The Savage, page 16
‘Nah, I’d light a candle,’ I say mildly. ‘It’s a miracle.’
‘You smug bastard—’ Rafa starts.
‘Language,’ I say, because I can’t help myself, and because it makes him growl like a dog on a chain.
‘You want language?’ he spits. ‘Here’s language. Orazio has a team ready to yank you home by your pretty hair. The F1 calendar is a knife and you’re lying across it, and the press are calling you Lazarus with a sponsorship deal. Where. Are. You.’
I grin harder in the dark. ‘My little scrambling software fucking you up, frate? You should be proud, you taught me well.’
At his low growl, I laugh. ‘I’ll teach you how it feels to have my boot up your ass if you don’t tell me where you are,’ Rafa barks.
‘I’m somewhere warm. Somewhere the only thing that smells like combustion is candle wax.’ I look at the lemon trees in the courtyard, the way their shadows make lattices on stone. ‘Somewhere with old bones and good doors.’
‘Sicily,’ Cesare says, and it’s not a question.
My skin jumps in mild apprehension I swat away. They’ll find me… eventually. But I still have a day. Two, tops. ‘You always did have a talent for maps,’ I say. ‘I’ll send a postcard.’
‘Don’t be cute,’ he says, and the tiredness under the threat is the thing that scrapes at me. ‘We held hands and sang fucking kumbaya around your bed. You owe us the right to see you’re well. Stop fucking around and come home.’
Silence. I can hear Rafa exhale, Cesare recalibrate, the sound of a lighter and a swear as someone – Sofiya? – steals the cigarette before Rafa can ruin his lungs with it.
Nostalgia seeps through me, but it pales in comparison to the sweet angel sleeping upstairs. The answers I need.
‘No.’
‘No?’ Cesare repeats flat as a dead snitch.
‘I want time,’ I say. ‘Alone.’
‘Bullshit,’ Rafa says immediately. ‘You’ve never wanted time alone. You want an audience when you set the room on fire.’
‘I want a room that doesn’t burn when she walks into it,’ I say, and the words are out before I can decide whether they’re wise.
‘She?’ Cesare’s voice goes soft. ‘Who the fuck is she?’
Jesus. You’re a fucking idiot.
‘Benedetta,’ I toss out, because part of me is perverse enough to play this stupid game with my own brother. There’ll be hell to pay when he finds out.
Or not.
None of us have forgotten he was the first to openly claim a Mancinelli, nearly got himself torched, pitch-forked and ex-communicated from the family for it. I was a lead pitch-fork holder. Now I love Maddie like a sister.
Go figure.
‘And who the fuck is this Benedetta?’ comes a new voice, older, heavier, threaded with the weight of decades. Orazio doesn’t shout. He wraps the line around your throat and waits for you to pull it tight. ‘A prayer?’
‘You’ve never had use for those, Nonno.’
‘Don’t test me, boy. You’re not the first Salvatore to fall in love with a woman who will cost him blood.’
There’s a shock of silence at that.
We don’t say the word ‘love’ in this family unless it’s followed by a show of power, of victory, or of God.
I choose not to answer. He takes my quiet for confirmation. Of course he does.
‘You will come home,’ he says, final. ‘Or I will bring you home.’
‘Two problems with that,’ I say softly. ‘One: you don’t know where I am.’
Rafa snorts. ‘You left a trail of expensive footprints. Only a matter of time, stronzo.’
‘Two,’ I continue as if he hasn’t spoken, ‘I won’t be alone when I come.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Orazio says, voice flint. ‘This family—’
‘This family,’ I cut in, ‘has already made room at its tables for two of our enemies’ daughters because my brothers decided they’d rather be happy than right. Don’t torch your own hypocrisy because my mess looks different.’
‘Mind your fucking tongue—’ he begins.
Rafa laughs once, sharp. ‘He’s got you there, old man.’
‘Shut up, Rafaelle,’ Orazio says without heat, which is how I know he’s rattled. ‘Renzo.’
‘Sì?’
‘Did you take vows on my behalf? On your father’s? On your mother’s grave?’
