Our breathing syncs — uneven, harsh, hungry.
Two sinners choosing each other in a place built for pain.
The vault isn’t silent.It’s not still.
It’s a fuse.
And we’re the spark.
Their breathing slowly steadies — still ragged, still trembling, still too intimate for a place like this.
Then—
a sound slices the air.
A lock turning.Slow.Precise.Wrong.
Not from Pia’s side.Not from mine.
Somewhere else.
A hinge shifts.Footsteps echo through the tunnel.
Cold floods my veins.
I know instantly that whoever is opening that dooris not coming to rescue us.
14
Pia
The Door Creaks, the Aftermath Trembles
The vault door shifts.
Not enough to open.Not enough to save me.
Just enough for air to whisper through the seam like a breath stolen from the dying.
I jerk upright so fast my spine screams. The thin trickle of airflow brushes my damp cheeks, lifts the hair stuck to my skin, slips into my lungs like a promise it doesn’t intend to keep.
“Santino,” I whisper, my voice still wrecked, still trembling from everything that just happened through six inches of steel. “Was that you?”
On the other side of the door, his breath stutters once. His voice cuts in—low, controlled, dangerous as a man about to erupt can sound.
“No.”
The single word chills me straight to the bone.
“I only heard one lock,” he says. Simply one. Someone’s testing it.”
Panic crawls up my throat like acid. I scramble backward until my knees hit the table and I fold, dragging my legs up to my chest. The cold metal seeps through my clothes, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the truth sitting in my skull like a gunshot:
Someone is out there.Not opening it.Not rescuing me.Listening.
The door creaks again—barely a sound, just a flex of stressed metal—and makes me flinch as if I had been struck.
“Santino,” I breathe, fingers biting into my sleeves, “I don’t want to die here.”
