4
Pia
A Predator in a Holy Maze
The church is louder this morning than it should be.Candles crackle.Coins clatter into donation boxes.Choir kids rush past me, laughing as if the place wasn’t built on bones.
But beneath the noise—beneath the prayers, incense, and false holiness—there’s a pulse. A living, breathing thing stitched through the stone. I feel it the same way I feel danger: a low hum against my ribs, a warning in the soles of my feet.
I move anyway.Slow.Precise.Every step is a calculation.
To anyone watching, I’m just another volunteer—new, harmless, dutiful. The girl who got “lost” yesterday and needed a priest to save her.
But I’m not lost today.
Today, I’m mapping.
Every archway. Every alcove. Every corridor Santino tried to keep me away from.
My fingertips skim cool stone as I walk, memorizing grooves, shifts in temperature. Old churches keep secrets—my father taught me that long before Giovanni ripped him out of my life.
My heart tightens.Not now.Focus.
I pass a line of parishioners lighting candles, heads bowed in prayer. While they whisper to God, I calculate blind corners and surveillance gaps. Someone can easily slip beneath the overhead cameras because they are angled too high. The sacristy door has a new lock. The kitchen doesn’t.
Three exits on the west side. Five on the east.
I catalog it all.
But I’m not alone.
Eyes drag across my back—not heavy like Santino’s furious, sinful stare last night. These are smaller. Quicker. Sharper.
I inhale slowly and glance over my shoulder.
Dante.
Fifteen, maybe.Tall.Stillness carved into him like a weapon.
He’s not pretending to pray or sweep floors like the other altar boys. He’s leaning against a far column, arms crossed, gaze locked on me with an intensity that lifts the hair on my arms.
He’s not curious.He’s suspicious.A Rivas son through and through.
I force a gentle smile—the same one I used to give cops when they caught me trespassing as a kid. Innocent. Harmless. Sweet.
It doesn’t land.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t frown. Doesn’t return anything.
He just absorbs me—every movement, every breath—with the eerie focus of someone who’s already survived too much ever to be fooled again.
Then, without a word, he turns and slips into the southern corridor, swallowed by shadows like he was never there.
A chill slides down my spine.
That wasn’t a child.That was a guard dog with too many scars and not enough trust left to hide them.
I keep walking, but my pulse ticks faster. Dante wasn’t watching casually. He was tracking. Testing. Evaluating.
