Emiliano turns his head a fraction, speaking to Santino without looking away from me.
“You love her,” he says.
Not asking.
Stating.
Santino goes still, like the word hit something vital.
“And she’s already a liability,” Emiliano continues. “Not because she’s evil. Because she walks onto sacred ground and it rots behind her.”
My nails bite into my palms until I feel the sting of broken skin.
“Get out of my head,” I snarl.
Emiliano finally looks satisfied.
Because now I’m cracking.
Good.
He steps back one pace.
Just one.
Enough to breathe.
Enough to bleed.
“This place doesn’t forgive,” he says quietly. “It only remembers.”
Then he looks at Santino again.
“And your brother will remember her face long after this night pretends it’s over.”
The words don’t rise.
They don’t need to.
Judgment doesn’t shout.
It settles.
And it’s suffocating.
Pia’s Breaking Point: The Realization
I stumble back like Emiliano just carved something loose inside my chest.
My spine hits stone.
Hard.
The impact knocks the breath out of me with a sharp, ugly sound. Cold slices through my coat and straight into my bones, but I barely register it.
Because something colder just gutted me from the inside.
It comes all at once.
