“But if my father were still breathing,” I say, “we wouldn’t be here.”“He’d have handled this himself.”“Like he handled everything.”
Miguel folds his hands. Not to pray.
To hold something together.
“Giovanni is gone,” I press. “The man who laundered blood under your pews is dead. And his crimes are choking the rest of us alive.”I descend another step.Now we’re nearly level.
“If you protect him now,” I say softly, “you’re not serving God.”
“You’re guarding a ghost.”
The words settle between us like sacrilege.
Miguel studies me as if I’m his greatest sin walking upright.
“You sound like him,” he murmurs.
It lands like a slap.
I don’t flinch.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the problem.”
He exhales—slow, defeated.
“The night your father died,” he begins—
—and my heart slams so hard I feel it in my throat—
“He came to me first.”
My breath fractures.
Of course, he did.
Why bleed into the son you’re grooming when you can rot on the shoulder of a man trained to keep monsters quiet?
I swallow.
Giovanni called me into the crypt.
The quiet.The weight.His hand was on my shoulder.His voice told me there were things I didn’t need to know.
Turns out there were things he didn’t trust me to survive.
“Tell me,” I say.
It comes out sharper than I mean.
Miguel’s eyes flick to the crucifix like it might censor him.
It doesn’t.
Dead men don’t object.
“Don’t make me beg,” I warn. “He’s dead. I’m the one living in his fallout. If you know something that keeps my brothers breathing—or names the one who might stop them—you don’t get to hide behind Latin and robes.”
His jaw tightens.
