Chapter 23 #3
Romeo moved the guards.Romeo changed the route.Romeo tried to outplay vipers and used our father as the bargaining chip.
Emiliano still swung the blade.
But Romeo opened the door that let him in.
My finger hovers over the trackpad again. I want to replay it. To dissect every second. Every word. Every flinch.
Instead, I close the player.
The office rushes back in—the ruined desk, the dead laptop fan, the distant creak of the house settling around us like a tired beast.
Pia’s hand finds my shoulder, squeezing once. “Santino,” she says quietly. “Look at me.”
I do.
“This isn’t a clean story,” she says. “You know that. He was cornered. Threatened. Used. That video…” She nods toward the laptop. “It doesn’t show intent. It shows a man drowning.”
“I don’t give a shit what it shows,” I say.
It’s a lie. We both know it.
I scrub a hand over my face. “Giovanni was right. One of his sons helped kill him.”
I stare at the dark screen, and all I can see is Romeo’s eyes.
Terrified.Guilty.Mine.
“I have to talk to him,” I say.
The decision lands in my chest with a dull, final click. Like a bolt sliding into place.
Not as a priest.
Not as Giovanni’s weapon.
As the man who’s going to decide whether this truth burns the family down—or just scars it.
I stand.
The floor creaks under my weight. The house listens.
Behind me, the laptop screen times out and goes black, swallowing the frozen ghosts of a king and the son who accidentally helped bury him.
“Where are you going?” Pia asks.
I don’t look back at the safe. Or the desk. Or the envelope still burning a hole in my jacket.
“To find Romeo,” I say.
Because after tonight, nothing between us will ever be the same.
Brother vs Brother: The Confession in the Ruins
The back garden used to be my mother’s pride.
Now it’s a grave pretending to be a memory.
The marble Virgin is split clean down the middle, like God finally chose a side and walked out.
The fountain is dry—no trickle, no whisper—just a cracked stone mouth frozen open like it died screaming.
Dead leaves rot in the basin, sludge-black and floating in rainwater that smells like rust and old sins.
Romeo sits on the lip of it with a cigarette burned down to the filter, ash clinging to the tip like he forgot it was there. His shoulders are caved in. His spine looks too tired to hold itself up.
For once, the family prodigal doesn’t look like the golden boy.
He looks like a man whose world already ended and he’s just waiting for the echo.
He doesn’t look surprised when I come closer.
“You saw it,” he says.
Not a question.Just a verdict.
I stop three feet from him. Close enough to hit. Close enough to be hit.
“You talked to them,” I say. “To the Vescari.”
Romeo lets out a short, bitter laugh with no humor left in it. “You sound just like him.”
I don’t move. Don’t blink. “Answer me.”
His shoulders sag like I just cut the last wire holding him upright.
“I did,” he says. “They cornered me weeks before he died. Knew shit they shouldn’t have. Knew about Guido’s school. Dante’s girlfriend. Where Zina takes her morning coffee like it’s a ritual instead of a risk.”
He drags a hand over his mouth hard enough to redden the skin.
“They said they’d hurt them. Paralyze Dante. Skin Guido alive. Put a bullet in Zina’s head just to send a message.” His voice fractures. “They promised I’d watch.”
“So I played,” he whispers. “I thought if I fed them bad intel—fake routes, ghost schedules—I could buy us time.”
“You moved his guards,” I say.
He flinches.
I step closer.
“You changed his schedule.”
Romeo’s hands curl into fists like it’s the only thing he can still control.
“I thought he’d be safe in the church,” he snaps.
“I thought nobody would dare touch him on holy ground. I didn’t know Emiliano was already inside the fucking walls.
I didn’t know he’d lined up the shot before I even opened my mouth. ”
His eyes shine—but the tears don’t fall.
“So yeah,” he murmurs. “Congratulations. The King was right. His son helped kill him.”
He finally looks up at me.
And it’s not defiance in his eyes.
