The Savage, page 10
I kill the chat before I’m tempted to put my fist through the screen.
When I look up, the older doctor is standing in the doorway, clutching a clipboard like a shield. His face pales when I crook a finger at him.
‘How’s our patient?’ I ask, meaning her.
He swallows. ‘She’s almost done.’
‘Good, and her tests?’
‘We’re scheduling an MRI and a cognitive test this afternoon. But this morning, we’ll start simple and gentle, just visual prompts and associative memory work. Nothing invasive.’
‘How much can I tell her?’
‘Enough to keep her calm.’ He shifts, uncomfortable. ‘If you push too hard, it could trigger neurological shutdown or false recall. That would… complicate recovery.’
I drag a hand down my face. ‘So I’m supposed to watch her drown while pretending she’s fine.’
‘I’m saying, Signore,’ the doctor says cautiously, ‘take it easy.’
‘Not my strong suit.’
He half-smiles, nervous. ‘Then perhaps it’s time to learn.’
I dismiss him with a flick of my hand, and he flees, no doubt grateful to still be breathing.
For a minute, I stare at the empty doorway, the echo of her voice still soft in my ears: You’re a terrible man.
Yeah. Probably.
But terrible men are the only ones who get things done.
When the door opens again, I almost forget how to breathe.
She steps in, flanked by the nurses, damp hair coiled beneath her veil, the faint scent of soap trailing in her wake. The habit is clean, freshly pressed, but the fabric stretches tight over her tits just enough for me to imagine what she looks like without it. To remind me what she looks like underneath.
Has her body changed as spectacularly as her face? Have her hips filled out more? Her ass plumper?
Fuck, does her pussy taste like the wild honey I remember? Or wilder still now she’s older?
Her cheeks are flushed from the shower, lips pink from biting them. There’s water still clinging to the edge of her wimple like tiny drops of dew.
And just like that, my blood surges south and I fight and lose a battle with a groan.
She catches the change in my breathing, the way my eyes linger too long, the way my cock surges under the sheets, and colour blooms up her throat. She stares… and stares, then she jerks away, makes the sign of the cross in mid-air like she’s warding off a demon.
I can’t help it. I laugh.
‘God won’t listen to that prayer, baby,’ I say, low and rough. ‘I got in first with mine.’
Her brows knit as she eyes me warily through her lashes. ‘And what, exactly, did a man like you pray for?’
I lick my lips, slow and deliberate, almost wishing I could reach under the sheet, stroke myself. But all it’ll take is one stroke for me to blow like a damn fire hydrant. And as much as I’m dying to, I’m not wasting that load on hospital sheets. Not when the memory of unloading inside Giada Mancinelli has me in a fever grip. ‘Didn’t use words. But I sent a whole load of visual aids so He’s got the picture, I’m sure, nice and clear.’
She sputters, takes a step back, colliding with the junior doctor who’s come in behind her. He catches her by the elbow to steady her.
A dark, feral growl rolls out of me before I can stop it. ‘Take your fucking hands off her.’
The doctor blanches, drops his hands and takes several steps aside.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ I snap. ‘It’s beginning to feel like Grand Central Station around here.’
She looks from me to the older physician, then to the chair he’s indicating, before returning to me. ‘You’re staying?’
‘For the tenth time, I’m not letting you out of my sight.’ I glance at the doctor. ‘With your permission, of course, I’ve got all the information she needs.’
The man hesitates, clearly unsure what that means, then clears his throat. ‘Of course, Signore.’
Giada – Benedetta, whatever she wants to call herself – sits stiffly in the chair beside my bed. The habit rustles softly. Her pretty hands fold in her lap like folded wings.
The doctor pulls another chair around, tablet at the ready. ‘Sister Benedetta, we’re going to begin gently, yes? We’ll start with basic biographical data. If anything feels overwhelming, tell me.’
She nods, still pale.
‘Do you know how old you are?’ he asks.
A wave of sorrow rushes over her face and she shakes her head. ‘All I know is I’m in my twenties.’
