Behind me, Romeo lets out a wrecked breath—relief and terror braided together.
“You’re making a mistake,” he says softly.
“Probably,” I reply.
I finally let go of his shoulder.
The absence of contact feels wrong, like I just stepped away from a ledge and remembered I can’t fly.
But I move anyway.
I walk toward the back of the house, toward the shattered French doors that used to open onto my mother’s roses and now gape over dead earth. Toward the car waiting beyond the ruined drive. Toward Pia.
Because that’s what this is really about.
Not Giovanni. Not the throne he died clutching.
It’s about the fact that I chose.
I chose Pia in that warehouse. I chose her again in the safe house. I choose her now, in the ruins of everything that made me.
And this lie?
This lie is the price.
“Santino,” Romeo calls after me.
I stop but don’t turn.
“What happens,” he asks, voice shaking, “when they find out anyway? Dante, Guido, Zina, Pia. What happens when this blows up in your face?”
I close my eyes for a second.
See Dante’s fury.Guido’s hurt.Zina’s disappointment.Pia’s eyes when she realizes I kept this from her—remembers her father died for a King my brother helped kill.
My stomach knots.
Then I open my eyes again and keep my back to him.
“Then I’ll take the hit,” I say. “Not you.”
There’s a long, sharp silence.
“That’s not how this works,” Romeo says hoarsely.
“It is now.”
I start walking again.
Every step carves a new line down the center of this family—before this moment, after this moment. Before I picked up my father’s crown of knives and turned it into something else. After I wrapped one of those blades in cloth and hid it behind my back.
The sky is the same flat gray it was when we pulled up.The house is the same wreck.
But everything is different.
By the time I reach the edge of the garden, I can feel Romeo’s stare burning between my shoulder blades.
He knows it, even if I don’t say it out loud:
