I’m shaking because of Thomas Giovanni Rivas’s son.
From those eyes.
Guido’s face detonates behind my eyelids every time I blink—wide, confused, terrified. Not just afraid.
Tainted.
Like he knew something just crawled out of the dark that wasn’t supposed to touch him.
Me.
I stagger backward until my spine collides with the courtyard wall. Cold seeps into my coat, eats through fabric and bone. I don’t fight it. I let myself slide down the stone like something discarded and end in a crouch, fingers tangling in my hair like I can rip the memory out by the root.
I didn’t come here to hurt a kid.
I came to steal.To survive.To avenge my father with teeth and lies so clean they cut.
I came here to gut a church.
Not a child.
My breath stutters. I clamp a hand over my mouth, but it doesn’t stop the sound. It breaks anyway—raw and small and wrong inside my throat.
Giovanni’s poison lived right behind that boy’s eyes.
Every lie he was fed.Every fear poured into him like scripture.Every story about monsters that wear your face.
I walked straight into that with a knife in my smile.
I press my forehead to my knees and bite down. Hard. I need pain that’s mine. Something I can earn.
“You’re okay,” I whisper, and the words feel like betrayal on my tongue. “You’re fine. He’s fine. You didn’t touch him. You didn’t break him.”
Liar.
I didn’t put my hands on him.
That’s it.
That’s the only mercy I get.
Because of fear?
Fear I delivered.
“Fuck,” I breathe, and my voice skids across the stone. The sound doesn’t come back to me. This place doesn’t echo comfort.
It keeps it.
A flicker.
Santino’s face when he turned back for me in the dark.
Not furious.
Not cold.
Shattered.
