My breath catches.
The numbers hit me first—lines and lines marching in tight, disciplined rows. Transfers. Balances. Amounts so large they barely feel real. But the structure is familiar. My father taughtme to read this language when I was too damn young to understand what it meant.
Money doesn’t lie, San.People do.
This isn’t a rumor.This isn’t speculation.
This is evidence.
Dates is the header for each column, written in Giovanni's neat script. Account codes. Shell foundations. “Charities.” Stipends. Notes.
My vision narrows as I scan the page.
A transfer from a “widow’s relief fund” into a Cayman account. Another from a “mission outreach” funneled into a private trust. A third routed through something labeled ST. BART’S ALTAR RENOVATION.
Bullshit.All of it.
He used the church like a fucking washing machine.
My stomach twists.
I flip the page—faster now. The pattern continues.
Offshore accounts. Fake charities. “Anonymous donations” sliding in and out of accounts he clearly owned. Money bleeding through the church’s books like rot under paint.
Names appear in the margins.
Priests.Secretaries.Drivers.
Some of them are already dead. I recognize the crosses Giovanni drew through their names once they became “no longer useful.”
They’re listed as conduits.
Not accomplices. Not equals.
Just pipes — the money flowed through. Men too weak to refuse him or too scared to ask where his cash came from.
I see the parishes I grew up around—names from dinners, fundraisers, baptisms. Men who placed a hand on my head and told me I’d make a fine priest one day.
They were laundering blood money while they handed me communion.
A tight burn sears the back of my throat.
I turn another page.
Confessional transfers.Funeral disbursements.“Widow gifts.”
Giovanni used confessionals to get money: cash under screens, envelopes in books. Funeral masses to move payouts under the cover of grief. Communion wine shipments to ferry money and product in and out of the city.
His favorite fucking trick:
Sin dressed up as holiness.
My jaw locks hard enough to ache.
All those years I thought I was choosing the church over him…and the whole time, I was walking straight into the center of his web.
My fingers tighten on the edge of the ledger until the paper warps.
