Especially them.
Not tonight.
The only fear that matters is hers.
I picture Pia in concrete coldness, wrists burning, mouth sharp even when someone splits it open. I picture Carlo’s smile—greasy, pleased. The way he’ll circle her like a collector admiring a stolen relic.
The image tightens my jaw until something threatens to break.
He doesn’t get the pleasure of this.
He doesn’t get the air.
I cut across an empty lot, glass snapping under my boots. The factories loom closer—giant carcasses with windows like rotted teeth. Somewhere inside that maze, they’ve wired her straight into my nervous system.
Not for Giovanni’s sins.Not for Romeo’s secrets.Not for the ghost of a ledger-keeper who loved his family too much.
She doesn’t die on an altar she didn’t choose.
My brother’s name crawls up my spine like poison.
Romeo.
The ledger. The shipments. The way his eyes lied even when his mouth didn’t.
Did he sell something he couldn’t retrieve?
Did someone decide she was the price tag?
Does it matter?
No.
I shove in a breath that tastes like metal and rot and river oil.
If she dies because I hesitated—because I stayed on church stone begging a silent God for direction instead of listening to the girl bleeding my name into the pavement—
Then I become Giovanni.
A man who feeds other people to his beliefs.
I stop at the edge of Vescari territory.
The road stretches ahead—straight, narrow, unforgiving. Warehouses stacked like coffins. Cameras tucked into cornerslike insects with lenses. Guns leaning in shadows owned by men who think God retired.
I roll my shoulders, feeling the scarred history of a body that has carried coffins, secrets, and more lives than heaven ever tallied.
“If they wanted a priest,” I murmur, voice ugly and settled, “they should’ve killed me before I learned how to love.”
The word sits heavy in the air.
Love.
That’s the ugly truth, isn’t it?
Not mercy.
Not an obligation.
