Chapter 24 #5
I stay awake long enough to memorize the shape of this moment—the weight of his arm, the heat of his chest, the way his breath ghosts through my hair. I hoard it like evidence against the world.
Just in case.
Then even that fear loosens its grip.
My eyes close.
And I fall asleep in the arms of a man who chose me over heaven and hell both.
For the first time in my life — I don’t dream of running.
I dream of staying.
The Peace Before the Storm
Evening settles over the sanctuary like the world finally learned how to exhale.
The light turns honeyed and low, stretching shadows along the exposed beams. Outside, the pines whisper against the windows in their own language. The rain has eased from a steady drumbeat into the occasional tired tap, like the sky doesn’t have the strength left to do more than breathe.
For once, I understand exactly how it feels.
I’m sprawled across Santino on the battered couch, my head on his chest, one leg thrown over his hip like I own him and don’t know how to pretend I don’t. The blanket tangles around us, with half of it on the floor. His arm is heavy along my back, his hand tracing slow, lazy circles over my back.
Every rise of his chest lifts my cheek.
Every fall pulls me deeper.
It feels like the end of a war.
This couch.This man.This fragile peace in a house that should never have existed.
His heartbeat thuds steadily under my ear.
I let it drown out the ghosts.
“Tell me something real,” he murmurs, his voice vibrating through my cheek.
I snort. “That’s dangerous territory, ex-Father.”
His fingers pause just long enough to pinch my side.
I yelp, swat his chest. “Asshole.”
He laughs—quiet and surprised, like the sound still catches him off guard. Like he’s not used to being allowed this.
“Something you’ve never said out loud,” he says. “No priest loopholes. No half-truths. Just you.”
My eyes drift to the beam above us. It still smells faintly of sawdust. He hauled it up himself.
I thought then, a man that stubborn should’ve scared me.
Instead, I wanted to kiss him.
“That’s an extensive menu,” I say. “Crimes? Nightmares? Poor decision-making?”
“Start with something that won’t make me bury someone,” he replies.
“That removes most of my backstory.” I pause. Exhale. “Fine. I’ll give you a soft one.”
He waits.
“How soft?” he asks.
“I used to steal candles from churches,” I say. “The expensive ones. Tall. White. Dramatic. My mom would light them for the saints, cry real good and hard. I would blow them out and take them home while she was distracted.”
He shifts beneath me. “You robbed God.”
“Relax. He got them back.” A thin smile ghosts across my mouth. “I’d line them up on the bathroom floor, pretend the tub was a boat and the tiles were the ocean. If I could keep every flame burning until sunrise… nobody I loved would die that week.”
He goes still.
My chest tightens, but I keep going.
“It didn’t work,” I murmur. “Obviously. But I kept trying. Burned my fingers more than once. Guess I started bargaining with God early.”
His hand drags slower now, careful, tracing my spine like it’s a prayer he doesn’t know how to say out loud.
“What happened to the candles?” he asks quietly.
I huff something between a laugh and a breath. “My mother caught me. Beat my ass with a wooden spoon while the saints watched. She told me God doesn’t listen to thieves.” I swallow. “I stopped stealing candles.”
The silence between us isn’t heavy.
It’s loaded.
Then, he does something I don’t expect.
He laughs.
Softly. Not cruel. Not mocking.
“You?” he says. “Little candle thief.”
“I was efficient,” I mutter. “Low risk. High reward… until it wasn’t.”
He shifts. I can feel the curve of his mouth against my hairline.
“I pictured you smaller as a kid,” he admits.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Sweet. Quiet. Halo-optional.”
“Terrified,” he answers.
That lands harder.
“Smaller. But loud on the inside.”
I tilt my head back to look at him. His eyes are warm and sharp all at once.
“You were never quiet,” he says.
“No,” I admit. “Paid for it.”
“Hey.” I tap his chest. “You wanted something that wouldn’t make you commit homicide. Don’t move the target.”
He catches my hand and kisses my knuckles once.
“I’m always homicidal where you’re concerned,” he says. “That’s permanent.”
It should terrify me.
Instead, it settles around my ribs like armor.
I smile before I can stop myself.
He sees it.
“There,” he murmurs. “That.”
“What?”
“You’re happy. And nothing exploded.”
I scoff. “Give it a minute.”
His thumb drags across the back of my hand. “Miracle.”
“Careful,” I warn. “That’s priest language.”
He shakes his head. “Never again.”
He says it without hesitation.
My chest tightens anyway.
We sit in silence for a while, the house softly creaking around us like it’s getting used to holding people instead of ghosts.
I continue talking.
Not confessional-talking. This is messier. Louder with truth.
I tell him about the first day I realized my mother wouldn’t save me. About the boy in the alley when I was fifteen and the glass bottle I broke over his head. About standing outside churches, wondering what would happen if I walked inside and said something real.
He listens.
No judgment.
No righteousness.
Just a man collecting all the damage I offer him and putting it somewhere safe.
Eventually, he talks too.
Not about crowns or graves or men named Giovanni.
He tells me about stealing books from the rectory.
Reading under a blanket with a flashlight.
About Miguel catching him swearing at God and handing him a cigarette instead of a sermon.
About hating the taste of communion wine but choking it down so people could feel forgiven for five minutes at a time.
“You were a terrible priest,” I tell him.
“I know.” His thumb circles the back of my neck. “Quitting saved my soul.”
“For me,” I say.
“For me,” he corrects. Then softer: “For us.”
Something opens in my chest and doesn’t close again.
I push myself up onto one elbow and look at him. Lamp-light smooths the hard lines out of his face. Even his scars look kinder here.
“I love you,” I say.
