I don’t look at him.
I turn.
Pia stands at the mouth of the corridor, caught between flight and faith. Her hands tremble. Her lips part like she forgot the rest of a prayer. Her eyes track me the way storms find shore.
Terrified - not of me.
For me.
That’s the part that lands where I forgot I still had flesh.
Because she sees it.
The animal under the cassock.The man Giovanni bred in a church to hide a kingdom’s sins.
I stalk back with the gun low at my side, slick with someone else’s blood, every nerve lit and violent under my skin. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t scream.
She just waits.
Like a woman who always knew what she was walking into.
“Santino…” Her voice shatters on my name.
I reach her and close around her wrist.
Not rough.Not gentle.
Possessive.
The way you touch something you survived for.The way you touch something you might lose.
“We’re not done,” I tell her, low and absolute.
Not here.Not tonight.Not with the dead stacked between us and still breathing.
Her fingers curl into mine like it’s a choice.
Like she’s already mine, whether or not she admits it.
I turn toward the dark with her in my wake like a secret I’m ready to ruin myself to keep.
And the war inside me smiles.
Carlo’s Trap & The Final Trial
The silence after the last body hits concrete doesn’t last.
It splinters.
One slow clap cracks through the warehouse, deliberate and lonely, echoing off steel and shadow like applause at a funeral.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
I know that voice before my eyes catch up.
Carlo.
He lounges on the mezzanine above us, one shoulder slouched into a rusted beam like this is a show he paid good money to see. There’s blood smeared up his sleeve, shirt half untucked, hair damp with sweat. The bastard looks pleased with himself.
