Chapter 21 Santino #2
That’s what crawls under my skin—the calm certainty of it. Like he’s not improvising. Like tonight’s already been written.
A trap.
Of course, it is.
I tighten my grip on Pia’s wrist and yank her behind the nearest stack of crates just as the first shot detonates the air. Wood explodes inches from my cheek. Splinters bite skin like shrapnel.
Gunfire erupts from above in a jagged, stuttering rhythm.
I slam my back into the crate, drag Pia into the hollow of my body, and start counting.
One muzzle flash left.Another farther down.Pause—third light—longer burst.
Two idiots dumping fear through their guns.
One methodical.
Carlo.
Waiting for me to peek so he can paint the wall with my skull.
Rounds chew through the crate in furious bursts. Dust scours my lungs. Somewhere, metal screams as bullets tear through shelving and send something heavy crashing.
I track the pattern.
Two wild.One clean.
Carlo aiming for me alone.
Good.
Hatred is easier when it wears a face.
Pia’s fingers claw into my shirt, knuckles white. Her heart jackhammers beneath my palm, like it’s trying to punch its way free of her ribs.
“Santino—” she starts.
“Listen.” I lean closer. I have to shout over the gunfire, but I keep my voice low—aimed into her bones. “When we move, you run. Back wall. Left of the loading door. There’s an exit behind the shelving. You don’t look back. You don’t stop. You don’t wait for me.”
Her head jerks, eyes blown wide in the gloom. She shakes it hard before I finish.
“No.” The word cuts. “I’m not leaving you. You’re not sacrificing yourself for me.”
A shot slams into the crate and showers us with splinters. She flinches—but she doesn’t let go.
Stubborn, reckless woman.
Brave enough to die for me.
Foolish enough to mean it.
My jaw locks until it aches.
“I’m not sacrificing myself,” I grind out. “I’m not letting you die for me either.”
The words rip out of me too loud, like I’m fighting the world and not just the woman pressed into my chest.
For one heartbeat, the chaos blurs.
It’s just her and me and the stink of cordite and old oil. Her breath ghosts hot against my neck. Her hands knot in my shirt like she’s anchoring herself to the storm instead of outrunning it.
I tip my head, press my forehead to hers.
One stolen second.
Our noses brush. Our mouths hover a breath apart. I could kiss her. I could slam her into these crates and remind her exactly who’s worth bleeding for.
Heat rolls off her like another impact.
She looks at me like I’m already dead.
Like she’s already grieving what she hasn’t lost.
“Santino,” she whispers, voice shaking, “if you die—”
“I’m not fucking dying,” I snap—softer than it sounds. “Not here. Not for him.”
Not for Carlo.Not for any of them.
If I go out, it won’t be on their terms.
The gunfire stutters into a pattern. One magazine runs thin. Another’s already light. Carlo’s pace never changes.
Patient.
Surgical.
He doesn’t understand.
Fear is my native language.
I was raised in it.Baptized in it.Drowned in it—then dragged back.
I pull back just enough to take her in. Blood smears her cheek that isn’t hers, a fingerprint of someone else’s life marking her mine. Her lashes are wet—but she’s not crying.
She’s furious.
Good.
Anger survives when grief would drown.
“On my mark,” I whisper. “You run. If you look back, I’ll drag you out by your hair, and you’ll hate me for the rest of your life. Are we clear?”
Her chin trembles, then locks.
“I hate you already.”
Something that might be a laugh scrapes out of my chest. Or a fracture.
“Perfect,” I murmur. “Stay alive, and you can tell me about it later.”
Another shot cracks—close. Carlo’s found the edge.
Time’s up.
“Go,” I snarl—and shove her.
I put everything into it: the terror, the obsession, the warped, brutal thing that passes for love in a man like me. She stumbles—catches—then she’s running low and fast along the crates, vanishing into steel and shadow toward the exit I clocked the second we walked in.
I don’t watch her go.
I can’t.
I burst from cover in the opposite direction, drawing fire like a curse.
The world detonates.
Metal screams as rounds tear into beams and ancient machinery. Concrete chips dance under my boots. A crate behind me explodes open—plastic-wrapped product spilling across the floor like a dirty snowfall.
Pain brands my upper arm as a bullet kisses skin instead of bone—white-hot and immediate. My fingers go numb. Blood slicks my sleeve, warm and wrong.
I bare my teeth and keep moving.
I don’t have the luxury of caring.
Not while Carlo laughs above, shouting something I can’t hear over gunfire and the thunder inside my skull.
I roll behind a support column at the base of the mezzanine stairs, lungs scorching, vision tunneling. The column shudders when another round smashes into it. Dust rains down like mockery.
