Chapter 16 Pia #3
My chest tightens. Breathing becomes shallow. It feels like there's no oxygen.
I’ve been hunted.
I’ve been beaten.
I’ve broken ribs and left men bleeding in alleys without asking if they deserved it.
I’ve dragged myself through hell and smiled when it burned.
But this—
This is different.
This is harm that stays breathing.
This is damage with a heartbeat.
And it’s staring at me from across the courtyard through Santino’s eyes.
He’s standing between Emiliano and me without even realizing it.
Like a shield.
Like a condemned man guarding the very thing destroying him.
Our eyes lock.
And it’s unbearable.
Because I see exactly what he sees.
The woman he touches like salvation.The woman he kisses.The woman he lets inside places he only ever gave to God.
And then—
The woman who made his little brother’s face collapse tonight.
The woman who wears death like perfume.
The woman who walked onto sacred ground and left blood in her footprints.
“I didn’t come here to destroy your family,” I whisper.
The words scrape my throat bloody on the way out.
They don’t sound brave.
They sound desperate.
Santino’s jaw twitches.
Just once.
A fracture.
For half a second, his eyes soften.
And hope—
stupid, treacherous fucking hope—
reaches for me.
Then his face hardens again.
Stone to match the walls.
“Intent doesn’t erase impact,” he says.
The sentence settles on my chest like a coffin lid.
I drop my gaze.
Not in submission.
In surrender.
Because he’s right.
Because intent doesn’t tuck children into bed at night and erase the pictures burned into their skulls.
Because intent doesn’t give you clean hands when you’ve already dirtied a soul.
Because I didn’t have to mean it for it to be real.
My breath shudders.
I press my lips together hard enough that they shake.
Something inside my ribs gives way.
Not loudly.
Just… finally.
It isn’t sobbing.
It’s worse.
It’s the part of me that stayed hollow on purpose, finally realizing it carved out something innocent.
If I stay—
I see it with brutal clarity—
There will be more fractures.
More fear.
More blood in places it has no right to exist.
I am not a gentle woman.
I am not safe to love.
And this family?
This broken, violent, cornered family?
They don’t need me.
They need less of me.
My throat burns.
Santino still stands there—split down the center between want and duty.
God and and his brother.
And I know it deep and sickening—
Only one of us survives this without being destroyed.
He’s already chosen.
Even if he hasn’t spoken it out loud.
I drag in a breath like it might be the last one I ever take inside these walls.
And something inside me settles.
Not with peace.
With inevitability.
If I stay—
I don’t save him.
I rot everything he’s trying to protect.
And that’s when it finally turns real:
I am not the woman who heals this family.
I am the disaster it learns to survive.
And I don’t know how to live knowing that.
I only know one thing—
For the first time in my life…
Walking away might be the most violent thing I ever do.
Pia Makes a Choice
Emiliano moves.
Not fast.Just closer.
The step that assumes the ground will make room for him.
I stiffen when his shadow crawls over my boots.
“You should leave,” he says quietly.
Not a command.Not a threat.
A verdict.
“For their sake.”
“No,” Santino snaps instantly.
The sound of his voice instead of my name twists something vicious under my ribs. He steps toward Emiliano before I can breathe, anger flashing hot and bright through the grief carved into him.
Emiliano doesn’t look impressed.
He smirks.
Not wide.Not amused.
Just enough to let Santino know exactly where this ends.
“For yours, then,” Emiliano says.
The air in my lungs evaporates.
I close my eyes.
Not because I’m weak.
Because if I look at Santino right now, I won’t go.
And if I don’t go—
I will finish destroying him.
In the dark behind my eyelids, the war inside me ignites.
My heart drags me toward Santino.To his hands.To his mouth.To the way he breathes my name like God might hear it and strike him down for it.To the way his body wraps around mine like he’s willing to walk into hell just to make sure I don’t walk there alone.
My logic slams in the opposite direction.
It screams exit routes and bloodlines and fallout.
It tells me this doesn’t end softly.It tells me this family doesn’t get a fairy tale.It tells me loving him is a loaded gun pointed at a child.
My mission waits in the back of my skull like a fixed blade.
Revenge.Evidence.My father’s face every time I close my eyes.The sins that didn’t die with him.
And then—
Guido.
Not as a symbol.Not as a pawn.
As a boy.
Smaller hands.Sharper fear.Eyes too old for his face.
Guido standing in a doorway, looking at me like I’m the next coffin his family will have to carry.
That’s when it settles.
The war goes quiet.
I open my eyes.
Santino stands facing Emiliano, furious and righteous and bleeding something he doesn’t even know he’s allowed to lose.
I take a step forward.
Not toward Santino.
Toward exile.Toward grief.Toward the only choice that doesn’t damn a child.
“I’ll leave,” I whisper.
The words barely exist.
They scrape out of my throat like broken glass.
Santino stands still.
“Pia—” His breath hitches. “Don’t.”
It isn’t an order.
It’s a raw plea.
The worst kind.
The kind that tears holes in reckless women and makes them burn worlds down.
“I have to,” I say.
My voice breaks.
I don’t hide it.
I let him hear what this costs me.
“Because if I stay, I won't stop hurting you,” I continue. “I just change what it looks like.”
I step back.
Once.
Then again.
Santino lunges a half-step before forcing himself to stop. Like he wants to grab me but doesn’t trust his hands not to beg.
“You don’t get to decide this alone,” he snaps.
I force myself to meet his eyes.
Force myself to watch his heart crack in real time.
“I do,” I whisper. “Because it’s my fault.”
Emiliano doesn’t interrupt.
He just watches.
Like a man watching a fire finish eating something that mattered.
I move.
My boots carry me toward the gate with the heaviness of a funeral in every step.
“Santino,” I breathe, just before I cross the last inch between staying and gone. “I didn’t mean to love you.”
The truth rips itself out of me.
“And I don’t know how to stop.”
I turn away, because if I don’t, I’ll crawl into him and never come back out.
The gate looms.
Black.Iron.Final.
I reach it and pull it open myself.
No one else gets the honor.
The hinges scream like something dying.
I step through.
The night rushes at me like open arms that only know how to kill slowly.
Behind me—
“Pia!”
His voice cracks my name down the middle.
It hits my spine.Shatters something sacred.
But I don’t stop.I don’t look back.I don’t give in.
Because if I do, Guido pays the price.
The gate slams shut behind me with a sound like a gunshot.
Metal on metal.Final.Absolute.
I walk into darkness with my heart still standing in that courtyard—
bleeding out in Santino Rivas’s hands.