No trap sounds like that.
No echo bleeds like a boy.
I step into the left corridor. The lantern light stretches ahead, crawling over rough stone, thick shadow—
—and then it finds him.
Guido.
Standing at the far end of the passage like a prayer that wandered into hell by mistake.
Too small for this dark.Too clean for this blood.
Guido in the Dark
I don’t breathe.I don’t blink.I don’t move.
Because the thing standing in front of me isn’t a guard.Isn’t a hunter.Isn’t some shadow with a gun and an evil plan.
It’s my brother.
Guido is a pale shape at the far end of the tunnel, swallowed halfway by the dark like the stone itself is trying to unmake him. His shoulders cave in, as if he is bracing for a blow that never comes. He buries both hands in his chest, clutching something so tight it looks painful.
A prayer book.
Bent. Soft. Worn at the corners.
His eyes find mine.
“Santino… who is she?”
He doesn’t mean her name.He means her existence.
The question is gentle.The damage is not.
Behind me, Pia goes still.
Not a flinch.Not a sound.
The way prey goes still when it realizes it isn’t alone.
Guido’s gaze slides past my shoulder.
Finds her.
Recoils as if she burned him.
“No,” he whispers, stumbling backward. “No—no—Dad said, Dad told me.”
The cold hits my bloodstream instantly.Poison, old and familiar.
“What did he tell you?” I ask.
The words scrape out low and controlled, because if I raise my voice even a fraction of an inch, something ugly is going torip loose from deep inside me and I don’t know if I can chain it again.
Guido shakes his head hard enough that his hair flies into his eyes.
“He said to stay away from her kind,” he sobs. “He said they bring death.”
