The night rushes at me like open arms that only know how to kill slowly.
Behind me—
“Pia!”
His voice cracks my name down the middle.
It hits my spine.Shatters something sacred.
But I don’t stop.I don’t look back.I don’t give in.
Because if I do, Guido pays the price.
The gate slams shut behind me with a sound like a gunshot.
Metal on metal.Final.Absolute.
I walk into darkness with my heart still standing in that courtyard—
bleeding out in Santino Rivas’s hands.
17
Santino
At the Altar, Alone With His Ruin
Iflinch watching her leave—not with fear, but because it hits exactly where she ripped something out of me and walked away with it.
Silence follows. The kind that listens.
Emiliano stands at my back like a battlefield praying for war, all pressure and judgment wrapped in a suit. I don’t turn around. If I look at him now, something permanent breaks. Bone. Vows. Him.
“Don’t,” he says quietly. “You know she’s right.”
I don’t answer.
If I open my mouth, I’ll either kill him or confess—and I’m not in the mood for salvation.
My body moves before my mind does.
Not to my room.Not to the tunnels, still echoing with damp stone and secrets.
I walk into the church.
The door groans like it resents what we do inside it. Darkness swallows me except for the few candles clinging to life near the altar. The air is thick with burned wax and old prayers. Incense that never forgot the sins it tried to hide.
I lock the door behind me.
I need walls between myself and this cursed bloodline before I put my hands through someone’s skull.
My footsteps echo through the aisle. Night has also blacked out the stained glass overhead, reducing saints to shadows.
The altar waits.
Raised.Dominant.A platform for liars.
I hesitate at the bottom step, then climb.
