“I am not hiding,” he says. “I am trying not to damn myself again.”
“Then damn me,” I respond. “I’m already halfway to hell, anyway.”
Silence grows.
Dense, judge-heavy.The kind that decides things without asking permission.
Miguel finally moves past me and sits in the first pew. The wood groans like it resents him for surviving this long.
For the first time, he doesn’t look like a priest.
He looks ancient.
I stay on the step above him.
Half-elevated, half-condemned.
Half-son.Half-executioner.
“He asked me if I believed in justice,” Miguel says.
My stomach tightens.
Giovanni and justice do not belong in the same breath.
I grip the rail.
“Justice,” I echo. “What did you tell him?”
Miguel lifts his eyes to mine.
“That depends,” he answers quietly… “…on whether you’re asking as a priest—”
His gaze hardens.
“…or as the man who’s about to decide how many of his brothers live.”
My pulse thunders in my ears.
“I’m asking as both,” I say.
And I mean it.
Because whatever he’s about to confess—
won’t belong to a priest.
It will belong to a king.
“Then listen,” Miguel murmurs.
“To what your father told me before he died.”
Giovanni’s Last Confession (The Part Santino Never Heard)
Miguel exhales and shifts in the pew. The wood sighs beneath him, like it already knows the weight it’s about to carry.
Suspended between what my father shaped me into and what I swore I’d never become. “He asked me if I believed in justice,” Miguel says.