There’s a catch on that last word; if I were a better grandson I’d let it pass. If I were a better man I’d rip my own tongue out to avoid the thing I’m going to say next.
‘My mama’s grave,’ I repeat evenly, ‘is the reason I want answers from the damn source. Not the half-baked story we all know is bullshit. The problem is it’s become back-burner shit for everyone.’
There’s a crackle on the line.
Rafa’s tone shifts to sharp, defensive. ‘Careful. You don’t get to take swings at the family for trying to survive it.’
‘Survive it?’ I snarl, heat flaring under my ribs. ‘You all made your peace with the version that hurt least. Meanwhile I’m still choking on the parts that don’t add up.’
Silence. Heavy. Loaded.
I drag a breath in, force it out through clenched teeth. The rage is still there, snarling under my ribs, but I cage it. For a moment. ‘I just need time,’ I say, steadier. ‘Time, space, and the courtesy of not being hunted by my own blood. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.’
We all know they won’t give me that grace.
But the lie is worth the try.
There’s a long breath on the other end. When Cesare speaks, it’s the voice he uses when he’s already decided the bad thing has to be done and he’ll be the one to do it.
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Interesting fact though. Dr Conti’s wife’s phone pinged with a call from the Sanctuary of Saint Cecilia. Seems he’s taken an unscheduled trip to Sicily?’
Shit.
So Rafa wasn’t bluffing. Of course he wasn’t. I glance at the corridor as if the walls might tattle. ‘How devout of him.’
‘“Devout” is one word,’ Rafa says, the grin back in his tone. ‘“Extracted” is another. And it looks like some random Madre Superiora has been whisked somewhere quiet after a skirmish at her convent. Know anything about that?’
At my stubborn silence, he chuckles. ‘A burned convent isn’t your style, frate. That was someone else’s flourish. But care to explain why your doctor and a disgraced nun were at the same GPS coordinate I visited over a year ago?’
‘I care to explain nothing,’ I say, but my mouth is dry. My mind isn’t in the room; it’s back in that ash-scarred cloister.
Nightowl better not have taken matters into his own hands. His message flashes in memory: New scenery. Better lighting for interrogation.
I’d thought it was for my interrogation.
Fuck, was it something else I misunderstood?
‘You’re a Salvatore, but you’re not invincible,’ Cesare says, softer. ‘You don’t get to drag some poor chick into the undertow of whatever’s going on with you because you’re bored of the surface.’
‘I’m not bored,’ I grate out, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said all night. ‘I’m—’ What? Obsessed. Starving. Home. The words line up and none of them do the job.
‘—I’m recalibrating,’ I finish. ‘Let’s pretend I’m stopping to smell the roses or some bullshit. Or whatever the opposite of that is. What’s life without a few macabre twists, eh? I can stomach contradictions. Can you?’
There’s a beat.
Then Rafa’s laugh, low and astonished. ‘Listen to the poet. Are you having an existential crisis, baby brother? Remind me, Ces, did you babble crap like this after you drove into the wall in Vegas that time?’
‘Shut the fuck up and don’t encourage him,’ Cesare says, but it’s soft, and I can hear him running a hand over his face the way he does when he’s trying to massage the headache into submission. ‘Ren—’
A sound cuts him off. Not his. Not mine.
A scream. High, jagged and real.
Every muscle in me answers before my head does. The phone’s still at my ear but I’m already moving.
‘Renzo?’ Cesare barks. ‘Jesus, what the fuck was that?’
‘Nothing to worry about. Gotta run.’ I smash the end button and before the phone skids from my hand onto the console, I’m running.
My bad arm flares white-hot pain but my body remembers what it was built for: acceleration. I shoulder the east-wing door and take the corridor in a crude, lurching sprint, one palm on the wall to keep from eating stone.
Her door is ajar, light spilling across the floor.
She’s tangled in the sheets, wrists striking at the air, her voice raw. ‘No, no, tell me she’s… not… oh God. Please—’
‘Giada.’ My voice sounds like someone else’s. I’m there in three strides, catching her hands before she hurts herself, pinning them gently to the mattress, lowering my weight so she feels pressure, not prison. ‘Angel, svegliati. It’s me. Wake up.’
