Doesn’t move.
The silence turns heavy. Almost unbearable. It presses on my ribs from the inside.
I see it in my head—the sound of his footsteps walking out of the safe house and out of my life. The door opening, closing. The hollow afterward. The way my lungs will have to remember how to breathe without the weight of him in the room.
I brace for it.
So when a sound finally cuts through the quiet, I take a second to understand it.
A chair scrapes against the floor.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Not retreating.
Coming closer.
My grip tightens on the rosary until the beads bite into my skin, and I keep my eyes up, locked on him, as Santino Rivas closes the distance between us one step at a time.
Santino’s Forgiveness… and One More Secret
Santino stops right in front of me.
So close, I can see the small cut on his lip I hadn’t noticed before. So close I can smell blood and smoke and the faint ghost of soap from a life that’s already burned down.
He reaches for the rosary in my hand.
I don’t resist.I don’t breathe.
He takes it from my fingers like he understands what it costs me to hold it—like he knows it isn’t just beads and thread.
It’s a grave marker.
He wraps it around his knuckles instead of his wrist, winding it tight the way men wrap chains when they plan to break something with their hands.
Then he cups my face.
Not like he’s claiming me.
Like he’s steadying me.
His thumbs wipe beneath my eyes, slow and deliberate, as if I might crack if he pushes too hard.
“I don’t hate you.”
The words land wrong at first—like they belong to someone else.
My body refuses them.
My chest locks around them.
“I never will.”
Something inside me collapses.
Not a fracture.A failure.
