Chapter 15 Santino #2
We pass carvings along the walls—names, half-erased prayers, obscene saints etched by hands that ran out of hope centuries ago. They built the church on bones.
Every foundation here is a corpse wearing a lie.
“Why are you so sure they’re following us?” she asks.
I don’t hesitate.
“Because they stopped chasing.”
Her breath fractures.
I don’t soften it.
“When men panic,” I say quietly, “they’re loud. They rush. They bleed everywhere. When they go quiet…”
I glance down the dark vein of stone ahead.
“…that’s when you worry.”
Her jaw tightens.
“Because they’re thinking.”
“Because they’re hunting.”
The Trap and the Revelation
I go so fast my spine locks.
The tunnel forks ahead like a split vein—two arteries pumping the same dark promise straight into the heart of something fucked.
And there on the stone—
Blood.
Not splattered.Not sprayed.
Dragged.
A thin, glistening line in the lantern glow, like someone tried to stay upright and failed one step at a time.
Fresh, still wet enough to shine.
My grip tightens on the knife. My stance shifts without conscious thought, my body sliding half in front of Pia, violence already loaded before my mind bothers to catch up.
I listen.
Past the dripping water.Past the low groan of old stone.Past the roar of the pulse in my ears.
There—
Footsteps.
Faint.Retreating.
Not frantic.Not wild.
Controlled. Measured. The sound of men walking away because that was the plan, not because they got scared.
They’re not running.
They’re moving.
My teeth grind.
“Oh, you motherf—”
Pia leans in, her breath a ghost against my shoulder. “Why would they run?” she whispers.
They didn’t.
That’s the problem.
“They got what they came for,” I say quietly.
The words taste wrong as soon as I hear them out loud. Too heavy. Too final.
Her fingers curl into my sleeve. “Santino… what are you talking about?”
I turn to her.
Not gentle.
Every instinct in me is screaming, and I’m done trying to tame any of it.
“Did you leave something in the vault?” I snap. “Anything they could use? A journal. A file. A fucking scrap of paper—Pia, think.”
She blinks once.
Too hard.
Like something just hit the back of her skull.
I see it. That tiny, betraying flicker.
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
I grab her arms.
Not to hurt. Not to comfort.
To keep her in the moment.
“What aren’t you telling me?” My voice comes out low, furious, frayed at the edges. “Don’t you dare look at me like that and pretend this is nothing.”
She swallows.
Her lips part.
Close.
Open again—
And a sound cuts through the tunnel like a knife.
“S-Santino?”
The voice hits me like a bullet.
Small.Fragile.All wrong in a place built for ghosts and killers.
My head snaps toward the left passage.
The blood trail.
My pulse detonates against my ribs.
No.
No, no, no—
“There’s a child down here,” Pia breathes.
I don’t answer.
I’m already moving.
Slow. Silent. Every muscle pulled so tight it feels like I might snap too.
The voice comes again, closer. Shaking.
“Santino…?”
God.
No trap sounds like that.
No echo bleeds like a boy.
I step into the left corridor. The lantern light stretches ahead, crawling over rough stone, thick shadow—
—and then it finds him.
Guido.
Standing at the far end of the passage like a prayer that wandered into hell by mistake.
Too small for this dark.Too clean for this blood.
Guido in the Dark
I don’t breathe.I don’t blink.I don’t move.
Because the thing standing in front of me isn’t a guard.Isn’t a hunter.Isn’t some shadow with a gun and an evil plan.
It’s my brother.
Guido is a pale shape at the far end of the tunnel, swallowed halfway by the dark like the stone itself is trying to unmake him. His shoulders cave in, as if he is bracing for a blow that never comes. He buries both hands in his chest, clutching something so tight it looks painful.
A prayer book.
Bent. Soft. Worn at the corners.
His eyes find mine.
“Santino… who is she?”
He doesn’t mean her name.He means her existence.
The question is gentle.The damage is not.
Behind me, Pia goes still.
Not a flinch.Not a sound.
The way prey goes still when it realizes it isn’t alone.
Guido’s gaze slides past my shoulder.
Finds her.
Recoils as if she burned him.
“No,” he whispers, stumbling backward. “No—no—Dad said, Dad told me.”
The cold hits my bloodstream instantly.Poison, old and familiar.
“What did he tell you?” I ask.
The words scrape out low and controlled, because if I raise my voice even a fraction of an inch, something ugly is going to rip loose from deep inside me and I don’t know if I can chain it again.
Guido shakes his head hard enough that his hair flies into his eyes.
“He said to stay away from her kind,” he sobs. “He said they bring death.”
Pia makes a quiet sound behind me. It is barely audible.
Like breath tearing.Like something caving inward.
I step forward automatically.
Slow.
Hands open.
Not to hurt.Not to threaten.
To beg.
