pia… what were you trying to tell me?”
My chest tightens so fast it hurts.
He heard it.
The almost-confession. The words that slipped out between I need you and God forgive me. The truth that’s been living in my heart since the day my father’s body hit the floor.
The coded map in my pocket.The evidence hidden in my coat.The cassette tape and Giovanni’s voice promising a quiet death.
Why I came here.What I really want.What I’m going to do.
I swallow and lean harder into the cold steel. The chill bleeds up my spine.
“I—” My voice scrapes free, small and raw. “I wasn’t ready.”
The admission tastes wrong. Weak. Not like me at all.
I’m the girl who walked into a Rivas church with a knife and a plan. The one who lied to their priest and smiled while doing it.
Now I’m shaking in the dark, afraid of my own truth.
On the other side, he exhales—a slow, steady breath. Not angry. Not accusing.
Just… there.
Waiting.
Of course he is.
That’s what he does.He waits you out. Like confession is inevitable.
“Tell me now,” he murmurs, softer than I’ve ever heard him. “You don’t have to hide anymore.”
My throat burns.
He doesn’t understand.
If I tell him everything now, I won’t be the one who gets destroyed.
He will.
I see his face when he realizes the girl he dragged into his church and kissed inside a confessional came here to burn his family to the ground.
I see the moment his eyes harden when he learns I broke into his father’s vault under his nose.
I see his expression when he hears Giovanni’s voice on that tape and understands exactly what kind of man raised him.
And worse—
I see the moment he realizes I knew… and didn’t tell him.
“I just…” I force the words through the tightness in my chest. “I needed you to know I wasn’t lying about everything.”
The truth wobbles, but I hold it upright.
“I didn’t use you,” I say carefully. “Not for that.”
The words hang between us—loaded and fragile.
Not for that.
Not for the way he holds me through steel.Not for the way his voice steadies me in the dark.Not for the way I ache when he says my name like it’s something holy and ruined at the same time.
Beyond the door, he draws in a breath and lets it go. A low sound follows—not quite a sigh, not quite relief.
More like something breaking.
Reshaping itself.
“Tell me only what you can bear to give,” he says quietly. “And I’ll take it.”
The gentleness ruins me.
I want to slide down this wall and spill everything.
Tell him about the ledger. About the mark carved into stone like a sentence.
About my father begging for his life while Giovanni decided loyalty was disposable.
I want to tell him about the cassette tape pressed to my ribs.
About the proof that his father is the monster I’ve been hunting since I was a child.
I want to tell him I stood in the room where Pietro Moretti died… and kept that truth to myself.
But something stops me.
Not rage.Not revenge.
Fear.
Not the familiar kind that tastes like sweat and adrenaline and survival.
This one hurts.
Sharper.
Fear of losing him.
Fear that if I lay every ugly part of myself on the table, he’ll choose the one that cuts deepest—and walk away without looking back.
I hate it.
I hate how powerful it feels.
I hate that wanting him to stay hurts worse than the idea of facing Giovanni’s ghost alone.
My fingers lift from my knee and drift to the door. I press on the steel without thinking, searching for him like instinct alone knows the way. The metal is cold—but beneath it, faint heat hums back.
Him.
Always there.
“I can’t…” I whisper. “Not all of it. Not yet.”
The words feel like failure.
I brace for disappointment—sharp breath, clipped reply, the scrape of him stepping away.
Instead, he stays.
I hear the quiet shift of his body against the other side of the door, like he’s coming closer instead of retreating.
He says, “Give me whatever you can afterward.” “Keep the rest until you’re ready.”
My eyes burn.
Who does that?
Who lets someone ration the truth?
Who takes scraps and calls it enough?
This man.
This priest.
This fucked-up, dangerous, loyal son of the man who ruined my life.
“I don’t know where to start,” I admit, my voice cracking. “Everything feels like a trap.”
“For who?” he asks gently. “You… or me?”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Both.”
The honesty slips out before I can catch it.
A beat.
After that—
"We will enter it together," he whispers. “When you’re ready.”
Something splinters inside my chest.
I want to collapse into it—into him, into the idea that maybe, just once, I won’t have to carry every secret alone.
But I can’t.
Not yet.
Not with Giovanni’s voice burning a hole through my pocket.Not with my father’s blood on his family’s hands.Not with the tape that could end him and his brothers resting over my heart.
“I’ll tell you,” I whisper, fingers curling tight against the steel. "Only… not tonight."
My voice fractures on the last word.
On the other side, his palm presses harder to the door—right over mine, like it belongs there.
“In that case, I'll wait,” he says.
No threat.No pressure.No demand.
A vow he is not supposed to make to a girl like me.
And that—not the chamber, not the darkness, not the memory of my father’s final breath—
Is what terrifies me most.
Because for the first time in my life, I’m more afraid of breaking someone else than I am of being broken.
Santino Forgives Her… Before Hearing the Sin
My fingers curl against the cold steel before I realize I’ve moved.
Not deliberate.Not brave.
Instinct.
The way you reach for air when you’re drowning.
I press my palm to the door and freeze when I feel his answer instantly—his hand already there, already waiting, like he’s been holding the place open for me.
“I don’t deserve forgiveness,” I whisper.