Not because he’s wrong.Because I still haven’t forgiven myself for that night.
Giovanni was shaking. He was rambling. Giovanni confessed things. I had told myself it was fevered nonsense. They sounded like the words of a dying king.
Romeo swallows, jaw flexing.
“There was something else that night,” he says. “Something was missing when they moved his belongings. Something Dad always kept on him.”
My skin prickles.
I know that tone.I know that pause.
“And whoever stole it…” Romeo continues, “…knew exactly where to look.”
A pulse cracks through me—sharp, electric.
I push out the question, "What did they take?"
Romeo hesitates.
Then:“A key.”
My world tilts.
Not a house key.Not a locker key.Not a safe-deposit key.
His key.
The one he wore on a chain under his shirt, tucked close to his skin. The one he once told me was, “closer than God, more dangerous than blood.”
A key I’d only seen twice.
A key no one else was supposed to know existed.
Emiliano once warned that you should not turn a key unless you want to watch the world burn.
My throat goes dry.
“Why would anyone take that?” I ask, even though deep down I already know the answer.
Romeo steps back from the sarcophagus, expression flint-hard.
“Because Dad used it to access the vaults beneath the church,” he says. “And someone wanted what’s inside more than they wanted him alive.”
The vaults.
My chest constricts.
I've never been down there.I couldn't go.
Giovanni used to say some doors were built to stay shut — that even kings didn’t open certain doors without consequence.
Romeo doesn’t explain further.
He doesn’t need to.
Because suddenly I’m back in that room on Giovanni’s final night—his voice cracked with pain, breath rattling, eyes glassy with fever:
Sins buried beneath us.The dead never stay dead.Make peace with the darkness, Santino. You were born from it.
