And the silence after him weighs more than anybody I dropped tonight.
My lungs burn.
My hands shake.
Behind me, Pia makes a small, ruined sound that has nothing to do with fear.
Everything is coming apart.
And the worst part?
Giovanni didn’t even have to be here to finish us.
He did it from the fucking grave.
Someone Else Is Here
Guido, wait—
The words tear out of me, too late to matter.
He bolts.
Footsteps slap wildly down the tunnel, echoing off stone—too fast, too small, too fucking scared. I lunge after him, my own boots hammering the floor, lungs burning like I’ve been sprinting for hours instead of seconds.
I’m three strides in when the air changes.
Not sound.
Not light.
Weight.
Pressure rolls down the corridor like a storm front, slamming into my chest hard enough to lock my knees. Every instinct I’ve ever had—every one Giovanni beat into me, every one the Church tried to drown—goes rigid at the same time.
“Let him go.”
The voice doesn’t shout.
It doesn’t need to.
It just drops into the dark like a verdict, and everything in me answers it before my brain catches up.
I stop.
Pia is breathing heavily behind me.
I turn slowly, like moving too fast might provoke whatever just stepped into our world.
He fills the mouth of the tunnel.
Broad shoulders block the faint suggestion of light from the far end. The coat hangs open, not because he’s careless but because he knows he doesn’t need armor. Hands loose at his sides, empty, like he hasn’t needed visible weapons in years.
Emiliano Maritz.
The exile.The ghost.The fucking storm my father never finished.
He’s supposed to be gone—somewhere far from here, rotting slowly with Zina in a corner of the world Giovanni didn’t want to think about anymore. He is not supposed to be in these tunnels, breathing my air, wearing that face like he still owns a piece of this family.
