The Savage, page 26
She blushes all the way back to the SUV.
The road narrows as Ragusa approaches, streetlights thinning and spacing out as the night presses closer around the car. We’re minutes from the safe house, close enough that my damn foot won’t stop bouncing in anticipation of being alone with my girl.
As days in the life of a mafiosi capo and racing driver goes, it’s been as close to fucking perfect as it can get. And the plans racing through my head of how to end a perfect day are so X-rated I’m surprised I can see straight enough to drive. Especially when Giada keeps glancing from beneath her lashes at me from the passenger seat, like she’s quietly taking inventory, committing me to memory while a probably tamer reel unspools in her head.
My arm throbs, not sharply any more, just enough to remind me it’s healing. I’m back in my body. Back in control. Alive.
‘Next weekend,’ I say, eyes flicking between the road and her smile, ‘I’ll take you to the next race. You’ll get to experience the whole wild ride properly. But no hugging chain link fences and sneaking around pit walls. Won’t be able to concentrate if you do.’
She laughs, tosses her hair, and the sound lands in my chest like a blessing. God help me, she looks breathtaking – soft dress, bare throat, eyes lit with something that isn’t fear for once. Five minutes from the Ragusa safe house. Five minutes from quiet. From walls and guns and order.
Should’ve fucking known that this would be the moment karma chooses to take a shit on my joy.
The first gunshot snaps the night in half. I’m already snatching at her nape, pushing her into the footwell.
‘STAY DOWN!’
Tyres scream as I wrench the wheel, shoving Giada down harder just as glass explodes inward. Bullets chew through metal. The car fishtails, slams hard into the kerb.
The door is open before we stop moving.
My eight capos spill out with machine precision. Luca, who’s been with me since my first F3 test, quiet as snowfall, deadlier. Enzo, a former Carabinieri. Marco, who lost two brothers to the Russians, never forgets a face.
Tito, Paolo, Sandro and Nico, who always travel closest to me as per Orazio’s orders. Then Bruno – old-school Sicilian muscle, scars like a map.
My trust in them is total but still I keep my head on a swivel as they fan out as one.
Silencers cough from the dark. Seriously, silencers? Fucking cowards. What’s the point of fighting if you don’t want it heard?
Must be Vittore’s style, cheap men pretending at professionalism.
I keep myself between the gun fight and the door of the passenger seat where Giada is crouched.
And for the next ten minutes I try to do the impossible and see in the fucking dark.
Ten minutes of hell, where I concede that maybe these bunch of assholes are marginally better than the last jokers Vittore sent.
I hear a curse and see Sandro go down.
Fuck.
Concrete erupts. Muzzle flashes strobe the alley. My men fire in disciplined bursts, covering angles, dragging wounded back, advancing inch by bloody inch.
We’ll be sitting ducks if we don’t move.
‘Cover me. We move back, now!’
Enzo immediately slams his Mack truck body in front of me. Tito joins him in a second without missing a single beat.
I yank open the bullet-proof door and jump onto the seat, slamming it behind me. ‘We’re going out the other side, angel. Be a good girl and don’t scare the shit out of me. You stay where I put you, no questions asked, do you understand?’
Her mouth tightens, fear flashing bright, but she nods once.
I suck in a swift breath, snatch her around the waist and step out, trusting my men to cover me.
I hear a groan from the side – fuck, it’s Marco – just as a shape breaks from the dark ahead, too eager but not fast enough, stepping into the spill of a streetlight like he wants to be seen. Big mistake.
My gun comes up without thought. One clean shot. Dead between the eyes and he drops where he stands.
Giada gasps, a sharp, broken sound, and her fingers claw into my jacket, clinging as I drag her with me.
I shove her behind a concrete pillar, my body folding over hers, blocking every possible angle. Bullets spark off stone nearby, angry and blind.
‘Stay down,’ I snarl, planting myself between her and the dark.
She nods faster this time, her beautiful eyes huge, trusting me with everything she has left.
That trust turns me feral.
I step out into gunfire and become something unholy.
Two shots – throat, eye. Another man drops screaming as Luca takes his knee out from fifty metres. Enzo cracks a skull with his rifle butt. Tito goes hand-to-hand, knife flashing, red spraying the wall like a fresco of violence.
A round grazes my shoulder, hot and familiar. I welcome it, using the rage as fucking fuel.
A man rushes me. I shoot him in the crotch as I snatch at his wrist, breaking it clean while taking his gun. Then I shoot him dead with it. Bruno laughs once, dark and pleased, as he drags another bastard into the open and finishes him.
Smoke thickens as time stretches.
They thought we’d be sloppy. Thought catching us happy made us weak.
Idiots.
These things always feel like forever and not fast enough. I know it’s been less than ten minutes when the night howls with louder noises.
Engines. Then pounding footsteps.
Blessed reinforcements, though a little too late.
Cesare appears out of the dark on my left, cold as winter, already firing to finish off what I think are stragglers.
Right before fresh gunfire erupts.
Fuck. Reinforcements aren’t one-sided. Apparently.
Rafa appears on my right, grinning like the lunatic angel of death he is. Dante strides through smoke and blood like he’s late to dinner, putting single bullets where faces used to be.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ Rafa calls. ‘But better late than dead, huh?’
“Sure. Whatever, pretty boy.”
He grunts and I grin.
Another five minutes of fire and shouts and bones breaking and the remaining men break.
They don’t get far.
When it’s over, the street and alley resembles a slaughterhouse, stone slick with blood, the air thick with cordite and iron. My men hold the perimeter as Cesare gives quiet orders. Rafa wipes blood from his jaw, still smiling.
