Chapter 14 Pia #2
The words rake my throat raw. I expect them to die between us. I expect distance. Withdrawal. That careful, priestly hesitation I’ve been bracing for since the moment I let myself feel something real.
Instead—
Only his voice.
Low.Steady.
“I forgive you.”
My breath stutters so hard it hurts.
“You don’t even know what I’ve done,” I choke.
I press my forehead to the steel. It’s freezing, but I don’t care. If I move now, the truth might spill all the way out.
He answers without thinking.
“I don’t need to.”
My chest draws tight.
“I felt the truth in you,” he continues quietly. “Whatever you’re carrying—whatever you think will make me walk away—”
His knuckles touch the steel.
Once.
Twice.
Exactly where my heart would be if he were touching me for real.
“—it won’t.”
Tears burn behind my eyes.
No one has ever said that to me.Not my father.Not anyone.
I’ve spent my life proving I deserve air. Space. Mercy. I learned early that love comes with forms to sign and rules to memorize and conditions you’re expected to fail.
And this man—
This priest.This sinner in a collar—
Is offering absolution before I’ve confessed the crime.
“You shouldn’t,” I whisper.
I hate how small my voice sounds.
“You don’t know what you’re forgiving.”
He exhales slowly, as if each word is a choice.
“I know what I feel.”
My heart rams my ribs like it’s trying to break free.
“And it’s yours.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty.
It’s heavy.
The kind that bends bloodlines.
I sink down the wall until I’m sitting on the cold stone floor, knees pulled in tight, forehead still resting on the door. On the other side, I hear him mirror me—fabric shifting, weight settling.
We sit like that.
Split by steel.Connected by something forbidden.
“You shouldn’t want me,” I say quietly.
Not because I believe it.
Because it feels safer than believing he does.
“You don’t know what kind of person you’re binding yourself to.”
He doesn’t pause.
“I do.”
“Powerful and strong in the way truth always is. Life, hurt has made you hard, but truth in love finds the good in everything.”
I swallow hard.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” I whisper.
“Why?” His voice softens. “Because you think you’re broken?”
Yes.Because all my pieces are wrong.Because I was built by fire, which taught me that warmth and safety are seldom the same thing.
“You’re not broken,” he continues. “You’re bleeding. There’s a difference.”
My lashes tremble.
He shifts closer on his side. I hear it. Feel it. The sound of someone choosing proximity even when it costs.
“You’re still here,” he says gently. “You survived things that should’ve erased you. That doesn’t make you dangerous.”
His voice drops.
“It makes you powerful.”
Something fractures inside my chest.
Not clean.
Not kind.
Wide and ugly and necessary.
“I don’t know how to be good,” I whisper.
He answers as if the truth has always been obvious.
“Then don’t be.”
A breath breaks from me.
Not laughter.
Something sharper.
“That’s the worst priest advice I’ve ever heard.”
A low sound from him. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh.
“All I know,” he says, “is that you’re real. And whatever you carry into this—”
A pause.
His hand presses against the door again.
“I’ll hold it.”
I shake my head, eyes burning.
“You shouldn’t.”
He lowers his reply to a vow.
“I want to.”
The words hang between us.
Unclaimed.
Unbreakable.
I stay there.
Curled against cold steel.
Holding forgiveness I never earned.
And for the first time in my life—
I don’t hate myself for refusing to let it go.
Their Walls Finally Fall (Emotionally)
I slide down the wall like gravity finally remembers me.
Like my bones surrender.
My knees hit first. Then my shoulder. Then my cheek sinks into cold concrete that smells like rust and damp and secrets.
I curl inward automatically.
Protective.Feral.Small.
Instinct.
The corridor carries sound like a whisper-tunnel, every breath magnified, every movement intimate in this underground throat of the fortress.
And I hear it—
A shift.
A scrape.
The mirror of me on the other side.
He sinks too.
Slow.
Heavy.
Like a man who has finally allowed himself to fall.
We end up the same without seeing each other.
Back to back through steel and stone and Rivas blood.
Two bodies braced against the same invisible wound.
I draw my knees into my chest, arms locking around my shins, breath sawing in shallow contradictions of air. My spine presses into the wall like I could collapse right through to him if I leaned hard enough.
And then—
I feel it.
Not with my hands.Not with my eyes.
With my chest.
He exhales.
Long.
Unsteady.
And my lungs follow without permission.
We breathe together.
Like something ancient.
Like something learned in another life.
