I mirror her without thinking, lowering myself until we’re sitting back-to-back on opposite sides of six inches of steel.
“Good,” I say roughly. “Stay with me.”
I close my eyes. It’s easier to picture her that way—knees drawn in, arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide and wild with fear she’s trying to pretend isn’t eating her alive.
“Tell me something true,” I say. “Something only you know.”
She goes quiet.
Too quiet.
All I hear is her breathing—fast, broken, scraped raw by panic.
Then she says, hoarse and low, as if the words are tearing their way out of her:
“My father begged for his life.”
My entire body goes still.
She doesn’t stop.
“He said my name,” she whispers. “He begged them not to let me see his body. They didn’t listen.”
My head drops forward, hitting the steel with a dull, sick sound. Shame burns through me like acid—hot, corrosive, merciless.
“Pia…” Her name comes out like a confession.
Giovanni’s voice echoes in my memory, overlapping hers:
Someone has to take the fall.And you… you will die quietly.
I want to rip the past apart with my bare hands.
“You asked why I came here,” she says, voice cracking. “That’s why. I wasn’t lying.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“No,” I whisper. “I knew you weren’t lying.”
I knew it the first time she said it—I just didn’t want to look at what that meant about my father. About my family. About me.
The truth I’ve been burying claws its way up my throat.
“And if I find the man who did that to him,” I say, my voice low, dangerous, and fully unholy, “I’ll kill him. I swear it.”
The vow settles in the tunnel like a loaded gun.
On the other side of the door, her breath stutters—then releases in a soft, shaking exhale. It’s a sound caught somewhere between grief and gratitude.
And it fucking undoes me.
She shouldn’t need a priest promising murder just to breathe easier.
“Why?” she whispers after a long beat. “Why do you care what happened to him?”
Because he was innocent.Because Giovanni scapegoated him.Because I’ve spent my whole goddamn life pretending I wasn’t made of the same rot.
But I can’t say that.
