Doesn’t take it back.
“I don’t know the full truth yet,” he adds. “But I know this—whatever happened back then, Romeo’s fingerprints are on it. Giovanni buried it inside him the same way he buried everything else.”
The walls close in.
My father’s face crashes through my mind—laughing, bleeding, reaching.
My mother’s voice.
My scream lodged somewhere in my body that never let it escape.
And now it isn’t just my past.
It’s his.
And it isn’t just Giovanni’s ghost between us anymore.
It’s his brother.
I stagger back.
Santino reaches for me.
I don’t know if it’s to catch me—or keep me from falling into something neither of us can survive.
My heart slams against my ribs like it wants out.
Because loving him isn’t just dangerous now.
It’s war.
And the man I may have to destroy—
Is his blood.
And standing in a safe house that feels anything but safe, with tears drying on my face and Santino’s shadow curled around my soul, one truth claws up my spine and locks into place:
The truth didn’t set me free.
It armed me.
We will not fight future battles with secrets. We will fight them in blood.
23
Santino
Returning to the Kingdom's Grave
The Rivas mansion isn’t a house anymore.It’s a carcass picked clean by time and cowardice.
My boots crunch over gravel that used to be a polished drive, over shards of marble and glass that once reflected my father like a king in a fairytale mirror. The east wing is a blackened rib cage against the sky, charred beams reaching upward like fingers begging God for mercy and getting silence instead. Windows gape open or stare blindly from behind plywood bandages. The wrought-iron gate hangs crooked on one hinge, like it tried to flee and failed.
Pia walks beside me with her coat drawn tight, shoulders hunched against the wind that slices straight through fabric andbone. She doesn’t ask for my hand. She just stays close enough that our shadows knot together across dead leaves and fractured stone. The woman who walked out of hell with me doesn’t flinch now — but I feel every step she doesn’t say out loud.
“This place feels wrong,” she murmurs.
Soft. Sharp.
