Chapter 15 Santino #3
I raise the blade a fraction, low and lethal.
“I’m not your fucking bishop,” I say.
My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by the last ten minutes and the last ten years.
“You don’t get to crawl out of whatever hole you’ve been hiding in and talk about control. You left. You don’t get a vote.”
His mouth twitches—too small to be called a smile, too sharp to be anything but a cut.
“Is that what Giovanni told you?” he asks. “That I left?”
My jaw clenches.
Behind me, Pia goes still.
“He told me enough,” I snap. “He taught me how to survive monsters.”
Emiliano’s gaze drops to my hands—blood drying in stiff brown streaks along my knuckles, knife glinting in the half-light—then flicks to the bodies we left in our wake.
Back to my face.
“You’re doing a beautiful job proving him right,” he says.
Pia makes a sound behind me. Not fear.
Fury. Grief. The awful, choking realization that no matter how far we run, Giovanni’s hand is still on our throats.
“You’re not taking her,” I say.
The words don’t feel like speech.
They feel like something carved.
Emiliano studies us. Me in front, Pia behind, still shaking, still standing. His eyes don’t soften. They just… assess.
“I didn’t come to take,” he replies. “I came to collect.”
My stomach knots.
Pia swallows, the sound small and vicious in the quiet.
“Collect what?” she whispers.
Emiliano looks at her like he’s measuring the exact size of the grenade she is.
“Debts,” he says. “Promises. Loose ends. The pieces Giovanni scattered all over this continent when he thought being a king meant he could rewrite fate.”
His gaze pins me again.
“And the trouble you dragged back into his house when you came home wearing a collar and thinking it made you clean.”
Rage flares up my spine, red-hot.
“You weren’t here.” “You didn’t see what he did. You didn’t watch him—”
“Die?” Emiliano cuts in softly. “Yes. That’s the one thing I missed. Everything else?” He gestures lazily to the walls, to the darkness, to the blood. “I know exactly how he played this game.”
A sound scrapes behind us.
Stone against boot.
Not Guido.
He’s too light.
This is heavier.
Older.
Pia’s fingers touch my back, just for a second.
We’re not alone down here.
Not by a long shot.
Emiliano hears it too. He doesn’t turn.
He doesn’t need to.
“Giovanni’s secrets didn’t die with him,” he says. “You know that now. You bled for it tonight.” His eyes slide to Pia. “She bled for it.”
My grip on the knife screams in protest.
“What secrets?” I demand. “You want to stand there and preach? Fucking say it. Say what you came here to say.”
He tilts his head, almost thoughtful.
“I came to say this,” he answers. “You think you’re choosing her over your father. Over the Church. Over the family.”
I lift my chin.
“I am.”
“For now,” Emiliano says.
The corridor feels colder.
“Giovanni built you in layers, Bishop. Priest on top of soldier on top of son. You can’t just tear one out and expect the rest to stay standing.”
He nods in the direction Guido ran, voice dropping even lower.
“You’ve already cracked one of his foundations. The boy won’t forget what he saw tonight. What he heard. You think that doesn’t have a cost?”
Behind us, another boot scrapes stone.
Closer.
Too close.
Pia whispers, “Santino—”
“I said,” I snarl, never taking my eyes off Emiliano, “you’re not taking her.”
He exhales once through his nose, like he’s finally bored.
“Who said anything about taking?” he asks. “You brought her to the altar yourself.”
There’s something in his tone that makes the hair rise on the back of my neck.
The tunnel feels like a throat about to swallow.
He takes one more step forward.
“You should never have come down here,” he says. “These tunnels don’t let go. Once you walk this deep into Giovanni’s bones, you don’t walk out free. Not you.” His gaze flicks to Pia again. “Not her. Not the boy.”
My heart slams once, twice, so hard it hurts.
“Then let it keep me,” I bite out. “Let it take me. It’s not getting her.”
Emiliano’s eyes burn faintly in the dim light—something old and lethal waking up behind them.
“Oh, it will keep you,” he answers quietly. “That’s the point.”
Another step behind us.
Metal kisses stone.
The unmistakable slide of a gun being shifted into a new grip.
Emiliano doesn’t look away from me as he adds, almost gently:
“Turn around, Bishop.”
I don’t.
For one stubborn, suicidal heartbeat, I hold his stare and curl my fingers tighter around the knife.
Pia’s nails dig into my back.
“Santino,” she breathes. “Please.”
The plea is enough.
I turn.
Slow.
Be careful.
The lantern light barely catches the outline of the man now standing further down the tunnel behind us—gun raised, stance steady, eyes unreadable in the dark.
Not a stranger.
Not a guard.
Family.
“Step away from her,” the voice says.
And every piece of my world tilts.
Because I know that voice.
I grew up fighting it.
Praying beside it.
Bleeding for the same man it worshipped and feared.
“Romeo,” I whisper.
The tunnel holds its breath.
And so do I.