I hate that I did that to him.
I hate that I love him enough to do it again.
My fingers tighten around the rosary. The beads bite into my palm like witnesses.
There it is.
The moment.
No more shadows. No more script.
The last lie is already sweating under my skin, begging to be born.
And for the first time since I walked into his church wearing innocence like a costume, I understand exactly how much this truth can burn.
I lift my eyes to his.
I don’t flinch.
“I’m done running,” I say softly—to the room, to God, to the man who tore a kingdom open for me.
Silence answers.
But it’s watching.
Pia Pulling the Thread
He cuts the silence open.
“Did they hurt you more after I came?” Santino asks.
His voice sounds wrong—hoarse, shredded, like someone dragged it over concrete and glass before handing it back to him.
I swallow, my throat scraping raw. “Not… like before.”
His eyes move over me, slow and surgical, like he’s cataloguing evidence. He reads every bruise, every shadow, every place my body still carries fingerprints.
“They just… talked,” I add.
His jaw flexes once. “About what?”
My stomach knots so tight I have to brace my hand against the table to stay upright.
About Giovanni.About my father.About Romeo.About the ledger under his church.About the fact that I’ve been lying since the second I crossed his fucking threshold and called it sanctuary.
I don’t say any of it out loud.
Not yet.
Instead, I reach for the rosary between us. The beads are cold, gritty with old dust. They click softly as I let them slide through my fingers one by one, like I’m counting down to my execution. It feels wrong in my hands—too heavy, too intimate.It should be his. A priest’s. An heir’s. Not the girl who walked into his life with a matchbook and a map.
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
The words come out quiet.
The room still hears them like a gunshot.
Santino doesn’t move.
