She takes one slow step toward me, and for the first time since she entered this church, I don’t back up.
I straighten to my full height — the heir I buried rising under my skin like a ghost I can’t outrun.
Her voice lowers, cautious now. “Santino… what did you just find?”
I don’t answer.I don’t need to.
For the first time since she set foot in this church, she looks at me not like a priest she can manipulate — not like a man she can unravel — but like the threat Giovanni raised me to be.
And as the parchment heats in my palm, one truth locks into place:
Whatever Giovanni hid…whatever lies beneath this church…whatever trail Pia came here to follow — it belongs to me now.
Santino’s First Step into His Father’s Darkness
Pia tries to leave.
Not quickly.Not in fear.She moves with the same deliberate, calculated grace she’s used from the moment she stepped into my life—each step a choice, each choice a strategy she already accounted for.
But she’s not walking out of this room.Not with the parchment burning in my hand.Not with her lies tightening around my throat like wire.
I step in front of the door before she reaches it.
Not out of lust.Not out of anger.Out of revelation.
“Santino—” she starts.
I cut her off.
“Tell me what you know.”
My voice doesn’t echo like a prayer.It doesn’t shake like a confession.It sharpens—low, lethal, unyielding.
The voice of Giovanni’s eldest son.The part of me I swore I buried.
Her breath catches—subtle, but real.
She studies me the way she studies locked corridors and camera angles—precise, calculating, absorbing every shift in power. She sees it. The change. The line I just crossed.
I grip the parchment tighter.It feels like it’s pulsing in my hand, alive with old sins.
“Don’t play with me,” I whisper. “Not now. Not about him.”
Her lashes lower.Not coy.Not manipulative.
Bracing.
She steps closer, and for a heartbeat, I think she might finally tell me the truth.But when she speaks, her voice slips out soft and devastating.
“Santino… you’re not the one in danger.”
A pause.A knife’s edge of silence.
“You’re the one being hunted.”
The words hit harder than any punch I’ve ever taken.
My jaw locks.The room tilts.Cold slides down my spine like a warning I should’ve heard years ago.
