My throat burns.
He doesn’t understand.
If I tell him everything now, I won’t be the one who gets destroyed.
He will.
I see his face when he realizes the girl he dragged into his church and kissed inside a confessional came here to burn his family to the ground. I see the moment his eyes harden when he learns I broke into his father’s vault under his nose. I seehis expression when he hears Giovanni’s voice on that tape and understands exactly what kind of man raised him.
And worse—
I see the moment he realizes I knew… and didn’t tell him.
“I just…” I force the words through the tightness in my chest. “I needed you to know I wasn’t lying about everything.”
The truth wobbles, but I hold it upright.
“I didn’t use you,” I say carefully. “Not for that.”
The words hang between us—loaded and fragile.
Not for that.
Not for the way he holds me through steel.Not for the way his voice steadies me in the dark.Not for the way I ache when he says my name like it’s something holy and ruined at the same time.
Beyond the door, he draws in a breath and lets it go. A low sound follows—not quite a sigh, not quite relief.
More like something breaking.
Reshaping itself.
“Tell me only what you can bear to give,” he says quietly. “And I’ll take it.”
The gentleness ruins me.
I want to slide down this wall and spill everything. Tell him about the ledger. About the mark carved into stone like a sentence. About my father begging for his life while Giovanni decided loyalty was disposable. I want to tell him about the cassette tape pressed to my ribs. About the proof that his father is the monster I’ve been hunting since I was a child.
I want to tell him I stood in the room where Pietro Moretti died… and kept that truth to myself.
But something stops me.
Not rage.Not revenge.
Fear.
Not the familiar kind that tastes like sweat and adrenaline and survival.
This one hurts.
Sharper.
Fear of losing him.
Fear that if I lay every ugly part of myself on the table, he’ll choose the one that cuts deepest—and walk away without looking back.
I hate it.
I hate how powerful it feels.
