“It happened anyway,” I say, quieter. “It crept in through cracks I didn’t know were there.”
My fingers curl around the rosary again—not in prayer.
In confession.
“In the confessional,” I murmur. “In the way you listened when I spoke. In the way you never rushed me. Never made me feel small just because I was bleeding on the inside.”
I swallow.
“In the way you fought men twice your size like they were nothing when they touched me wrong.”
My voice trembles.
“And in the way you remembered things, I didn’t think mattered enough to matter to anyone.”
His jaw tightens.
Not anger.
Control.
Memory crashes into me without warning—the alley behind the church where he shoved his jacket into my hands like it was the only warmth left in the world; the vault door trembling under his palm; the wild, violent hope in his eyes when the ledger proved real; the way his voice broke in that warehouse when he thought death was seconds away and said I love you like a truth he never meant to survive.
“All of it,” I whisper. “Every fucking moment—”
My lungs burn.
“By the time I had the evidence, I didn’t know what to do with it anymore.”
He shifts.
One step.
Not toward me.
Not away.
Balanced on the knife-edge between.
“Because if I used it,” I say, “you would hate me.”
Air leaves my chest in a sharp ache.
“And if I didn’t… my father’s ghost would never let me sleep again.”
My mouth twists into something that might once have been a laugh.
“So I did what I always do,” I whisper. “I ran.”
My eyes sting.
“I tried to save you by leaving you.”
There it is.
The truth beneath the ruins.
Santino finally straightens.