“Come on, Bishop!” Carlo’s voice slices from above—bright with delight. “Let’s see what kind of saint you are when your heart’s on the floor!”
I look up at the metal staircase spiraling toward him.
Each step exposed.Each step a gamble.Each step another chance to die.
Perfect.
A trial isn’t a trial if you walk it safe.
I clamp my palm over the bleeding groove, feel the heat, the slick proof I’m still here.
Still moving.
Still choosing.
My father built me to be a weapon.The Church tried to make me do penance.Pia made me want a future that didn’t stink of graves.
Now Carlo wants to see which man survives.
My lips peel back.
“Final test,” I murmur, more to God than to him. “Watch close. You don’t get to claim this one.”
For Pia.For the truth under Giovanni’s lies.For the man I am choosing—again and again—to become—
I step from behind the column and set my boot on the first metal stair, climbing into the kill zone.
Above me, Carlo steadies his aim.
The barrel follows my chest with lethal, almost-loving attention—
like he’s about to deliver his own twisted benediction.
Pia Saves Him
I break cover and sprint for the stairs.
The floor is a football field of death—bare concrete, no shadows deep enough to hide in, nothing between me and Carlo but air and intention. My boots hammer. My lungs rip. My blood roars so loud I almost don’t hear the shot—
—I almost don’t feel the world tighten behind my spine like a held breath.
The first round slices past my back close enough that the heat of it licks my skin.
Too close.
Carlo’s laugh floats down from above, delighted. He’s already corrected his aim. He wants my back.
Wants my heart from behind.
I push harder.
Another shot cracks.
Not his.
It comes from my right.From behind me.From the one place I swore I would never hold a gun.
I skid to a stop so hard my boots scream, spinning as my pulse tries to tear through my ribs.
Pia stands in the open, exactly where I ordered her not to be.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders now, a black storm in motion. Her face is pale. Her mouth is a hard, lethal line. Both hands are locked tight around something sacred and profane all at once—
A gun.
A real one.
A guard’s fallen weapon.
Still smoking.
The shooter behind me—the one Carlo parked like a backup sin—staggers, a raw scream ripping out of his throat as his shoulder erupts red. He spins, crashes into a metal rack, drops hard and boneless like God cut the strings.
Pia fires again.
The recoil jars her arms. The shot isn’t wild.
It’s precise.
Deadlier than fear.
The man convulses once and goes still.
Silence slams into the space where noise used to live.
I stare at her like I’ve never seen her before.
Not the girl in the church.Not the polished innocence.Not the woman who breathes like sin and pretends it’s warmth.
Something else.
She stands there with the gun sagging in her grip, hands shaking violently now that it’s over, breath sawing in and out like she’s clawing air into her lungs. There’s blood on her knuckles. Not hers. Not mine.
Her eyes remain feral, unashamed.
Steel.
Something old and bone-deep inside me uncoils, stretches wide in my chest like it’s been waiting decades to wake.
“Move!” she screams.
Not my name.Not a plea.
An order.
It hits harder than any bullet.
Because in that one word, I hear it clean—
She is not my burden.She is not the soft place I die for.She is not the pretty thing I bleed out protecting.
She is my match.
And holy fuck, she always has been.
I surge toward her before the thought finishes, grab her face in both hands, thumbs framing her jaw like I need proof she’s solid, breathing, real.
She flinches at the blood on my skin, then leans into it, eyes bright and savage, lips parting like she might say my name and swallow it in the same breath.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snarl. “I told you to run.”
Her laugh is half hysteria, half fury. “Yeah?” she spits. “I told you I wasn’t leaving you to die.”
Another gunshot rips overhead, chewing a crater into the floor inches from my boot. Carlo’s reminder: this isn’t a moment.
This is a war.
Pia doesn’t flinch.
She lifts the gun again, barrel tipping upward like a dark fucking offering.
“He’s not killing you,” she says, voice shaking but grim as a verdict. “Not tonight. Not ever.”
My heartbeat stutters.
I’ve bled for family.I’ve knelt for God.
No one has ever stepped between me and death and chosen me back.
I catch her wrist, drag her closer until our faces are a shared breath.
“Stay behind me,” I growl.
She shoves my chest hard enough to rock me.
“No,” she says, and God help me, there’s no fear in it at all. “I’ll stay alive. Try to keep up.”
Something savage and unholy tears loose inside me.
I kiss her.
Not soft.Not slow.
I slam my mouth to hers in the middle of gunfire and iron and the scream of sirens buried in my ears, tasting blood and terror and something better than sin. Better than prayer. She kisses me back like hell doesn’t scare her because she’s already living in mine.
The moment burns.
Then it’s gone.