The doctor looks at me. Nods.
‘Your date of birth is the thirteenth of April 2000. That makes you twenty-five.’
She frowns faintly at me, mouthing the numbers like a prayer. ‘Twenty-five.’
‘You were born in New York City.’
Her gaze flicks to me. ‘America?’
I nod once. ‘Manhattan. Haven’t you wondered why you have an American accent?’
She frowns. ‘I also speak Italian so I assumed maybe I grew up there?’
‘You’re Sicilian.’
Her eyes widen. Then she takes a deep breath. ‘Do I… have family?’ she asks hesitantly.
The doctor glances at me before answering. ‘Yes. A large one. Three sisters, you’re the fourth. One younger brother.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Four siblings?’ she whispers in awe.
And dammit, at every point since she appeared like an angel at my side, I’ve yearned for all of this bullshit to be an elaborate ruse. But watching her reaction to the information she should’ve had years ago so she could remember, I know she’s not faking it. She’s truly lost all memory of her childhood.
‘Alive and well,’ I say quietly. ‘Two of your sisters – Maddelena and Sofiya – are married to my brothers.’
Her lips part in shock. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Hell of a thing that came with literal fireworks, believe me.’ I let the corner of my mouth curl. ‘So it looks like you and I…’ I shrug, deliberately lazy. ‘…we were meant to be.’
Her jaw tightens. ‘I don’t think so.’
I sigh, then nod towards the doctor before she can tell me once again that she belongs to the Man Upstairs. I’m fast losing patience with that bullshit too. ‘Keep going.’
He clears his throat, pretending not to notice the storm brewing between us. ‘Your parents are alive,’ he says, reading from the chart. ‘We’re still confirming current residence.’
I smile to myself and let that slide.
As a Salvatore, destined it seems with the task of keeping the Mancinellis in line, I know where both her snivelling excuse for a father and her so-docile-she-might-as-well-be-comatose mother is too. And they’re coming nowhere near her in the foreseeable future. If ever.
But she doesn’t need to know that. Yet.
Her gaze returns to me, then the doctor. ‘And what do they do?’
My expression hardens. ‘You don’t need that answer yet.’
She leans forward slightly. ‘You know, don’t you? You know everything.’
‘Not everything,’ I say. ‘But enough to know they’ve got blood on their hands.’
Her jaw drops. ‘What? What does that mean?’
I curse under my breath. ‘Nothing you need to be concerned about.’
‘Then why did you say that? Are you implying they’re some sort of crimin—’
‘Perhaps we move to something else?’ the doctor interjects, looking uneasy.
Her gaze probes mine harder, but not finding what she wants, she purses plump lips I want to bite and lick more than I want my own breath. ‘Fine.’ She exhales sharply. ‘How did we meet?’
I look at her for a long time, letting the silence drag until she fidgets. ‘In church,’ I say finally. ‘But not in the way you think.’
Her eyes flicker – confusion, curiosity, a flick of fear. ‘Church?’ she echoes.
‘Yeah.’ I lean back, watching her reaction like a scientist studying combustion. ‘Let’s just say it wasn’t the kind of prayer that saves souls.’
The doctor coughs into his hand, scribbling something on his clipboard. She stares at me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m insane or dangerous.
Probably both.
And for the first time since I woke up, I feel ruthlessly alive.
Sister Benedetta
The room keeps shifting under my feet, even though I’m seated. It’s the strangest sensation, like the floor has turned to water and I’m sitting in a boat the sea isn’t in the mood to stabilise.
Three sisters. One brother. Alive. Somewhere out there, walking under the same sun that finds its way through these shutters.
And two of those sisters… married to his brothers. Men who look like him, probably command a room like him? I push that thought away, concentrate on the important ones.
‘My siblings. Tell me their names again.’
He repeats them slowly.
Maddelena. Sofiya. Jacinta. Narciso.
The names fit oddly in my mouth, like shoes that aren’t mine but have worn my shape in secret. I mouth them anyway, under my breath.
Maddelena. Sofiya. Jacinta. Narciso.