The underground hums. Pipes groan. Water drips somewhere behind us like a ticking clock counting down something neither of us can name.
Then even that fades.
The fortress dissolves.The Rivas machine grinds to dust.
There is only this.
Steel.Breath.
Two wrecked souls pressed onto the same axis.
I close my eyes.
Let the dark take me.
Finally safe enough to come apart.
My throat burns.
The words lodge first—thick and raw—but once they start, I can’t stop them.
“You saved me,” I whisper.
My voice shatters the silence like glass.
The confession is barely sound.
“Twice now,” I add, lips trembling as the truth pushes harder. “You didn’t have to.”
My face presses into my knees.
I wait for the answers men like him are trained to give.
Denial.Deflection.Jokes.Strategy.
Instead—
“You’re wrong,” Santino murmurs.
His voice seeps through the wall, low and soft—
—and lethal in sincerity.
“I had to.”
My breath stutters.
I press my knuckles against my mouth like it might stop whatever’s splitting inside me.
Then his voice shifts.
Darkens.
Drops—
Not a threat.
A vow.
“I’d kill anyone who touches you.”
A silence wide enough to fall into.
“I’d burn this place to the ground if it meant keeping you alive.”
The words don’t close my throat.
They pry something open.
A shiver claws down my spine—
Not fear.
Recognition.
It lands on my chest like lightning finding its home.
No one has ever claimed me like that.
Not my mother. Not my father. Not the church. Not the family. Not blood or prayer or obligation.
No one has ever said, you are mine and meant I will destroy worlds for you.
My hands shake.
My eyes sting.
“You shouldn’t want me,” I whisper.
It tears out of me.
Every doubt.Every scar.Every ugly truth stitched into my bones like a birthmark.
“You shouldn’t,” I repeat, my voice fraying now. “I’m… I’m wrong in too many ways to fix.”
Silence stretches.
Not empty.
Charged.
Then—
“I do.”
No pause.No conditions.No retreat.
Just the truth.
Heavy.
Unmovable.
“I do,” he says again, like it’s law now. Like the universe just bent around two words.
Something inside my chest gives way.
Not slowly.
Not safely.
All at once.
I exhale—and it breaks out of me in a sound language never taught me.
A wrecked, shuddering sob.
“I do, too.”
The admission feels like stepping off something higher than fear.
Like jumping without knowing whether there’s ground.
And somehow—
I don’t fall.
We stay like that.
Breathing.
Breaking.
Not bartering power.Not dancing for leverage.Not negotiating blood and empire.
Just two souls stripped bare in the dark.
I remain curled there long after the tears fade.
Long after breathing steadies.
And still—
Neither of us moves.
Because something sacred has taken root between stone and steel.
And we don’t dare touch it.
Not yet.
Pia’s Almost-Confession (Interrupted by Fate)
The words rise like poison in my throat.
Thick.Burning.
They claw their way up from the pit I’ve been sealing off my whole life—from the place where my father’s face lives, where Giovanni’s shadow never leaves, where every why and what if was buried under obedience and blood.
I drag in a breath like it might save me.
Like it might give me courage instead of stripping it bare.
“My father…” I whisper.
It hurts just to say it.
The name.The weight.The ghost of his hands on my shoulders, steering my life like property.
“What Giovanni did,” I continue, my mouth dry, my pulse snapping too fast. “What I came here for…”
The truth waits behind my teeth.
Sharp.Poised.Ready to ruin everything.
I almost gave it to him.
Nearly let it all spill in one breath.
But something about this moment—
This thin, fragile pause between us—
Feels too sacred to poison.
Too breakable to pollute with something ugly.
The wall between us has only just fallen.
If I speak now, it will fly back into place.
I swallow.
The lie sticks.
The truth stays caged.
“Santino… if I tell you everything,” I say instead, my voice unwinding, “you won’t look at me the same.”
The fear in it is real.
Ravenous.Raw.
I brace for the distance.
For the hush of his retreating.
For the quiet click of something shutting down.
Instead—
“I already do.”
His voice barely reaches me now.
Not sound.
Weight.
Gravity.
Truth.
“Nothing you say will change that.”
I almost believe him.
God help me—
I almost let myself fall into it.
Hope is a drug.
And I’ve been sober too long.
I close my eyes.
Promise myself I won’t touch—
And still, my hand rises.
Slow.Unsteady.
I lay my palm against the steel again.
Cold.
Merciless.
But it’s him.
A silent, shaking I’m here.
A breath later—
His hand meets mine through iron and stone.
