Chapter 17 Santino
Santino
At the Altar, Alone With His Ruin
Iflinch watching her leave—not with fear, but because it hits exactly where she ripped something out of me and walked away with it.
Silence follows. The kind that listens.
Emiliano stands at my back like a battlefield praying for war, all pressure and judgment wrapped in a suit. I don’t turn around. If I look at him now, something permanent breaks. Bone. Vows. Him.
“Don’t,” he says quietly. “You know she’s right.”
I don’t answer.
If I open my mouth, I’ll either kill him or confess—and I’m not in the mood for salvation.
My body moves before my mind does.
Not to my room.Not to the tunnels, still echoing with damp stone and secrets.
I walk into the church.
The door groans like it resents what we do inside it. Darkness swallows me except for the few candles clinging to life near the altar. The air is thick with burned wax and old prayers. Incense that never forgot the sins it tried to hide.
I lock the door behind me.
I need walls between myself and this cursed bloodline before I put my hands through someone’s skull.
My footsteps echo through the aisle. Night has also blacked out the stained glass overhead, reducing saints to shadows.
The altar waits.
Raised.Dominant.A platform for liars.
I hesitate at the bottom step, then climb.
How many times did Giovanni stand here for photos—hands folded like a good man — while the ground beneath him swallowed men whole? Holy king. Family patriarch. Professional sinner with clean gloves.
I press my palms into the cloth.
My head bows.
I see Pia.
Her face when she said, I’ll leave.
Like she ripped herself open and handed me the damage.
Then—
Guido.
Those wide, ruined eyes at his bedroom door. Looking at her like she was the last ghost sent to finish what the others started. Like I invited death into his haven and asked it to tuck him in.
He’s just a kid. A fucking child trained by trauma and exile like its heritage. And still—somehow—we made the fear worse.
Good job, Father.
The title curdles in my mouth.
I grind my hands into the altar like I might break it for telling the truth too late. Bone protests. Wood answers.
Romeo flashes behind my eyes.
His name burned into Giovanni’s ledger in ink red from implication.
TRAITOR.
My brother’s name is in the same handwriting that ordered murder and signed checks for orphanages. Romeo laughing. Changing the subject. Disappearing when he shouldn’t. Looking at Pia like he recognized her as an incoming explosion.
I’m losing everyone in fractals.
Zina in exile.Guido afraid.Pia gone.Romeo buried under secrets.
And I’m standing in the single building pretending we’re not rotted to the root.
“Is this what you wanted?” I whisper to the glass.
My voice shatters and climbs into the rafters.
“For your sons to choke on your sins? To choose between blood and betrayal while you rotted comfortably in secrets under your own fucking altar?”
Christ hangs above me.
Nails through feet. Frozen in carved suffering.
I stare up at his pretty agony, sculpted just enough to be acceptable.
“You died for strangers,” I mutter.“He killed for his blood.”
Silence.
God doesn’t speak here. Only corpses do.
One candle gutters out.
I scrub my hands down my face, dragging the priest off myself like flaking skin, trying to find the son underneath.
Because that’s the joke, isn’t it?
I’m standing where Giovanni stood.
Hands on the same altar. Wearing a collar he used for camouflage.
And it hits me—
He made me his penance and his inheritance.
And now, his sins are devouring us alive.
I step away and cross to the brass phone by the sacristy door. Heavy. Ancient. Wired straight into this building’s veins. Giovanni hated traceable calls. Preferred his ghosts to stay indoor-only.
My thumb pauses.
I know exactly who I’m calling.
Not Pia.Not Emiliano.Not Romeo.
A man who knew Giovanni before the devil crowned him.
I dial from memory.
The ring hums through the sanctuary like another heartbeat buried in marble.
When the line clicks and a tired voice answers with a soft, “Pronto?” I don’t pretend.
“Father Miguel,” I say. “I’m at the altar.”
A beat.
“I need you here. Now.”
I hang up before he can soften it with prayer.
If God refuses to answer inside this place, then the man who watched my father rot will.
I return to the altar and brace myself against it, standing in the dark with the future pressing down like a crown I never fucking asked for.
The Priest Who Knew Giovanni Before the Crown
The church door opens behind me.
Eased.
Like whoever just entered already knows, this place punishes noise.
Footsteps follow—measured, quiet on marble. No rush. No hesitation.
Of course he comes.
Father Miguel has always walked that way. Like a man who learned long ago that violence doesn’t care how brave you sound. It only cares how still you are when it arrives.
I don’t turn.
I keep my palms against the altar, stare at the crucifix above it—the ribs, the bowed head, the polite trickle of carved blood that pretends suffering can be made respectable.
