Giovanni’s Last Confession （The Part Santino Never Heard）
Giovanni’s Last Confession (The Part Santino Never Heard)
Miguel exhales and shifts in the pew. The wood sighs beneath him, like it already knows the weight it’s about to carry.
Suspended between what my father shaped me into and what I swore I’d never become. “He asked me if I believed in justice,” Miguel says.
Soft words.Crushing weight.
My jaw tightens until it aches. My hands curl, tendons burning in my forearms.
Justice.
My father never believed in justice.
He believed in leverage.In erasure.In outcomes.
Justice was for men without money and power and hands dirty enough to matter.
Miguel swallows.
“He said, ‘If I am judged… will I be judged as a king… or as a man?’”
The air punches out of my lungs.
I close my eyes—
Not because I don’t want to see Miguel.
Because I can see Giovanni.
My father standing exactly where I stood earlier. Palms on the altar. Eyes lifted to Christ. In asking questions, he had no intention of earning forgiveness for.
“Bullshit,” I mutter.
Miguel’s gaze sharpens.
“Giovanni did not come to be forgiven,” he says quietly. “He came to be categorized.”
A sound tears loose from my chest.
It’s not a laugh.
It’s something that broke trying.
“Of course he did,” I breathe. “The devil always wants to know which door he’s supposed to walk through.”
Miguel doesn’t react. He stares at the altar like Giovanni might materialize there if he looks long enough.
“He told me he built his empire with blood,” Miguel continues. “He paid for every corner of this church with blood.” That he stood at this altar to rinse his conscience and taught himself to believe the stains were lifted.
My stomach knots.
“He said there were ledgers,” Miguel says. “Accounts. Records. Money filtered through holy names. Crimes baptized as charity. Enough evidence to destroy not just him—”
Miguel looks at me.
“—but you.”
Cold slides down my spine.
The vault.
The coded pages.
My father’s handwriting crawling through my dreams like rot.
I don’t move.I don’t breathe.
The entire church seems pressed against my ribs like it’s trying to crawl inside me.
“He didn’t confess,” Miguel says.“He inventoried.”
“Like property,” I murmur.
Miguel nods once.
“Like inheritance.”
My throat burns.
I see Romeo’s handwriting in the margins.
Dates.Figures.Initialed names like mass graves disguised as math.
Giovanni didn’t build a church.
He built a laundering system and wrapped it in stained glass.
“And you believed him?” I ask.
Miguel’s eyes darken.
“I knew Giovanni never spoke without intention,” he says. “Every word he said that night outlived him.”
Fuck.
That’s what this is.
Not repentance—
Preparation.
“And then?” I press.
Miguel sags a fraction.
Just enough to show how old he truly is.
“He was not looking for absolution,” he says again. “He wasn’t sorry.”
“Then why go at all?” I snap.
Miguel lifts his eyes.
And for the first time tonight—
He looks afraid.
“Because he was terrified.”
I am still completely.
My father.
Terrified.
The man who taught me fear was a weapon.The man who trained us to bleed without flinching.The man who could kneel in a pew one morning and bury someone alive that night.
Afraid?
“Of what?” I demand. “The IRS?”
Miguel doesn’t smile.
“Of his sons.”
The words wrap around my heart and squeeze.
Of his blood.
Of me.Of Dante.Of Romeo.
Of the weapons he sharpened, and then couldn’t control.
Of the fact that monsters don’t raise children.
They manufacture heirs.
I step down without realizing it.
Boot to marble.
The sound snaps through my skull like bone.
“He thought one of us would kill him,” I whisper.
Miguel doesn’t deny it.
“He believed it was inevitable,” he says. “That power rots eventually. That blood always circles back. That he raised men instead of sons—and men crave crowns.”
I drag a hand down my face slowly.
THE KING WILL DIE BY A SON’S HAND.
My father wrote it like a grocery list.
Not a prophecy.
Planning.
“Did he say when?” I ask.
Miguel shakes his head.
“Only that he could feel it near.”
“Did he say who?”
Miguel hesitates.
Just long enough.
My pulse slams.
Once.Twice.
I lean forward, menace in every inch of me.
“What did he fear most?” I demand.
Miguel’s voice drops.
“That one of your brothers already believed the crown belonged to him.”
The candles flicker.
The church groans.
The crucifix stares down like it’s measuring my soul and finding it short.
And beneath my feet—
Steel doors.Ledgers.Truth rotting patiently in the dark.
“He didn’t come to confess,” Miguel says.
“He came to warn me that the devil doesn’t leave when the father dies.”
My father didn’t fear death.
He feared losing the inheritance.
And suddenly—
I’m no longer a priest in a ruined church.
I’m the son of a king who knew his empire would eat itself alive.