No doubt.No hesitation.
Our palms align as if the wall is nothing.
Like this place doesn’t own us anymore.
“I want to trust you,” I whisper.
It sounds like surrender.
“And I want you to trust me.”
“I do.”
Immediate.
Certain.
Too easy.
Something in his voice splits my chest.
Not hopeful—
Open.
This isn’t heat.
This isn’t hunger or darkness pulling bodies together in secret rooms.
This is worse.
Heavier.
It settles inside me like something alive.
Breathing.Watching.Waiting.
Attachment.
The most dangerous word in any language.
Attachment is leverage.Attachment is vulnerability.Attachment is how you get buried in this family.
My fingers curl tight against the door.
My pulse drums like a warning I don’t know how to read.
Whatever is growing between us—
It isn’t soft.
It isn’t gentle.
It’s a blade wrapped in velvet.
And I want it anyway.
Which scares me more than any threat ever whispered inside a Rivas war room.
I lean forward until my forehead rests against the steel.
Let my eyes close.
On the other side of this wall is a man who would tear worlds apart for me.
On this side—
A woman who came here to bring blood and truth and fire into his life.
And I still can’t say it.
Not tonight.
Not when his hand is this steady.
Not when his voice still sounds like safety.
Not when—for the first time—
I don’t feel alone in the dark.
The lie pulses in my chest like a second heart.
Alive.Patient.
And it tells me something I don’t want to hear.
The longer I stay here—
The harder it will be to leave without destroying him.
The truth isn’t gone.
It’s only waiting.
And when it rises—
It won’t whisper.
It will tear everything open.
The Footsteps Return
The moment doesn’t fade.
It shatters.
The air changes first.
I don’t hear it — not at first.
I feel it.
A pressure shift.A wrongness crawling up my spine like icy fingers.
Then—
Crunch.
The sound slices through the tunnel and straight into my ribs.
Boot on gravel.
Slow.Measured.
Not hurried.Not searching.
Approaching.
My heart rockets into my throat.
I don’t breathe.I don’t move.I don’t think.
On the other side of the steel, Santino stills so completely he might be carved into the wall itself. Whatever warmth we were wrapped in vanishes in a single breath.
Something else takes its place.
Predator.
Controlled.Lethal.Listening.
The steps draw closer.
Not heavy.Not careless.
Deliberate.
Predatory.
Someone isn’t just walking this corridor—
They’re hunting it.
My fingers slide from the steel and curl tight against my chest, searching for something that isn’t there.
A weapon.A miracle.An exit.
The lantern outside the vault flickers once.
Twice.
The flame gutters as if it knows.
Shadows stretch long and wrong across the corridor—bones and mouths where walls should be.
Another step.
Closer.
My pulse pounds so loudly I’m sure it’s traveling down the tunnel ahead of me.
And then—
Click.
The unmistakable sound of a chambered round.
Metal kissing metal.
Final.
Unforgiving.
Real.
My stomach drops as if the floor just vanished beneath my feet.
On the other side of the door, Santino exhales.
Barely.
Then his voice cuts the dark—
Low.Steady.
A command wrapped in calm.
“Stay quiet.”
A breath.
“No matter what you hear.”
My mouth opens on instinct.
Air rushes in.
I crush my hand over my lips before a sound can escape.
Fingers shaking.
I seal my mouth shut until it goes numb.
Until I taste blood where teeth break skin.
The steps stop.
Right outside the vault.
So close I could swear if I leaned forward I’d feel breath through the seam.
A shadow bleeds beneath the door.
Man-shaped.
But wrong.
Too long.Too still.
The lantern casts him up the wall beside me in warped black strokes—head tilted, shoulder cocked, weapon low but ready.
Waiting.
Listening.
I slam my eyes shut.
Every ending explodes through my head.
Every consequence of silence.Of delay.Of the truths I never spilled.
My father’s face claws into view.
Giovanni’s voice follows.
The weight of everything I never said crushes down on my lungs.
On the other side of the wall—
I feel Santino.
Not touching me.
But there.
Heat through ice.
A monster in a collar if someone crosses this threshold.
A vow of breath and bones.
The shadow shifts.
Boot leather whispers closer.
A man crouches at the seam.
And then—
His voice slides through the darkness like pleasure sharpened to silk.
“Found the girl.”
My blood turns to ice.
Every system inside me shuts down.
No cry.No breath.No thought.
Only that voice ringing in my skull like a death bell.
The tunnel holds its breath.
And so do I.