“You called for me,” he says.
His voice hasn’t changed since I was a boy. Still warm at the edges, worn in the middle, frayed underneath. Age has dragged it deeper, but the damage was always there.
Maybe I just didn’t know how to hear it before.
I turn slowly.
Miguel stands halfway down the aisle, like the church itself decided that’s how close he’s allowed to come. Candlelight catches the silver in his hair, the grooves etched around his eyes. His cassock is neat. His spine is tired.
He looks like a man who’s been carrying the same corpse for decades and never found a place to bury it.
And he’s looking at me—
Standing on Giovanni’s altar,like a king who lost his inheritance and found a guillotine instead.
I don’t laugh.
There is nothing funny left in my body.
“You knew my father before all this,” I say.
My voice sounds scraped raw, like I dragged it through gravel to get it out.
Something tightens on Miguel’s face. Just a flicker. But I see it. I learned young how to read men built on secrets.
“I knew him,” he replies carefully, “when he still believed there was a line he wouldn’t cross.”
A laugh crawls out of my chest and dies halfway to my mouth.
“And where did it go?” I ask, “When did he decide it didn’t apply anymore?”
Miguel steps forward. Slowly.
The hem of his cassock whispers across the marble like a quiet accusation. Each footfall echoes through the nave like a ticking clock I don’t remember setting.
“I heard things,” he says. “I saw things.” His eyes lift to mine. “But I am a priest, Santino. Confessions—”
“Are sacred,” I snap. “Yeah. I know the fucking script.”
His mouth tightens.
“The seal of confession is not a rule,” he corrects quietly. “It’s a vow.”
I step down from the altar.
One stair.
Still above him—but not enough.
Half-heir.Half-collar.All rot.
“And I’m not asking you to break it,” I lied.
Miguel lifts one brow.
He’s known me too long to believe soft sins.
I drop my voice until it sinks into the bones of the church.
“But if my father were still breathing,” I say, “we wouldn’t be here.”“He’d have handled this himself.”“Like he handled everything.”
Miguel folds his hands. Not to pray.
To hold something together.
“Giovanni is gone,” I press. “The man who laundered blood under your pews is dead. And his crimes are choking the rest of us alive.”I descend another step.Now we’re nearly level.
“If you protect him now,” I say softly, “you’re not serving God.”
“You’re guarding a ghost.”
The words settle between us like sacrilege.
Miguel studies me as if I’m his greatest sin walking upright.
“You sound like him,” he murmurs.
It lands like a slap.
I don’t flinch.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the problem.”
He exhales—slow, defeated.
“The night your father died,” he begins—
—and my heart slams so hard I feel it in my throat—
“He came to me first.”
My breath fractures.
Of course, he did.
Why bleed into the son you’re grooming when you can rot on the shoulder of a man trained to keep monsters quiet?
I swallow.
Giovanni called me into the crypt.
The quiet.The weight.His hand was on my shoulder.His voice told me there were things I didn’t need to know.
Turns out there were things he didn’t trust me to survive.
“Tell me,” I say.
It comes out sharper than I mean.
Miguel’s eyes flick to the crucifix like it might censor him.
It doesn’t.
Dead men don’t object.
“Don’t make me beg,” I warn. “He’s dead. I’m the one living in his fallout. If you know something that keeps my brothers breathing—or names the one who might stop them—you don’t get to hide behind Latin and robes.”
His jaw tightens.
“I am not hiding,” he says. “I am trying not to damn myself again.”
“Then damn me,” I respond. “I’m already halfway to hell, anyway.”
Silence grows.
Dense, judge-heavy.The kind that decides things without asking permission.
Miguel finally moves past me and sits in the first pew. The wood groans like it resents him for surviving this long.
For the first time, he doesn’t look like a priest.
He looks ancient.
I stay on the step above him.
Half-elevated, half-condemned.
Half-son.Half-executioner.
“He asked me if I believed in justice,” Miguel says.
My stomach tightens.
Giovanni and justice do not belong in the same breath.
I grip the rail.
“Justice,” I echo. “What did you tell him?”
Miguel lifts his eyes to mine.
“That depends,” he answers quietly… “…on whether you’re asking as a priest—”
His gaze hardens.
“…or as the man who’s about to decide how many of his brothers live.”
My pulse thunders in my ears.
“I’m asking as both,” I say.
And I mean it.
Because whatever he’s about to confess—
won’t belong to a priest.
It will belong to a king.
“Then listen,” Miguel murmurs.
“To what your father told me before he died.”