Chapter 24
Pia
Sanctuary in the Pines: A New Beginning
The new sanctuary doesn’t look like a church.That’s the first mercy.
From the edge of the gravel drive, it looks like something whispered into existence and held together with stubborn hope—white stone walls, a dark roof, tall pines standing guard instead of marble saints. No stained glass. No bell tower. No crucifix looming over the door like a verdict.
Just a porch.A railing.A front door painted the soft gray of storm clouds.
I stand barefoot on the porch boards, cold biting up through the wood into my bones. Morning sits heavy in the air—wet and sharp, pine and dirt and the metallic tang of dew. The world is quiet.
Not holy.Not haunted.
Just… quiet.
My ribs still ache when I breathe too deeply.
My palms still twitch if I’m not careful, fingers curling like they’re bracing for the next hit.
My throat still burns when I swallow—phantom pressure from hands that aren’t here anymore but refuse to let go.
But Santino is inside.
And somehow, that makes this place feel sacred.
I curl my fingers around the railing, pressing into the smooth wood until my knuckles go pale. He sanded this himself. I watched him once, shirt off, sawdust clinging to his skin, arms moving in slow, steady strokes like he could grind the sins out of the boards before we ever stepped on them.
He chose this land like a man chooses a confession—carefully, quietly. Far from the city and all its eyes. Far from the Rivas mansion and Giovanni’s shadow. Far from the church that blessed him and broke him in the same breath. He bought it with his own money. Rebuilt it with his own hands.
Clean rooms.Wooden beams.No crosses unless we decide we want them.
A thin ribbon of gravel glittered with dew in the early light. No tire tracks from blacked-out SUVs. No blood hiding beneath the stones. Just birdsong, the hush of wind through pines, the distant rush of the creek he showed me yesterday like it was a secret.
Safe.
The word sits in my chest. It feels like a foreign object. My body hasn't decided if it belongs there.
I’ve never been good at “safe.”
I’ve been good at surviving. At reading people. At wearing pretty, like armor so men underestimate me. At lying through my teeth in confession to a priest who saw straight through me and refused to let go.
I have never felt worthy of safety.
No one has loved me without paying a price.
Love, for me, has always been a transaction paid for in blood or silence.
I have never seen a future I didn’t have to steal.
And now I’m standing on a porch that smells like fresh paint and coffee, bruises turning yellow beneath my skin, a man inside who would burn down the world before he let anyone touch me again—
And I am fucking terrified.
Not of the next threat.Not of the next torture.
Of this.
Of the possibility that this is real. That I might finally get everything I ever wanted—and not have to run the moment it shows up.
A breeze slides along the porch, crawling up my arms in gooseflesh. I should go back inside. The floor is warm there. The couch is soft. Blankets still tangled from the few stolen hours before dawn, fully clothed but so close I felt every rise and fall of his breathing.
Instead, I stay.
I listen to the boards whisper beneath my bare feet. I count the pines lining the drive. I scan the tree line the way trauma taught me I’m allowed to.
Nothing moves.
No headlights.No men with guns.
Just me and this quiet that dares to be real—and the weight of a future pressing against my spine.
“I don’t know how to just… live,” I whisper into the open air. My voice sounds too raw on a morning this beautiful. “I don’t know how to be the woman who gets a house in the woods and a man who loves her and mornings that don’t end in blood.”
The railing doesn’t answer.
Coward.
Behind me, the front door clicks open.
I don’t have to turn to know it’s him. The air shifts. My body recognizes him before my mind catches up—the familiar heat at my back, the scent of soap and sleep and something feral and dangerous that is just Santino.
Bare feet cross the porch boards.
“You’re up early,” he says, voice rough with sleep.
A shiver tears through me that has nothing to do with the cold.
I turn.
He stands in the doorway in gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt clinging to his chest, hair pushed back with careless fingers, shadow dark along his jaw. No collar. No stolen holiness.
Just a man.
My man.
The thought punches the air out of my lungs harder than any broken rib ever did.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say.
It’s only part of the truth.
I slept for maybe an hour before the dream came—hands on my face, water in my lungs, a voice telling me to scream louder so God could hear.
I woke up with my fingers twisted into his shirt and my mouth at his throat like it was the last safe place left on earth.
He held me until my breathing stopped racing.
Now here we are.
“You were shaking,” he says softly, like he heard the part I didn’t give him. He steps closer, shoulder catching the door before it closes. “Nightmare?”
