“Get it together, Pia. You know why you’re here.”
I won’t allow the lie I’ve been drowning in — the lie named Santino Rivas — to follow me into the dark.
Not where I’m going.Not beneath holy ground.
The Descent Beneath Holy Ground
The side entrance of the church yawns open just enough for me to slip through. I move fast and silently, shoulders brushing cold stone as I ease the door shut behind me with a soft click.
The storm outside muffles everything—thunder rolling over the city like distant artillery, rain hammering the roof in relentless sheets. Inside, the sound becomes a low, steady growl settling deep in my bones.
I cross myself out of habit.
Not faith.
The sanctuary stretches before me, cavernous and dim. Rows of empty pews stand in rigid lines like soldiers awaiting orders. The air smells of incense burned hours ago and old wood soaked in decades of whispered sins.
Lightning flashes.
For one sharp heartbeat, the stained glass windows erupt in color—scarlet, gold, deep blue—saints and martyrs staring down at me with painted eyes. The shadows they cast spill across the pews like torn cloaks, holy figures turning into specters.
My pulse trips.
Not from fear.
From anticipation.
This is what I came for.
Not the priest with wolf eyes.Not the kiss that still lingers like heat on my mouth.Not the way his hands trembled after he almost killed for me.
I’m here for what Giovanni buried.
I move down the center aisle, boots whispering across worn stone. At night, the church feels different—less sanctified, more honest. The crucifix above the altar seems to stretch longer in the dark, as if even Christ reaches for something hidden beneath his own stage.
My fingers slip into my pocket, brushing the folded map again. A reminder. Proof I’m not imagining all of this. Proof my father wasn’t just telling bedtime stories when he warned me about men like Giovanni burying truths where daylight couldn’t reach.
“Under the altar,” he’d once said, voice low, smoke curling around his words. “That’s where kings keep the sins they can’t afford to confess.”
Back then, I thought he was being dramatic.
I didn’t know he was giving me instructions.
Lightning flashes again, bathing the altar in stark white. Up close, the carved wood looks almost alive, shadows pooling beneath it like a mouth waiting to open.
My pulse kicks harder.
I step behind it.
The altar feels huge, heavy, immovable—but I know better. Nothing built by men is permanent. Not their power. Not their churches. Not the kings who pretend to rule beneath them.
I crouch, sliding my hand along the underside until my fingertips catch the faint seam I marked earlier—just a woman “praying too long” when no one bothered to look twice.
There.
A loose board.
Exactly where my father said Giovanni hid things he couldn’t bury in daylight.