“Guido,” I say, softer than I learned how to be. “She’s not what you think.”
But he isn’t listening to my voice.
He’s listening to Giovanni.
Always Giovanni.
His eyes drop.
To the knife in my hand.
To the blood slicking my sleeves.
To the dark shape crumpled half-hidden behind us that used to breathe and doesn’t anymore.
The fear on his face turns feral.
“You’re leaving with her,” he whispers.
It isn’t loud.It doesn’t need to be.
“You’re leaving us. Like Dad said you would.”
The word guts me.
Us.
Not him.Not the .
Guido.Romeo.Everything I tried to bury under prayers.
“No,” I breathe. “Guido, I would never—”
“You already are!”
His voice shreds the tunnel.
“You’re standing there with a knife like you’re—like you’re some monster and you’re—” his throat snaps closed, “you’re choosing her.”
Pia doesn’t move.
Doesn’t defend.
Doesn’t reach for me.
She just stands there and bleeds quietly inside her skin while my past and my future tear each other apart.
I step closer.
“Guido. Look at me.”
He flinches.
Just a flinch.
Enough.
“She hasn’t hurt me,” I say. “Not once. Not ever. She’s the only reason I’m not dead in a concrete box right now.”
He looks at her again.
Confused.
Fractured.
Too young to hold grief and truth at the fucking same time.
Giovanni’s voice is still louder than mine.
Something caves in on his face.
He whispers it then—the sentence I will carry to my grave.
“He said you’d choose her over us.”
I swallow blood.
“I choose you every day,” I say.
It isn’t true anymore.
And he hears it.
He steps back.
Heel catches stone.
Fear detonates.
I lift my hand.
Not to grab.To stop.
“Guido—don’t—”
He turns and runs.
Boots slapping wildly into the dark.
A kid fleeing from the ghost his father left behind.
“Guido!” I shout—lunging—
But he’s gone.
And the silence after him weighs more than anybody I dropped tonight.
My lungs burn.
My hands shake.
Behind me, Pia makes a small, ruined sound that has nothing to do with fear.
Everything is coming apart.
And the worst part?
Giovanni didn’t even have to be here to finish us.
He did it from the fucking grave.
Someone Else Is Here
Guido, wait—
The words tear out of me, too late to matter.
He bolts.
Footsteps slap wildly down the tunnel, echoing off stone—too fast, too small, too fucking scared. I lunge after him, my own boots hammering the floor, lungs burning like I’ve been sprinting for hours instead of seconds.
I’m three strides in when the air changes.
Not sound.
Not light.
Weight.
Pressure rolls down the corridor like a storm front, slamming into my chest hard enough to lock my knees. Every instinct I’ve ever had—every one Giovanni beat into me, every one the Church tried to drown—goes rigid at the same time.
“Let him go.”
The voice doesn’t shout.
It doesn’t need to.
It just drops into the dark like a verdict, and everything in me answers it before my brain catches up.
I stop.
Pia is breathing heavily behind me.
I turn slowly, like moving too fast might provoke whatever just stepped into our world.
He fills the mouth of the tunnel.
Broad shoulders block the faint suggestion of light from the far end. The coat hangs open, not because he’s careless but because he knows he doesn’t need armor. Hands loose at his sides, empty, like he hasn’t needed visible weapons in years.
Emiliano Maritz.
The exile.The ghost.The fucking storm my father never finished.
He’s supposed to be gone—somewhere far from here, rotting slowly with Zina in a corner of the world Giovanni didn’t want to think about anymore. He is not supposed to be in these tunnels, breathing my air, wearing that face like he still owns a piece of this family.
Yet here he is.
He looks at Pia first.
Of course he does.
His gaze drags over her—mussed hair, ripped shirt, bruises blooming along her throat—and something ugly flickers there. Recognition, like an old scar. Disappointment sharp enough to cut. Then something darker, buried deep, like he’s cataloging her against a list I’ve never seen.
His eyes come to me next.
No surprise.No confusion.No “what the hell did I just walk into?”
Just confirmation.
“You’ve lost control,” he says quietly.
Not an accusation screamed in my face.
A clinical note.
“And now everyone will pay for it.”
My hand moves on its own.
Fingers wrap around the handle of my knife, the familiar weight sliding into my palm like it’s been waiting for this exact moment since the day Giovanni handed it to me and said, You’re not ready yet.
Pia steps closer, so close I feel the heat of her body at my back. Her palm hovers near my shoulder blade like she’s stopping herself from touching me, and that restraint hurts worse than any wound.
Emiliano takes one step forward.
The tunnel shrinks.
He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t posture. He just walks like the world rearranges itself to make room when he moves.
“Try it, Bishop,” he murmurs.
The title sounds wrong in his mouth, like he’s biting down on something sour.
“See what happens.”