And I’m standing exactly where the cycle begins.
The Son
With
Blood on His Hands
Miguel doesn’t even blink.
“Your father believed one of his sons would kill him.”
The words don’t land like a shock.
They land like confirmation—like something my bones have always known and never wanted named.
In my head, I see it again, my father’s handwriting burned into paper like a curse:
The King will die by a son’s hand.
My pulse roars in my ears. The whole church tilts. For a second, I’m sure I’m going to be sick right here, at the same altar he used as a washing station for his conscience.
Miguel keeps talking, calm as if he’s reading last rites over my chest.
“He said he’d lost control,” Miguel continues. “That he gave power to someone too young to carry it and too proud to refuse it. That he taught one of you how to rule… and forgot to teach you how not to.”
My throat is dry as ash.
“Which son?” I ask.
It barely makes a sound. It doesn’t even feel like my voice.
It feels like a verdict.
Miguel’s mouth opens, then closes. His gaze flicks to the crucifix like it might save him from this.
“I cannot—”
My hand slams onto the back of the pew.
The crack of wood ricochets through the empty church, loud as a gunshot.
“Don’t,” I snarl. “Don’t quote doctrine at me while my family is burning alive.”
My breath saws in and out. Hot. Unsteady.
I step off the last altar stair completely, boots hitting marble. No more halfway. No more pretending priesthood shields me from this.
“I’m not asking you as a priest,” I growl, closing the distance, “I’m asking you as a man who watched Giovanni turn my mother into an absence and my brothers into weapons.”
Miguel flinches.
Good.
“At least be honest enough to admit what you saw,” I bite out. “What you heard. What you know.”
My voice drops, razor-sharp.
“We already buried one man in this family because nobody asked hard enough questions. I’m done treating silence like it’s holy.”
Miguel’s lips press together. His jaw works. Then he exhales through his nose like it hurts.
“The night Giovanni died,” he says slowly, “he couldn’t stop mentioning it.”
A chill claws down my spine.
“It?” I whisper.
Miguel swallows.
“One name.”
Heat crawls up my neck. My jaw locks until my teeth throb.
“Which one?” I rasp.
For half a heartbeat, I’m sure he’s going to fold back into the safety of his collar and leave me bleeding under stained glass.
Instead, his voice drops to almost nothing.
“One of your brothers.”
My head floods with faces.
Dante—quiet, controlled, always watching more than he speaks.Romeo—smiling, joking, never quite letting me see what sits behind his eyes.Guido—too young, too soft, the only one who still believes monsters look like something other than family.
My reflection flashes in my mind—collar on my neck, crown hovering like a threat.
Every smile turns suspect. Every memory drips poison.
“Say it,” I demand.
Miguel’s fingers twist together in his lap, knuckles whitening like he’s praying over his own execution.
“He said your brother had changed,” Miguel whispers. “That ambition had turned into hunger. That loyalty had rotted into entitlement.”
I shake my head once, sharply.
“No,” I say. “You’re wrong.”
Miguel flinches again but doesn’t stop.
“He said the crown had already settled on your brother’s head,” he murmurs. “Even while he was still alive.”
I turn away, dragging a hand through my hair hard enough to hurt.
“What brother?” I snarl, “Which brother?”
Miguel hesitates.
Too long.
Something inside me fractures clean.
I whip back toward him, rage erupting without a filter.
“Enough,” I bark, the word booming off stone. “Say the name or you’re complicit. I am not walking out of this church pretending you didn’t just set my entire family on fire.”
Miguel folds inward, shoulders curling like the weight finally crushed him.
Then—
“The night Giovanni died,” he forces out, eyes bright with unshed tears, “he said one name more than once.”
My heart hammers so violently I can feel it everywhere—skull, jaw, fingertips, walls.
“Whose?” I whisper.
The church seems to inhale and hold it.
Candles flicker. Shadows lean in.
Miguel lifts his gaze to mine.
And I know—whatever comes out of his mouth next is going to kill something in me that doesn’t grow back.
Romeo, the Suspect
Miguel’s answer is almost gentle.
Almost.
“Romeo.”
The name does not explode.
It collapses.
Something deep inside me gives way quietly first—then everything after it caves in.
My head jerks once, sharp and unthinking. As if shaking hard enough might dislodge the word lodged in my skull.
“No,” I say.
Not disbelief.
Command.
Miguel doesn’t soften. Doesn’t flinch.
He just keeps cutting.
“Your father said Romeo met with men behind his back,” he continues. “Men he introduced as allies but spoke about as enemies. That he asked questions a son doesn’t ask unless he’s planning to replace the man answering them.”
My throat tightens.
Romeo.
Always laughing.
Always slipping away.