I try to imagine their faces, their voices. Sofiya sounds sharp and bright; Maddelena sounds softer, heavier with thought. Perhaps I’m inventing them. Perhaps I’m right.
‘Breathe,’ the doctor murmurs from somewhere to my left, like he’s reminding himself too.
And from the man in the bed, the last thing I want to hear. ‘As much as it gives me no joy to say it, all your Madre needed to do was point you to an internet search engine. Your family and mine, we don’t seek the limelight but it finds us anyway. She knew exactly who you were. And she kept it from you by giving you a bullshit name so you’d never learn the truth.’
The words land like cracking thunder.
So this is what it feels like when faith shakes and splinters. It’s not a clean break. It’s lightning in the far distance, a hairline crack you can’t see until you put weight on it, and then it races across the surface and the cup you’ve treasured for years lies in your hands as dust.
Divine design… or damnation?
I search for the part of me that would know the difference, and find only salt and tide filling my throat.
Renzo watches me the way storms watch ships. Patient. Certain. Ready to decide whether to spare or swallow. I hate that he looks beautiful while he does it, that the line of his mouth invites hunger even as it promises ruin.
‘Tell me something true,’ he says softly, like we’ve been trading untruths as a game and he’s tired of winning.
‘What would you like to know?’ I manage.
‘Anything you can’t pray yourself out of. What are you feeling right now?’
That earns him a look. His mouth quirks, and I look away first.
I force my hands to unclench. ‘I’m… afraid,’ I say at last. The confession comes raw. ‘Not for my soul; for my mind. If all this is true… if I’ve built a life on this emptiness and I fill it too quickly, I’m afraid of what will break.’
He nods once, as if he truly understands. ‘That’s why I asked for the doctor’s advice, not your Madre’s.’
The word Madre strikes something sore. ‘Don’t speak of her like—’
‘Like a woman who kept a lost girl pliant with obedience?’ His voice stays level, but I feel the iron under it. ‘I will. Until I know why.’
Because I had nothing else, I want to say. Because when your head is all white noise and your heart is all black water, you cling to the first hand that offers you a rope. Even if it burns.
The doctor clears his throat, drawing my attention gratefully away from him. ‘Sister, would you be willing to answer a few more questions? We’ll keep to gentle prompts.’
Renzo’s gaze flicks to me – your choice – then back to the doctor with warning etched into the set of his jaw. For once, the warning isn’t for me. It steadies me more than any prayer has in weeks.
‘I’ll try,’ I say.
The doctor slides a card from a folder. A church. Not the convent chapel; this one is bigger, older with vaulted arches and a rose window. My chest tightens. I know this place without knowing it; my heart walks its aisles while my head insists I’ve never crossed the threshold.
He watches my pupils, my breath. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’
‘Light,’ I say, before I can swallow the word. ‘There’s always light here when I see it in my dreams.’ My eyes sting. I blink it away.
‘Good,’ he murmurs, encouragement without pressure.
‘Where is it?’
‘It’s a church. In Manhattan,’ Renzo replies.
A glance at him shows a ferocity that sends shards of alarm through me. But within that ferocity, I catch a fleeting glimpse of something else. Something like sorrow.
I want to ask why. I want to hug him. I want to—
The doctor produces another card. A silver pistol lies on a velvet cloth. ‘And this?’
My mouth goes dry. My palm prickles, like I’ve held something cold for too long. ‘No,’ I say, too quickly. ‘Nothing.’
Renzo’s gaze darkens.
The doctor moves on. Photographs of cities, of faces I don’t know but feel the ache of, like names on the tip of my tongue. He asks about food, and I say fennel and orange in winter, and the taste lands in my mouth like a long-forgotten meal. He asks about smells, and I say petrol and lilies, and Renzo lets out the smallest breath, as if a string inside him has loosened by a hair.
‘I’d like to try a sound prompt,’ the doctor says gently. ‘May I?’
My hands knot. I nod.