It’s surrender.
“Is this the part where you judge me?”
Everything within me surges at once.
Miguel’s sermons.Giovanni’s last orders.Carlo’s laughter in the dark.Pia’s voice when she bled truth into the open.
A thousand roads explode in my head, and every single one ends in blood.
I could end him.Drag him home by the collar and drop him at Dante’s feet. Tell Guido. Let Zina burn him with her eyes and Emiliano finish it with his hands.
I could turn him into a sacrifice and call it justice.
Instead, I see my brother.
Not the boy who slid through life smiling.
The man who tried to save his family and destroyed it anyway.
Exactly how Giovanni raised us.
“You should hate me,” Romeo says.
I exhale.
Long.Jagged.
“I don’t.”
He looks at me like I slapped him. “Don’t fuck with me,” he whispers.
I don’t raise my voice.I don’t soften it either.
“Hate would be easy,” I say. “Hate would let me sleep. Hate would give me permission to put a bullet between your eyes and tell myself I fixed something.”
He swallows hard.
“And you won’t?” he asks.
I take one more step closer. So close I can smell the smoke on his breath. The fear under his skin.
“I won’t,” I say.
Because you weren’t cruel.Because you weren’t hungry for power.Because you were weak.
And weakness is the most Rivas sin there is.
“You fucked up,” I continue. “Spectacularly. You opened a door you didn’t know how to close, and people died on the other side of it.”
He nods as if every word is a blade.
“But you didn’t do it because you wanted him dead. You did it because you were trying to keep the rest of us alive.”
Silence chews at the space between us.
Romeo stares at the ground like it might open and take him if he begs hard enough.
“I didn’t mean to be the villain,” he whispers.
I don’t answer right away.
Because neither did Giovanni.Neither did I.
And that’s the worst part.
I reach out and grab the back of Romeo’s neck.
Not violent.Not gentle.
Unavoidable.
I lean closer.
“You don’t get to pretend you’re not responsible,” I tell him quietly. “And you don’t get to pretend you’re not family either.”
He shakes under my grip.
“Which one kills me?” he breathes.
I meet his eyes.
“Neither,” I say.
And in his face, I see it—
Fear.Relief.
And something far more dangerous.
Hope.
Santino Protects Romeo, and the Family Fractures
Romeo stares at me like I just told him the sky is green.
“You don’t?” he repeats, voice thin. “You don’t hate me?”
My hand is still on the back of his neck, fingers pressed into sweat-damp skin. His pulse hammers against my palm like it’s trying to outrun his body.
I shake my head once.
“I’m tired of being our father’s weapon,” I say.
The words come out low, flat, heavier than any threat I’ve ever used. Because they’re not aimed at him.
They’re aimed at the ghost living within both of us.
Wind cuts through what used to be the garden, rattling dead branches and the shredded remains of old prayer ribbons Zina tied here when she still believed wishes could beat bullets. The cracked Virgin watches us like she’s waiting to see which one of us falls first.
I step closer, lowering my voice so it doesn’t belong to anyone but him.
“If I expose you,” I say, “Dante will never forgive you. Guido will never trust you. Zina will see you as another knife in her back. Pia’s father will never rest. And Giovanni will win again—from the grave.”
Romeo swallows so hard I hear it.
His eyes shine under the gray light, raw and hunted. “So what are you going to do?” he asks.
I look back at the mansion.
Shattered windows gaping like broken teeth. Burn marks crawling up the stone. A kingdom rotting from the inside out because the man who built it loved control more than he loved any of us.
This house has seen enough blood.It’s still thirsty.
“I’m going to bury this,” I say.
His breath catches.
“For now.”
Romeo’s eyes widen. “You’d lie for me?”
“I’m not lying,” I answer. “I’m choosing what story the family survives.”
It tastes like blasphemy in my mouth. A former priest rewriting scripture.
I let go of his neck only to catch his shoulder instead, fingers digging in.