Her eyes slit open, but they’re blind with sleep. She doesn’t see me. She sees the past clawing at the edges of her skull. ‘Blood,’ she says, choking. ‘So much blood.’ She pulls her hands free and stares at them in horror, even though they’re unblemished. ‘My hands – oh God—’
‘Just a dream,’ I lie. I recapture her hands and gather her closer, because telling her the truth now would be cruelty. ‘You’re safe.’
Her breath stutters against my chest so hard, the rosary on her nightstand clicks against the wood with each shudder.
Up close she smells like soap and sleep and the shampoo I chose for her.
Simple scents, yet so intoxicating I could breathe her in forever.
I tuck the hair at her temple back under the wimple she refuses to shed, and something traitorous inside me aches at the thought of slipping it off with my teeth.
Her heartbeat steadies slowly, painfully. She blinks up at me, the focus coming back in jerks. ‘Renzo?’
‘Yeah.’ I keep my voice low. ‘It’s me.’
She swallows and her throat works again. ‘I heard – someone shouted – run.’
Her sister, Maddie. Urging her to flee. To save herself.
Dooming us all to the hell of never knowing.
‘And then…’ Her gaze drops to her hands, still caught in mine. Shame and horror knot her features as if she’s been painted with them. ‘It wasn’t mine. But it was on me. I can’t—’ She closes her eyes, like darkness can unsee what memory shows.
‘Look at me,’ I say, because the only way out is through. When she refuses, I say her name sharper. ‘Giada. Look at me.’
Her lashes lift. God, those eyes.
‘I’m here,’ I say, and realise I’m saying it as much for myself as for her. ‘You’re in Ortigia. In my house. In my arms. Not in any past that can hurt you from the inside. Do you understand?’
She nods, a small, reluctant movement. I ease my grip and her hands slide to my chest with the slow awkwardness of a person embarrassed by need. I cover them with mine and feel the fine tremors still moving through her.
‘Breathe,’ I tell her. ‘With me.’
We do, counting silently, the way I taught myself to ride the pain when it spikes. In, four. Hold, four. Out, six. Her breath stumbles, then learns the count until the hummingbird panic in the room settles to a trapped, wary thing, then to something that sits on the edge of the bed and watches.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers after a while, mortified. ‘I woke you. Did I wake the whole palazzo?’
‘Who gives a fuck if you did? Not me.’ I don’t add that I haven’t slept; that I was halfway to breaking into her room anyway under the pretence of checking the windows or some other crap. ‘Nightmares don’t ask for permission.’
She huffs the smallest laugh. ‘Like you.’
I should argue. I don’t.
‘Do they always come like this?’ I ask.
‘Not always.’ She searches the ceiling as if there might be a clean answer etched up there. ‘Sometimes it’s just a smell – a choir – lilies.’
I can’t help but grit my teeth.
She’s mentioned the lilies before.
I don’t tell her about the lilies my mother brought to Father Calogero, her childhood priest visiting from the Old Country. He’d been the reason she was visiting the church that day she was killed.
‘Sometimes a… a noise,’ she continues. ‘Metal. Cold.’ She flinches. ‘Tonight it was the shout. “Run.” A woman. I think she loved me.’
Maddelena, I think. Or Sofiya. Or someone else I haven’t learned yet in this scavenger hunt of her life. ‘She does,’ I say, not bothering to dance around the verb tense. ‘You have sisters. You’re loved.’
She blinks. Tears well and don’t fall. ‘Am I?’ It’s plaintive and it guts me.
‘By too many people.’ The truth surprises a laugh out of me, soft and ragged. ‘It’s a liability.’
She studies my face as if the answer to all of it might be written where the bruises are fading. Her eyes ask the question her lips refuse to utter.
And you?
The night presses close, waiting. I could lie. I could pivot. I could hand her a neat sentence about protection and duty and the honour of care. I don’t.
‘You hold the key to that door, ragazza.’
