Discovery of Giovanni’s Hidden Trail
Pia finally steps back.
It shouldn’t feel like oxygen leaving the room, but it does.
Her heat slips from my skin, her gaze loosens its grip on my ribs, and for a second I swear the whole sacristy expands around me again.
I straighten, force my lungs to move, force my pulse to slow.
I need distance.I need clarity.I need to fucking remember who I’m supposed to be.
But as she turns toward the doorway, something slides into the corner of my vision — a faded curl of parchment sticking out from beneath an old, dust-coated missal on the sacristy counter.
A book Giovanni used.A book no one has touched since he walked these halls.
My body goes still.Completely.
The world narrows to that uneven sliver of parchment—yellowed, frayed, waiting like it has been holding its breath for years.
Pia notices the shift in me instantly. Of course she does.She pauses mid-step, her eyes narrowing just enough to tell me she sees more than I want her to.
I ignore her.For once, I actually manage to.
I reach for the missal and slide the parchment free.
My heart stops.
The handwriting—sharp, slanted, carved into the page with pressure only Giovanni used—hits like a punch to the sternum.
My father’s.Undeniable.Unwelcome.
I haven’t seen it since I was a teenager — since he shoved forged statements under my hand and told me to “sign like aman,”since I learned that loyalty meant lying to the courts to protect a ghost he claimed he’d never met.
Ink ghosts from my past bleed straight into the present.
At first, symbols fill the page—crude sketches of the church’s foundation, hallways missing from any official blueprint, a crawlspace beneath the sacristy, and a passage marked beneath the altar.
And in the center — a symbol.
Not a cross.Not a sigil used by clergy.Not anything meant for holy walls.
A mark Giovanni burned into the underside of his desk the night he made Romeo and me swear we’d die before betraying him.A mark he carved into the crates he shipped out of Palermo when I was fourteen.A mark reserved for only one thing — the secrets too dangerous ever to surface.
My pulse spikes so hard I have to grip the edge of the counter to keep my balance.
This isn’t a note.This is a trail.A warning.A confession he never had the spine to say out loud.
Behind me, Pia moves — too fast, too interested, too knowing.
“What is that?” she asks, her voice soft but edged with steel.
I snap the missal shut before she can get closer.
She freezes.Just a fraction.But I catch the widening of her eyes, the flicker of something she rarely shows—fear.
Good.Finally, something real from her.
Her gaze sharpens, mapping the shift in my expression with surgical precision. She knows it’s important. She knows it’s old. She knows it’s him.