“But understand this,” I add. “You don’t get to keep playing both sides. If you ever put them at risk again—Dante, Guido, Zina—”
I lean in until we’re nose to nose, until he can see every ugly truth in my eyes.
“I will judge you, and there won’t be a priest left in me when I do.”
He flinches.
Good.
He should.
Romeo nods, a jerky, broken motion. Tears finally spill over, cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks.
“I swear,” he whispers. “I’m done.”
I don’t know if I believe him.
I don’t say that out loud.
Faith in this family has always been currency, not a gift. And right now I’m spending mine where it counts most—on keeping us from turning on each other before the next war even starts.
Footsteps crunch somewhere inside the house. A door slams in the distance. Voices carry—Dante, probably, barking orders like he hasn’t slept in days; Guido asking questions no one wants to answer yet.
Romeo’s gaze flicks toward the sound, then back to me.
“What are you going to tell them?” he asks. “About who killed him?”
The question lands like a knife between my ribs.
Images slam into me at once:
Emiliano’s blade.Giovanni’s blood on the church stone.Pia’s father falling in front of her.The ledger.The letter.The fucking security footage.Romeo’s face on that grainy screen, trying to trade his own soul for ours.
The truth is a bomb.
I’ve spent my entire life standing in its blast radius.
I turn away from him and stare at the mansion ruins again—at the scorched arch where my father once stood and called this place holy, like the word meant anything in his mouth.
“The truth they can live with,” I say.
My voice is steady.
Lying feels too much like prayer now—mouth moving, hoping the words build something instead of burning it down.
“And the rest stays with us.”
Us.
Not me.Not him.
Us.
A shared sentence.A shared sin.
The word hangs between us like a noose and a lifeline at the same time.
Behind me, Romeo lets out a wrecked breath—relief and terror braided together.
“You’re making a mistake,” he says softly.
“Probably,” I reply.
I finally let go of his shoulder.
The absence of contact feels wrong, like I just stepped away from a ledge and remembered I can’t fly.
But I move anyway.
I walk toward the back of the house, toward the shattered French doors that used to open onto my mother’s roses and now gape over dead earth. Toward the car waiting beyond the ruined drive. Toward Pia.
Because that’s what this is really about.
Not Giovanni. Not the throne he died clutching.
It’s about the fact that I chose.
I chose Pia in that warehouse. I chose her again in the safe house. I choose her now, in the ruins of everything that made me.
And this lie?
This lie is the price.
“Santino,” Romeo calls after me.
I stop but don’t turn.
“What happens,” he asks, voice shaking, “when they find out anyway? Dante, Guido, Zina, Pia. What happens when this blows up in your face?”
I close my eyes for a second.
See Dante’s fury.Guido’s hurt.Zina’s disappointment.Pia’s eyes when she realizes I kept this from her—remembers her father died for a King my brother helped kill.
My stomach knots.
Then I open my eyes again and keep my back to him.
“Then I’ll take the hit,” I say. “Not you.”
There’s a long, sharp silence.
“That’s not how this works,” Romeo says hoarsely.
“It is now.”
I start walking again.
Every step carves a new line down the center of this family—before this moment, after this moment. Before I picked up my father’s crown of knives and turned it into something else. After I wrapped one of those blades in cloth and hid it behind my back.
The sky is the same flat gray it was when we pulled up.The house is the same wreck.
But everything is different.
By the time I reach the edge of the garden, I can feel Romeo’s stare burning between my shoulder blades.
He knows it, even if I don’t say it out loud:
The Rivas family is still standing — but now it’s balanced on a new lie.
A lie I chose.A lie I’ll bleed for.
And as I walk back toward the life, I’m tying to Pia with another secret, with my brother’s sins hooked through it like barbed wire, one thought claws its way up from the darkest part of me and refuses to let go:
When this breaks—and it will break — they won’t just judge Romeo.
They’ll judge me.
And I don’t know if there’ll be enough of the priest left to survive it.