Chapter 18 Pia #2
I lean forward as far as the cuffs allow.
“You tell your boss,” I say, low and lethal, “that if Santino walks into this for me, I’ll tear his empire down with my bare fucking hands before I die.”
Carlo doesn’t blink.
He just pats my cheek.
“Sweetheart,” he says. “You’re not supposed to bring him.”
He nods.
That’s when I see it.
My phone is on a metal tray. Dark screen. Cracked case.
“We already did.”
The Evidence They Want
Carlo circles me like I’m already a corpse.Not rushed.Not excited.Just patient—the way men get when they know there’s no exit.
“You really think you were slithering around that church for nothing?” he says, boots whispering over concrete. “You think we don’t track every cockroach that crawls near Giovanni’s ghost?”
My pulse stays steady.
Fake it until it’s real.
“If I had what you think I have,” I say, cold and bored, “I wouldn’t be rotting in your basement.”
Carlo stops directly behind me.
I feel him before I hear him—heat at my back, weight in the air, the faint metallic snick of a blade being thumbed open near my ear.
“Wrong,” he murmurs.
He fists a hand in my hair and yanks my head back so hard my eyes sting.
“You’d be right here either way,” he says pleasantly. “But that ledger?” His breath grazes my cheek. “That’s the difference between dead tonight… and useful.”
Ledger.
The word hollows me out.
So it’s not paranoia.Not coincidence.
They know.
My father didn’t just die.He turned into a file someone’s been chasing ever since.
“What ledger?” I ask, flat.
Carlo laughs and steps back into view.
That slow, crawling smile stretches across his face like rot.
“The one Giovanni used to erase men like your father from history.”
My breath catches despite every wall I’ve built.
He crouches until we’re eye to eye, forearms resting on his knees, knife loose in his hand.
“You really thought we wouldn’t piece it together?” he asks softly. “Church tunnels. Dead accountant. A priest suddenly ripping through my boys like he’s got hell wired into his fists.”
He tilts his head, studying me like I’m a puzzle he’s already solved.
“Giovanni framed your father, sweetheart. Used him, then buried him. And you walked into that church thinking you’d dig the truth out of stone.”
My stomach goes ice cold.
“Bullshit,” I whisper.
Carlo shrugs. “Truth doesn’t care if you like it.”
He rises, rolling his shoulders like this is a warm-up, not an interrogation.
“If you didn’t have it,” he says, louder now, “the Bishop wouldn’t have murdered two of my scouts in under thirty minutes.”
My throat tightens.
Two.
Not one.
Two men died because of me.Not collateral.No mistake.
Santino slaughtered them.
Because killing for me is easier than denying me.
I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste iron.
Carlo leans in again, so close the stink of cigarettes and coffee-stale breath fogs the air between us.
“We want your father’s proof,” he says, voice low, intimate. “The ledger. The money. The names. The blood-trail that finally ends Giovanni Rivas.”
His eyes glitter.
“And we know exactly how to trade for it.”
He straightens and drifts to the side, toward a metal cart I hadn’t registered through the adrenaline blur.
On top of it—
My phone.
Cracked.Awake.Waiting.
My world narrows to that rectangle of glass.
He plucks it up between two fingers like it offends him.
“We already sent a message,” he says lightly.
My stomach drops through the floor.
I lean forward as far as the cuffs allow.
“What did you do?” I ask.
Carlo’s smile sharpens.
He taps the screen and angles it toward me.
The display flares to life.
A text thread.My name.Pinned location.
SENT.
To Santino.
My vision goes fuzzy around the edges.
“They’re very attached to you, priests,” Carlo muses. “Curse, salvation—same addiction. But yours?” He taps again, casual as a god. “He’ll come.”
I swallow hard enough it hurts.
“He won’t,” I whisper.
Carlo laughs.
Then he holds the phone closer, inches from my face.
I see it.
Two read receipts.The three-dot bubble.Disappearing.Reappearing.
My breath stutters.
Carlo lowers the phone slowly, savoring it.
“Oh, darling,” he says. “He’s already on his way.”
Something in my chest caves in on itself.
Not fear.
Resolve.
He thinks he’s baiting Santino.He has no idea he just declared war on a man who doesn’t know how to bleed slowly.
I lift my gaze to Carlo’s face.
“If he comes here,” I say quietly, voice shaking with rage and certainty, “you’re not trading me.”
His brow ticks up.
I let a smile curl, mean and dead-eyed.
“If he comes here,” I finish, iron in my throat, “he’s burying you.”
Carlo laughs again—
But this time, just for a second, the edge frays.
And I know he heard me.
Pia’s Internal War: Love vs. Death Sentence
The phone is still glowing when he lowers it.
That small, violent rectangle of light feels brighter than the bare bulb overhead. Brighter than Carlo’s eyes. Brighter than whatever future I thought I still had left.
My name.My location.Santino’s number burning like a fuse.
I didn’t send it.
But it’s already done.
“He’ll walk into hell for you,” Carlo says softly. “Just like Giovanni did for your mother.”
I stop breathing.
Not a gasp.Not a beat.Just absence.
Air leaves and forgets to come back.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I manage.
Carlo tilts his head like he’s admiring a scratch on a new car.
Slow.Cruel.Curious how deep it cuts.
“You really don’t know?” he murmurs. “Your mother wasn’t just some woman Giovanni fucked and forgot.” His mouth curves. “She was insurance.”
My stomach turns to acid.
“A leash,” he continues. “A pressure point. A way to make sure your father remembered who owned him.”
I shake my head hard enough to make the cuffs bite.
“No,” I whisper. “You’re lying.”
Carlo’s mouth twitches.
“Giovanni didn’t take women for pleasure,” he says. “He collected them for leverage. They chose your mother because your father was useful. And usefulness requires obedience.”
My chest constricts.
Shrinks.Crushes inward.
“He used her,” Carlo goes on, unbothered by the collapse happening in front of him, “to keep your father in line. She was a quiet knife at his throat. The reminder that love makes men kneel faster than guns.”
“I don’t believe you,” I choke.
Carlo shrugs.
“But your father did.”
The word father doesn’t land.
It fractures.
I see him hunched over ledgers. Coffee gone cold. Fingers shaking like he was forever afraid the numbers would bite back. He loved my mother like oxygen.
And she—
My vision blurs.
“Giovanni decided he didn’t need him anymore,” Carlo says. “So he erased him. And your mother?”
He smiles.
“Collateral.”
Something seals my throat shut.
“You’re lying,” I say again. Thinner now. A shrapnel word. A prayer.
Carlo leans in close enough that I could bite him if I were free.
“Then why do you think you lived?” he asks quietly. “Giovanni doesn’t leave witnesses unless they’re useful.”
Cold pours into my veins.
Not a shiver.
An infection.
“And now,” Carlo continues, straightening, “his son has a weakness for pretty little tragedies like you.”
I shut my eyes.
Not him.Not Santino.
I won’t be the reason he breaks.
Not after everything inside him has already cracked and bled.
This wasn’t supposed to touch him.I was supposed to disappear clean.Instead—
I’ve become the blade.
“I can’t let him come,” I whisper.
Carlo chuckles.
“Sweetheart,” he says, spreading his hands, “men like him always come.”
I open my eyes.
The truth in that hurts worse than any lie.
Santino doesn’t measure danger.He doesn’t calculate the cost.He doesn’t hesitate.
He comes.
For blood.For family.For me.
And I put the target between his ribs.
He’ll walk into this place with hell under his skin and with God nowhere in sight.
They won’t just kill him.
They’ll make it slow.They’ll make it personal.
And if they can’t break him with lead—
They’ll break him with me.
“You don’t win,” I whisper. “Even if you kill him… you lose.”
Carlo’s eyes gleam.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “That’s what dying people say when they’re already finished.”
My heart slams so hard I feel it in my teeth.
My head fills with Santino.
The way his voice drops when he’s furious.The way he touches everything precious might shatter.The way he looks at Guido — like God didn’t burn every altar inside him.
He can’t die for my father’s sins.He can’t bleed in Giovanni’s war.
Carlo steps back and folds his arms, satisfied.
I shake once.
Not fear.
Decision.
If Santino walks into this — If they try to trade my body for his crown—
Then I won’t go quietly.
I won’t beg.
I won’t be bait.
I’ll be the match.
Because if men like them think they’re going to use me to butcher him—
Then I’ll make sure they’re the ones who choke on my name.
And I’ll burn the truth out of their mouths before I let Santino die for a lie that started long before I ever took my first breath.
Pia Tries to Escape (And
Fails
)
I force myself to breathe.
In. Out.
Count things. Anchor myself.
One: wrists cuffed behind the chair, metal grinding into raw skin.Two: ankles free.Three: one guard at the metal door.Four: two more near the stairs, guns low but close enough to touch.Five: Carlo, lounging like a bored executioner who’s already picked the grave.
He thinks he’s already won.
Good.
Men like him always stop watching right before something breaks.
I shift my weight, testing the chair. It’s cheap industrial trash—metal frame, rotting wood seat—probably older than me and less stable. One leg wobbles if I breathe too hard.
If I can break it — If I can get my hands through — If I can make it to the stairs—
I can vanish before Santino ever steps into this fucking tomb.
I roll my shoulders, making the cuffs click against the metal back.
Carlo glances over lazily. “Don’t,” he warns. “I’ve already had a long day, Moretti. Don’t make me break your pretty fingers just to keep you still.”
I smile at him.
It feels like peeling skin off bone.