My father didn’t just die.He turned into a file someone’s been chasing ever since.
“What ledger?” I ask, flat.
Carlo laughs and steps back into view.
That slow, crawling smile stretches across his face like rot.
“The one Giovanni used to erase men like your father from history.”
My breath catches despite every wall I’ve built.
He crouches until we’re eye to eye, forearms resting on his knees, knife loose in his hand.
“You really thought we wouldn’t piece it together?” he asks softly. “Church tunnels. Dead accountant. A priest suddenly ripping through my boys like he’s got hell wired into his fists.”
He tilts his head, studying me like I’m a puzzle he’s already solved.
“Giovanni framed your father, sweetheart. Used him, then buried him. And you walked into that church thinking you’d dig the truth out of stone.”
My stomach goes ice cold.
“Bullshit,” I whisper.
Carlo shrugs. “Truth doesn’t care if you like it.”
He rises, rolling his shoulders like this is a warm-up, not an interrogation.
“If you didn’t have it,” he says, louder now, “the Bishop wouldn’t have murdered two of my scouts in under thirty minutes.”
My throat tightens.
Two.
Not one.
Two men died because of me.Not collateral.No mistake.
Santino slaughtered them.
Because killing for me is easier than denying me.
I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste iron.
Carlo leans in again, so close the stink of cigarettes and coffee-stale breath fogs the air between us.
“We want your father’s proof,” he says, voice low, intimate. “The ledger. The money. The names. The blood-trail that finally ends Giovanni Rivas.”
His eyes glitter.
“And we know exactly how to trade for it.”
He straightens and drifts to the side, toward a metal cart I hadn’t registered through the adrenaline blur.
On top of it—
My phone.
Cracked.Awake.Waiting.