The admission slips into the room and sits down with the patience of a saint waiting for a sinner to finish. She inhales like I’ve given her a third choice between yes and no. Which, to be fair, I have with my cryptic as fuck answer.
But… whatever. ‘Go back to sleep.’
The pulse at her throat calms under my palm but she shakes her head.
‘Stay,’ she whispers, so faint I might have dreamed it. ‘Just for a minute. Until I—’
‘Till you sleep,’ I finish, relieved and undone. ‘Yeah.’
I shift carefully, sliding onto the edge of the mattress, my bad arm tucked close to my body and my hand still banding her wrist like a promise that doubles as a shackle. She wraps the rosary around her free hand, but she doesn’t make the sign of the cross.
Instead she curls in, very small, like a woman who remembers how to do this from when she was a girl and slept through storms between people she trusted.
She trusts me. God help us both.
‘Renzo?’ she says, drifting.
‘Mm?’
‘If I remember… if it’s bad… will you—’ She gropes for the word, finds a different one. ‘Will you stay angry?’
It’s my turn to stare at the ceiling. ‘At who?’
‘Everyone.’
I think of my mother on the church floor; of her soft hand that had wrapped around mine a hundred times and would never again. Then I think of the gun that was in Giada’s hand.
I think of Nightowl’s text and the million unanswered questions.
I think of Orazio’s voice, reaching across miles to tug on the leash I’ve slipped. I think of the madness that grew in my chest the first time she smiled in this house like the sun had remembered it owed us something.
‘I’ll aim it where it belongs,’ I say. ‘And do my best to keep it off you.’
Her breath loosens. ‘All right.’
In the silence that follows, I hear my phone on the console in the other room. It buzzes once, twice, three times. I let it. The sea keeps whispering at the windows. The palazzo settles, shifting its old bones.
I sit in the dark and watch the knot in her brow ease, watch sleep come back and take her carefully and gently this time.
When her breathing evens, I look down at our hands – her rosary twined in one, my fingers around the other – and admit the thing no Salvatore is supposed to admit when the game is still on.
I don’t know how to win this without losing something I can’t afford to lose.
For once, I decide not to plan the end at the beginning.
‘Sleep,’ I murmur, useless and necessary. ‘I’ve got you.’
The phone goes silent.
The night doesn’t. Somewhere out beyond the water, the storm that will break is arranging itself, drawing breath.
I lean back against the headboard, keep hold of her wrist, and wait to learn what I’ll be when the lightning finds us.
Giada
I wake before he does.
I lie on my side watching him, the lamp throwing faint amber over his face, making him look both impossibly young and carved from something ancient.
He’s fallen asleep with one hand wrapped tight around my wrist as if he meant to keep me shackled even in his dreams. I should be concerned about the possessiveness of it. Instead, I trace the tiny ridges of callus across his knuckles, and my chest folds in on itself.
My mind will not be quiet and I know in my bones the past is rising. And it’s not good. A silent snort surprises me. Forget good.
Whatever my brain has buried is bad. Very, very bad.
Every prayer I whisper turns into a question.
What if I really am everything I fear? What if I hurt someone? Someone Renzo Salvatore loves? What if that blood in my dream wasn’t symbolic at all?
I ease my wrist free, careful not to wake him, but even that small separation hurts. I fold my hands and press my forehead against them. The words that come out are ragged, nothing like the neat Latin I was taught. ‘Please, Lord, if I’ve sinned, let me remember. Let me atone. Let me do whatever it takes…’
Stop.
The sound that escapes me isn’t holy. It’s small, cracked, helpless. And it wakes him.
‘Giada?’ His voice, low and rough and smoky with sleep.
I scrub at my face. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to—’
He shifts, eyes opening, hair a dark tangle against the pillow. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I was praying.’
‘That’s usually supposed to calm people down.’
‘It didn’t.’ I meet his gaze, the weight of it burning through the dark. ‘Renzo… am I a monster?’
He goes utterly still.
The silence stretches so long I can hear the tick of the clock in the hall. When he finally answers, the pause before his words is the sharpest thing in the room.
