Soft words.Crushing weight.
My jaw tightens until it aches. My hands curl, tendons burning in my forearms.
Justice.
My father never believed in justice.
He believed in leverage.In erasure.In outcomes.
Justice was for men without money and power and hands dirty enough to matter.
Miguel swallows.
“He said, ‘If I am judged… will I be judged as a king… or as a man?’”
The air punches out of my lungs.
I close my eyes—
Not because I don’t want to see Miguel.
Because I can see Giovanni.
My father standing exactly where I stood earlier. Palms on the altar. Eyes lifted to Christ. In asking questions, he had no intention of earning forgiveness for.
“Bullshit,” I mutter.
Miguel’s gaze sharpens.
“Giovanni did not come to be forgiven,” he says quietly. “He came to be categorized.”
A sound tears loose from my chest.
It’s not a laugh.
It’s something that broke trying.
“Of course he did,” I breathe. “The devil always wants to know which door he’s supposed to walk through.”
Miguel doesn’t react. He stares at the altar like Giovanni might materialize there if he looks long enough.
“He told me he built his empire with blood,” Miguel continues. “He paid for every corner of this church with blood.” That he stood at this altar to rinse his conscience and taught himself to believe the stains were lifted.
My stomach knots.
“He said there were ledgers,” Miguel says. “Accounts. Records. Money filtered through holy names. Crimes baptized as charity. Enough evidence to destroy not just him—”
Miguel looks at me.
“—but you.”
Cold slides down my spine.
The vault.
The coded pages.
My father’s handwriting crawling through my dreams like rot.