He presses a button on a small player. Choir – men’s voices, Latin, the Kyrie – rises, holy and lucid. The notes carve my chest open with the care of a surgeon and the savagery of a thief. I’m on my knees in a cathedral again, or still, and I can feel the cold of the stone and the heat of breath against my ear and the way a heartbeat can drown out God.
I make a small and startled sound. Renzo’s hand grips the sheet so hard his knuckles blanch. ‘Enough,’ he barks at the doctor. It’s not loud, but it ends the hymn like a fired bullet.
The doctor clicks the player off. The silence aches and I breathe in, slow. Out, slower.
‘Thank you,’ he says, writing something I can’t read. ‘That’s enough for now.’
I want to be angry with him for stopping when some part of me wanted more, for pushing when some part of me needed less. Instead I’m angry with God for putting me here in the middle of this man’s gravity, and with my own body for wanting what my vows called ruin.
‘Why do you think you can order everyone around?’ I ask suddenly, voice sharper than I intended. The question bursts out like I’ve been holding my breath for years. ‘Doctors. Soldiers. Me.’
He doesn’t blink. ‘Because it’s my right.’
My mouth falls open. ‘Your what?’
‘Power,’ he says simply, as if he’s defining a word for a child. ‘Mine was forged before you put on that habit. It doesn’t vanish because a man in a lab coat frowns at me.’
‘You can’t talk about people like they’re—’
‘Pawns? Weaponry?’ His eyes glint. ‘You’d be surprised how necessary it is in this life, angel.’ He stops, breath hissing through his teeth as he shifts his leg. Something softer enters his voice, at odds with the arrogance. ‘And don’t mistake me. I’m not proud of what got me here. Well, fuck it, that’s a lie. I am what I am. A Salvatore in blood and bone. But I’ll use it to keep both of us alive.’
The doctor clears his throat again, a diplomat stepping between warring states. I feel the oddest relief that he’s here, that someone exists in this room who isn’t tethered to me by history or feral hunger edged in rage.
‘Later,’ he says to me, lowering his voice. ‘If you wish, we can discuss therapy options… privately.’
Privately. A small word, but it throws doors open in my mind that I hadn’t noticed until now. Choice. Agency. Words that weren’t in the Madre Superiora’s vocabulary unless they were followed by a lecture on obedience.
I nod, almost imperceptibly. ‘Thank you.’
Renzo sees it. He doesn’t like it. He leans back as if to put distance between himself and his own temper. ‘You’re not cutting into her head.’
‘No one suggested—’ the doctor begins, flustered.
‘I’ll choose who does what to me and when, thank you, Signore,’ I say, harsher than intended.
The room goes still. And yes, it’s borderline ridiculous to say this to the man who had me kidnapped and is keeping me prisoner here.
So I’m stunned when something passes across Renzo’s face.
Surprise first, then something that looks a good deal like pride. He tips his head, conceding the point with a little flick of a smile.
‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘I prefer you with teeth.’
I flush. ‘I’m not your pet.’
‘Unfortunately,’ he murmurs, almost too low to hear. ‘But we’ll get there.’
I push to my feet, needing air even where there isn’t any. The habit whispers, betraying my agitation and aggravation. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘Everything,’ he says without shame. Then, softer, ‘But I’ll start with your time.’
‘That’s not yours to ask for, not when you’ve taken me against my will.’
‘Then whose?’ he asks, clearly intending to ignore the kidnapping part of my accusation.
‘God’s,’ I say, because it’s the only answer I know how to give that doesn’t slice me apart.
‘Then tell Him to invoice me.’ His mouth crooks. The arrogance should repel me. It doesn’t. It terrifies me because it doesn’t.
I turn away before he can see the wobble in my mouth. The stainless-steel crucifix on the wall catches the light and throws it back at me. For a wild second I want to tear it down and ask aloud why I was saved whatever atrocity befell me only to be thrown to this.
‘Anger is not a sin,’ Sister Teresa once told me, when I confessed to resenting the way the wind crept under the shutters and made my bones ache. ‘It’s the direction you point it that matters.’
