A warning.A quiet one.A message etched in the air between us:
You’re not moving through this place unseen.You’re walking through a den guarded by cubs who bite.
I tighten my grip on the clipboard I’m pretending to read.
This church isn’t just a holy maze.It’s a battlefield dressed in stained glass and holy water.
And Santino isn’t the only predator inside it.
Not anymore.
The Boy Who Sees Everything
The courtyard should feel open.Safe.Holy.
It doesn’t.
The weak morning sunlight barely tags the stone, scattering pale gold on puddles from last night’s storm.
The air is damp and cold enough to bite.
I step through the archway and inhale deeply, trying to steady my breath after navigating the corridors.
They feel less like hallways and more like a circulatory system—narrow, throbbing with secrets, leading toward a heart I haven’t reached yet.
I tell myself I shouldn’t care who stares at me.I shouldn’t care who fears me.I’ve walked into worse places than this—into mansions with armed guards, into crime scenes, into rooms where the wrong question gets you killed.
And yet—
My chest tightens when I see him.
Guido.
He’s perched on the edge of the courtyard fountain, shoulders hunched, elbows propped against his knees. His fingers drag across the cracked marble lip of the fountain—picking, scraping, repeating the motion like it steadies him. The water behind him reflects a warped silhouette of a boy who has seen far more than any child should.
He’s not looking at me.
He’s watching Santino.
And there’s something about the way he watches his brother that hurts to witness.
Santino crosses the courtyard from the opposite archway, moving like a man carrying weight in his bones—thick, invisible, punishing. His collar is slightly askew, dark hair mussed, jaw tight. He looks like he didn’t sleep… or like he fought some demon in the dark and lost.
Guido flinches.
It’s tiny. Barely a twitch of muscle. The kind only someone trained to read fear would catch.
My pulse stumbles.
Why is the kid scared of him?
Is it the collar?The grief?Giovanni’s death ripping the family apart?
Or is it the darkness under Santino’s skin—the one he tried to choke out of himself last night—bleeding through for this child to see as easily as I do?
A group of parish children run by, giggling as they chase each other through beams of light. Santino stops to kneel next to a little girl whose shoelace has come undone. He ties it with steady hands, gives her a small smile, nudges her back toward the others.
He’s trying so hard to be gentle.
