Her lips are slightly parted.
Her heartbeat doesn’t change.
Mine fucking does.
“Giovanni didn’t just have secrets,” she murmurs.
A pause thickens the air.
A suspended second where everything in me coils tight enough to snap.
Then:
“He had sins that were never confessed.”
The words land like a strike—clean, precise, devastating.
My grip loosens.
She slips free of my hand like smoke pulled by a draft.
Thunder cracks above the rafters, loud enough to shake dust from the beams. The stained glass trembles. Candle flames bow low. The entire church feels like it’s reacting with me.
She turns toward the long stone corridor that leads deeper into the cathedral’s underbelly.
The crypt.
The foundations.
The tunnels Giovanni guarded like a dragon over its hoard.
And she walks.
Fast.
Sure.
Silent.
Like she’s been here before.
“Stop,” I order, the command tearing out of me sharper, harsher, more desperate than I intend.
She doesn’t stop.
I take one step.
She’s already past the first archway.
Two.
Her silhouette fades into shadow.
Three.
Gone.
She disappears into the same darkness my father used to haunt, the same corridors he warned me never to enter, the same places where the line between sacred and sinful blurs until there’s no difference at all.
