Giovanni’s Last Confession （The Part Santino Never Heard） #2
“Shipments vanished not long after Giovanni gave him more control,” Miguel adds. “Nights he disappeared were the same nights money bled out of the books. The same nights routes went dark.”
My thoughts become a crime scene.
Romeo not answering his phone.Romeo leaving dinners early.Romeo showing up with dust on his shoes and reasons already rehearsed.
His voice in the crypt.
If you open that vault, you’ll wish you never did.
Miguel doesn’t give me time to recover.
“Your father said Romeo asked about places he never mentioned out loud,” he continues. “About meetings never written. About locations a son should have never known existed.”
My lungs burn.
I see Romeo beside me in the tunnels.
His eyes tracking Pia like a locked scope.
That flash of emotion I couldn’t name.
Not jealousy.
Recognition.
“He disappeared the night Giovanni died,” Miguel adds.
I go still.
“He knew where your father would be,” Miguel finishes quietly.
“And he didn’t stop it.”
A sound tears out of me that almost resembles laughter.
Almost.
It’s wrong. Ruined. The sound of something feral breaking loose.
“So he suspected his own son,” I snarl. “And instead of facing it, he buried his filth under God’s floors and prayed we’d suffocate in silence.”
Miguel doesn’t argue.
Silence is his confirmation.
I drag a hand down my face. My palms are slick. My jaw aches from how hard I’ve been holding it shut.
Romeo.
The louder one.The charming one.The one who shielded Dante when things went ugly.The one who cracked jokes while I burned inside my skull.The one who kissed my mother’s forehead in her coffin.
The one who looked at Pia tonight like he’d finally spotted a threat worth measuring.
Is he the reason her father died?
Is he why mine did?
Is he the hand that struck the match and walked away smiling while we all burned?
My vision tunnels red.
I drop onto the pew hard, wood biting into my back.
I grip the edge until my knuckles bleach.
Something inside me comes loose.
Not grief.
Clarity.
Sharp. Cold. Unforgiving.
I’m not losing a brother.
I’m meeting an enemy who’s been wearing my blood like a disguise.
“I trusted him,” I whisper.
The words taste like rust.
Miguel does not interrupt.
Good.
“He slept down the hall from me,” I say. “He ate at my table. Prayed behind the same altar.”
My voice cuts thin.
“And all that time…”
I suck in a breath through my teeth.
“…he might’ve been digging graves.”
Miguel finally speaks again.
“Giovanni didn’t know if Romeo would kill him,” he says. “But he knew Romeo could.”
I nod once.
Small.
Final.
“I know it too.”
The truth clicks into place too easily.
Romeo isn’t chaos.
He’s precise.
A blade waiting in plain sight.
And if he did this—
If he murdered our father—
If he used our family as kindling—
Then he is not my brother anymore.
He is a sentence.
And I am done pretending priests don’t know how to pass them.
Something inside me turns over.
Locks.
I’m not standing in a church.
I’m standing at the edge of a throne I never wanted.
And it’s screaming my name.
The Future King Steps Forward
Miguel watches me like a man staring at a ledge, waiting to see if I step off or jump.
The candles spit and crackle, wax sliding down their sides like slow blood. The church feels smaller now—tight, suffocating. Like the walls finally understand what’s been happening inside them and want out.
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
Not as a priest.
As a man who knows some answers don’t come back clean.
I straighten slowly, fingers peeling off the pew. My knees complain. My spine doesn’t. It locks.
For the first time tonight, the noise in my head dies.
No Pia disappearing through the gate.No Guido’s eyes blown wide with fear.No Romeo laughing.
Just one ugly truth sitting in the middle of my chest:
I’m Giovanni Rivas’s son.
Pretending I’m not is what got us here.
“For the first time,” I say, my voice low and unfamiliar in my own ears, “I’m going to act like Giovanni’s son on purpose.”
Miguel flinches. It’s small, but I see it.
