He claws at my arm, fingers scrabbling, skin slick with panic.
I feel the truth land in him before his body does:
There will be no air.
“Shh,” I breathe against his ear.
No prayer.No redemption.
Just silence.
His eyes bulge. His kicks get sloppy. His grip slides uselessly down my sleeve.
I wait until the fight drains clean out of him—
—and then I let him fall.
He hits the floor hard, half-draped over his unconscious friend.
A grotesque little monument to being too fucking late.
For a beat, the vault holds its breath.
Then Pia’s breathing breaks the stillness.
So does the drip.
Blood on stone.
The smell hits next—wet iron, old incense, dust, the faint ghost of holy oil in the walls.
The church’s heart.
Turned into a slaughterhouse.
I bend, snatch up the fallen knife, and wipe the handle on dead fabric.
No prints.
Old instinct.
Giovanni drilled it into us before we were tall enough to see over a wheel.
Think like you’re already hunted.Kill like they’ll never prove it.
I straighten with steel in my hand and steel against my spine.
Two weapons.
I turn.
Pia stands framed in the doorway, hair wild, eyes too bright, skin bruised and breathing too fast beneath torn fabric.
She looks like something ripped out of hell—
—and like the only goddamn thing in this place that matters.
Her gaze drops to the bodies.
