Soft.Controlled.Too careful to be Romeo, who moves through life like he owns the floorboards.
Not Pia either.Her movement is lighter, quicker.
This… is someone else.
My spine freezes.
I pivot hard, shifting my weight, hands rising—
—but I’m not fast enough.
A hand clamps over my mouth from behind, iron-tight. Fingers dig into my jaw, forcing my teeth against the flesh inside my cheek.
The other hand — colder, deadlier — presses a blade to my throat.
A precise kiss of metal.One wrong twitch and it’ll open me clean.
My heart doesn’t race.It drops.
Adrenaline hits so fast the edges of my vision sharpen. The vault tightens around me, shelves looming in, ledgers watching like silent witnesses.
“Easy, padre,” a voice breathes against my ear. Low, calm, touched with an accent that slides under my skin like a splinter. “Don’t do anything fucking stupid.”
I inhale through my nose, steady, measured. Not fighting. Not yet. Not until I understand how he’s standing, how he’s holding me, how he’ll cut.
He’s bigger than Romeo, broader.His chest presses into my back, solid and unyielding.
Definitely armed. The knife isn’t cheap—a balanced blade with a grip made for someone who knows what he’s doing. He adjusts it, tightening just enough to remind me I’m a breath away from bleeding out.
Not Dante.Dante represents chaos. Emotion. Noise.
This man is none of that.
He shifts, mouth closer to my ear. I catch the faint mix of gun oil and expensive cologne—foreign, out of place in this church.
An outsider.
Working inside.
Of course.
His thumb digs into my jaw, ensuring I can’t jerk away or bite.
“My employer was very curious,” he murmurs, smooth as poison, “whether the priest would come down here eventually. Whether you’d be too loyal… or too curious.”
Employer.
The word detonates in my skull.
Rocco had a boss.Someone higher.Someone smarter.Someone who knew about this vault.
Someone who knows I opened it.
My pulse jumps, but I force my body loose, pliant—let him think the blade is enough to break me.
“What a disappointment,” he adds lightly. “Giovanni’s son, following the scent like a good little bloodhound straight into the cage.”
I want to wrench his hand off my face, turn, bury my fist in his throat until he can’t speak again.