Good.
Someone should.
There’s no pride in it. No swagger. Just the acceptance you feel when you realize the bullet is too deep to pull out.
“I’m going to find out if Romeo killed our father,” I continue.
The words taste like gunpowder.
“And if he did…”
My jaw clamps. Pain hums up the side of my face.
Images hit fast, viciously — Romeo as a boy, knuckles split, standing in front of me to take hits that weren’t his.Romeo as a teenager, grinning through a busted lip.
Relax, Santo, I’ve got this.Romeo as a man, eyes too sharp every time Pia’s name comes up.
Miguel swallows. I hear it.
“You’d kill your own brother?” he asks quietly.
My eyes burn.
“I’ll judge him,” I say.
My voice doesn’t shake.
“Like he judged everyone else.”
The church absorbs it. No lightning. No thunder. No divine objection.
Of course not.
God checked out of this family a long time ago.
I turn from Miguel and face the altar one last time. The same stone where Giovanni posed for cameras, palms pressed like a saint while the tunnels below filled with ledgers and bones.
This stone watched him rule.
It’s about to watch me.
My gaze drags up the crucifix, tracing the carved ribs, the nails, the tilted head.
“Have you ever noticed something, Father?” I murmur.
Miguel steps closer. “What?”
“He’s not standing on anything,” I say. “Not the ground. Not heaven. Just hanging there.” I huff out a humorless breath. “That’s what you did to us. You and him. Left us dangling between mercy and justice and called it faith.”
Miguel’s face tightens, shame cutting through the lines time already carved.
I don’t let it move me.
I step down from the altar.
My heel hits marble with a crack that sounds like a verdict.
“If I become king,” I whisper, low enough that it’s more to the wood and stone than to him, “it’ll be because you made me, Father. Not God.”
Not Giovanni either.
Them. All of them.
Every adult who taught us how to sin and then acted surprised when the lesson stuck.
I descend the steps, each one stripping something off me—priest, confessor, dutiful son. By the time my feet hit the main aisle, what’s left feels sharper.
Heir.
Judge.
Executioner, if I have to be.
The air shifts.
At first I think it’s just my pulse roaring in my ears, but then I hear it—muffled, bleeding through the heavy wooden doors.
Voices.
Raised.
Familiar.
I stop dead.
Romeo.
His tone is unmistakable, even blurred by distance and wood. That edged humor sharpened into a weapon, the way his voice drops when he’s really pissed, forcing you to lean in like that’s another form of control.
Another voice slices through his.
Dante.
Angrier than I’ve heard him in years.
The words don’t come through clean, just fractured pieces — “don't lie to me. "“You think I don’t notice.”“Shut the fuck up.”—
But it’s enough.
They’re not fighting about a missed dinner. Not about a shipment.
They’re fighting about truth.
My pulse spikes, hammering against my ribs like it wants out.
Miguel looks toward the doors, worry creasing deeper into his face. “Santino—”
“I’ve got it,” I say.
I don’t look back.
I start down the aisle alone, the same path I walked at my father’s funeral. Same church. Same air. Same weight on my shoulders as invisible hands trying to press me into the floor.
The difference now?
Back then, I thought grief was the worst this building could hold.
Halfway down, I pause for a heartbeat, letting their voices sink beneath my skin.
Romeo snarls something low and vicious.Dante snaps back.Something slams—wall, fist, doesn’t matter.
I exhale once.
Slow.
Controlled.
When I move again, my steps are steady, the pace of a man walking toward both the pulpit and the gallows.
Every step is a choice.
Priest or heir.Brother or king.
I already know which way this ends.
By the time my hand closes around the cold metal bar of the door, my decision isn’t a thought anymore.
It’s a crown made of knives settling on my skull.
I tighten my grip.
I walk toward the voices, knowing that whatever I hear next will decide whether I face Romeo as my brother…
…or as my king’s first judgment.