“Just my brain doing its fucked-up greatest hits.”
He stops in front of me, close enough that the cold finally loses. The porch is narrow; it forces us into the same breath. His eyes catalogue every shadow on my face, every place I pretend doesn’t ache.
It all aches.
Some wounds just learned how to hide.
"You should have woken me." "I did wake you. You were already there."
The corner of his mouth twitches with a smile he doesn’t entirely trust. “Smartass.”
“Ex-priest,” I shoot back. “You’re the one who taught me honesty is holy.”
A soft, broken laugh escapes him. He glances past me, toward the trees, the gravel, the thin road cutting through wild green.
“Too quiet?” he asks.
“Too… everything,” I admit.
His gaze snaps back to mine.
“Too much?”
“Yes.” My throat works. “No. I don’t know.”
My hands flex against the rail. I make myself let go before the wood cracks.
“I don’t trust peace,” I tell him. “It’s always been the calm before someone hurts me.
I keep waiting for a black car to crawl up that drive.
For someone to kick in that door. For you to tell me this was just a fantasy and now you have to put the collar back on and be holy for people who never deserved you. ”
He steps in close.
The world reduces to his eyes.
“Look at me.”
I do.
He looks older now. Sharper. Like he survived something he can never give back. But there’s something else there too.
Something still.
“I’m not going back,” he says. “Not to him. Not to that house. Not to being anyone’s weapon.”
He lifts his hand slowly, giving me time to pull away.
I don’t.
His fingers circle my wrist, thumb pressing into my pulse like he’s anchoring himself to it.
“This is where I am,” he says. “Here. With you. In this fucked-up miracle of a house, we’re going to turn into something that doesn’t hurt when you breathe.”
My throat burns.
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not.” Then, quieter, “But it’s real.”
The word sinks into me.
Real.
Not borrowed.Not temporary.Not paid for in pain.
My hand slips from the railing and curls into his shirt.
I don’t pull him in.
I don’t have to.
He steps into me anyway, chest brushing mine, one hand braced beside my hip—not trapping me.
Claiming space with me inside it.
And for the first time—
I let myself believe.
This might actually be my life.
Not the tunnels.Not the blood.Not the running.
This.
Cold air.Warm skin.
A house in the pines and a man who looks at me like I’m not broken.
Just survived.
It feels like standing on the edge of a cliff with the wind at my back.
Terrifying.
And for the first time in my life—
I think I might finally be ready to jump.
Santino’s Confession
Santino steps closer.
Not like a man asking permission.
Like a man walking straight into a truth he’s held in his mouth so long it hollowed him out from the inside.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says.
His voice is low, steady—but I hear the fault line beneath it. The old fracture cracking wider so something real can finally breathe.
“That sounds dangerous,” I say lightly. Because fear taught me early — smile first, bleed later.
He doesn’t smile.
Not even a twitch.
Instead, he moves in until the cold air can’t reach me anymore. Until our breaths tangle and the quiet itself seems to hold still just to listen.
“When I took off the collar,” he murmurs, “it wasn’t about walking away from God.”
My heart stumbles inside my ribs.
His hands come up slowly, carefully, reverent—like he’s afraid I might fracture beneath them. His fingers fold around my wrist, thumb brushing my pulse like he’s memorizing proof I can’t vanish on him.
“It was about choosing you.”
The words don’t arrive gently.
They land like impact.
They rewrite history.
My throat constricts so hard it burns behind my eyes.
“Santino—” I whisper, but he doesn’t let me collapse inward. He meets me in it.
He lifts my knuckles to his mouth and presses a kiss there that feels like confession and vow and apology tangled together.
“I spent my whole life being told who I was supposed to be,” he says quietly. “A soldier while I was still a boy. A saint before I ever learned how to sin. A son who never measured up. A judge who learned early that mercy always came with a body count.”
He lifts his eyes to mine.
A priest.
He never says it.
He doesn’t have to.
It lives in his bones.
“And the only time I’ve ever felt real,” he continues, “was when I was with you.”
Something caves in behind my eyes.
Not loud.
Not violent.
Soft.
The way glass finally gives when it’s exhausted pretending to be steel.
“Santino,” I breathe, but there is no language savage enough to hold what he’s just handed me.
“You saved me,” he says.
The air itself shudders.
“From him.”
My stomach knots.
“From myself.”