The words slip out without permission.
Before fear can touch them.
Before I can wrap them in barbed wire and bargain them back.
He freezes.
Like the world hit pause.
His chest stills under my palm. Even the house seems to hold its breath.
Regret flares briefly. Then I get angry at myself for thinking that.
I survived tunnels. I survived drowning. Men who liked their prayers screamed.
I can survive three words.
His face looks undone.
Like I handed him something he never believed he could own.
“Say it again,” he breathes.
My throat burns.
“I love you,” I say again. “And not because you saved me. Because even if you hadn’t, I would’ve fallen for the stubborn, dangerous ex-priest who wouldn’t let me drown in my own fucking lies.”
Something wild ignites behind his eyes.
He sits up sharply, bringing me with him, cupping my face like I’ll vanish if he lets go.
“Pia,” he says, my name cracking in half.
Then—
“I love you too.”
It hits harder than any weapon I’ve ever taken to the body.
“I’ve loved you since you lied to me in confession,” he adds with a breathless laugh. “I knew you were full of shit, and I wanted you anyway. Your mouth. Your fire. Your refusal to bow.”
A ruined sound breaks out of me.
Tears follow.
“I was a disaster.”
“You were mine.”
He kisses me like it’s not optional. Slow. Devastating. No fear. No delay.
I laugh into it.
I cry into it.
This is our peace.
This is our ending.
For approximately three seconds.
A low rumble cuts through the quiet.
My brain offers thunder.
It’s wrong.
Gravel crunches.
My body stiffens before thought returns.
Santino’s hand drops from my face.
He turns toward the window.
Toward the drive.
Toward the lie we’ve been telling ourselves all evening.
The engine dies.
Silence roars.
He’s already moving.
The man who said I love you is still here.
So is the one who was trained to kill.
My stomach drops.
“Of course,” I whisper. “Of fucking course.”
Peace never lasts in this family.
The Knight’s Warning
The knock isn’t loud.
It doesn’t need to be.
It cuts through the house like steel through silk—precise, deliberate, final.
Santino is off the couch before the echo dies. The warmth burns off him in a single breath, replaced by something iron-hard and coiled beneath his skin. He pulls on his pants without looking at me, movements controlled in the way men get right before they destroy something.
My heart slams so hard against my ribs I taste metal.
I follow him down the short hall, bare feet on floorboards still warm from us. The sanctuary feels wrong now—too open, too exposed. The quiet that held us an hour ago has sharpened into a waiting thing, taut as a wire pulled tight between trees.
Santino doesn’t touch the lights.
Doesn’t reach for anything that looks like comfort.
He opens the door.
No one stands there.
Just a box.
Small. Black.
Velvet, the way a priest’s collar used to be. Like a promise wrapped around a bullet.
Rain beads across the porch, tapping softly and patient. The pines sway beyond it, long shadows stretching toward the doorway like they want inside.
Santino stares at the box like it might explode.
Like he almost hopes it does.
Slowly, he crouches and lifts it.
The way his jaw tightens tells me he already knows.
I stand behind him, hands curled useless in my hoodie, wanting to touch his back and terrified the world will rip it away from me if I do. My stomach knots so hard it steals my breath.
He carries the box inside.
Places it on the table between us.
The room shrinks around it.
Judging us.
Santino flips the lid open.
Inside—
A single chess piece.
White marble.
Heavy even without being in my hand.
Cracked clean through the neck like someone tried to be merciful and failed.
The KNIGHT.
Cold floods my bones.
There’s a folded note underneath it.
Santino picks it up.
Reads once.
His mouth tightens.
Then he hands it to me.
My fingers shake as I unfold the paper.
Fourteen words.
Neat.
Certain.
Cruel.
The next story is his.And we are coming.
The truth hits with surgical precision.
This isn’t about us.
This isn’t even about Santino.
This is about Romeo.
“They’re warning you,” I whisper.
It comes out wrong.
Thin.
I already know.
Santino doesn’t look at me.
“No,” he says.
Then he lifts his head.
His eyes cut through the windows, through the trees, through the night—toward the invisible road threading back into blood and legacy and fire.
“They’re warning Romeo.”
The way he says it chills me more than fear ever could.
Not soft.
Not broken.
Measured.
A man who has already chosen violence if that’s the price.
“They’re coming for him,” he murmurs. “And they’re not bluffing this time.”
The wind slams against the windows—loud, demanding, alive.
I grab his arm.
“Santino.”
My voice cracks the way it always does when I’m about to beg.
He turns.
This is not the man who kneeled.
Not the man who prayed.
Not the man who whispered salvation into my mouth like he believed it.
This is something older.
Colder.
Finished with mercy.
And filled with something far more dangerous.
“We prepare,” he says.
Not a suggestion.
A vow.
“And when they come—”
His fingers brush the fracture in the knight’s neck.
“—we choose our side.”
My mouth goes dry.
There is no side that doesn’t end in blood.
The wind rises outside, howling through the pines like something ancient and starving.
The house creaks.
The light flickers.
Then steadies.
Santino closes the box.
The sound is soft.
Final.
It settles into my bones like a verdict.
I step into him.
No questions.
No barricades left.
I wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into his back like my body already knows this is the last place that will ever feel safe.
His hand closes over mine.
Strong.
Certain.
Too certain for a man who just opened a promise from hell.
“What if they don’t stop?” I whisper.
He lowers his head just enough that his mouth brushes my hair.
“They won’t,” he says.
No fear.
Only the truth.
Outside, the rain thickens.
The trees bow.
And somewhere between the sanctuary we thought would save usand the city that taught us to bleed—
the next war sharpens its teeth.