And then – movement.
One of Vittore’s men, not dead enough, lunges like a fucking zombie off the sidewalk.
At Giada.
I cross the space in a heartbeat. Slam into him. His blade flashes and I catch it, twist, feel tendons pop as I redirect the knife into his ribs. His scream is wet and high.
‘You don’t look at her,’ I snarl. ‘You don’t breathe near her. Not in this life or the pathetic afterlife you’re headed to.’ I put the gun under his jaw and end him.
Silence crashes down.
I turn back… and Giada is caught in vicious tremors that shake her whole body.
Her eyes are fixed on me, but she’s no longer here. She’s somewhere else. Somewhere far and terrible.
‘Giada?’ Panic freezes for a split second before I’m charging towards her, catching her shoulders. ‘Giada!’ My hands and eyes frantically search her body. I swear to fuck, if she’s been hit, after all we’ve been through—
My thought chokes to a halt as I complete the search, telling myself to breathe because I can’t see any blood. But if she’s not hurt, then why—?
‘No,’ she whispers. Then louder, breaking. ‘No – no—’ Her hands fly up and she clutches her head.
‘Giada?’ My hands tighten on her shoulders.
I feel my brothers and soldiers edge in, equally tense.
She gives an inhuman little screech as her pupils blow wide and her breath shatters.
Then she says it.
One name. One truth. ‘Madre Superiora.’
And she screams.
20
RENZO
My boots crunch glass as I drop in front of Giada when she folds.
She doesn’t fall so much as collapse inward. Her knees slam into the asphalt. Her hands claw at her head. The sound she makes doesn’t belong to this moment or this place.
‘Madre Superiora.’
The word tears through the silence left behind by gunfire.
Every Salvatore snaps inward, weapons rising in savage reflex to a possible new enemy.
Hell… no, not a new enemy.
A very old one, lying like a fucking viper in the grass, ready to sink its venom into the Salvatores.
Bodies shift as first my family, then the lieutenants and the capos form a hard perimeter without being told, backs out, eyes sweeping, muzzles steady.
Cesare barks orders low and fast. Dante’s already on comms. Rafa takes one step forward, then stops like it costs him blood to do it.
Sofiya is there too. Of course she is. She never stays where she’s put. She drops beside Giada without hesitation, one hand firm on her shoulder, grounding, protective. ‘It’s okay, sis. You’re okay.’
Giada is shaking with full-body tremors, sobs ripping out of her like something’s being torn loose. Her hair’s come free, sticking to her face, to her wet cheeks. Her fingers are white-knuckled in gravel.
I crouch in front of her, heart punching my ribs hard enough to hurt. My hands hover, useless, afraid to touch her wrong, afraid she’ll break if I do.
‘Giada,’ I say. My voice sounds wrecked even to me. ‘Tesoro. Look at me.’
She doesn’t. She rocks, breath dragging in broken pulls, whispering prayers. Names. Fragments.
I swallow and open my mouth again, panic threading through me sharp and mean.
Then she looks up.
Not at Sofiya. Not at the guns or the men or the bodies cooling behind us.
She looks straight at me.
Relief hits her face first as her eyes flood with fresh, clean tears. The kind that come with truth instead of terror. She reaches out, shaky fingers pressing against my mouth, stopping me cold. ‘I didn’t do it,’ she says.
Her hand is warm and steady and I swallow as she repeats it. ‘I didn’t kill your mother.’
The road goes dead silent. Not a breath or a scrape of a boot. Even the insects shut the fuck up.
She pushes herself straighter on her knees. Sofiya’s hand stays on her shoulder, anchoring her as she turns her gaze outward. She looks at my men now. At the faces carved by grief, loyalty, and years of violence done for blood and family.
She meets Rafa’s eyes. He’s gone still in a way I know too well. Like a man holding himself back from ripping the world open with his bare hands.
‘On my life,’ Giada says, voice rough but holding. ‘And on my honour. I did not kill Isabella Salvatore.’
Her breath catches and then her face changes.
Confusion cracks into disbelief. Disbelief hardens into rage.
‘It was—’ She stops. Swallows hard. Her voice shakes. ‘It was Madre Superiora.’
A low murmur ripples through the circle. Dangerous.
‘She fired the shot,’ Giada says, anger rising now, pushing the fear back. ‘She used me. They all did. They were behind it from the start. The Russians. Nonno. Her.’ Her hands curl into fists. ‘She shot your mother. And then she put the gun in my hands. Told me that if I told anyone… that she and El… Nonno.’ Her voice breaks wide open. ‘Oh God. She said they would kill me too.’
Sofiya tightens her grip. Leans closer. ‘You’re safe,’ she murmurs. ‘You’re free of it now. I promise.’
Rafa steps forward despite himself. His jaw is clenched so tight it looks like it might crack. ‘Everything,’ he snaps. ‘You tell us everything. Now.’
I’m on my feet before the word finishes leaving his mouth. ‘Enough.’
The growl cuts clean. Rafa freezes. His eyes snap to mine, blazing and haunted and agonised, then away. Sofiya shoots him a look that says ‘not now’ and ‘don’t you fucking dare’ all at once.
‘We’re still on an open road,’ Sofiya says coolly. ‘Bodies. Noise. Lights. Vittore isn’t done throwing shit at us yet. We need to move.’
She’s right. I know it. The men know it.
I don’t care.
I turn back to Giada and don’t hesitate again.
I scoop her up off the ground, one arm under her knees, the other locked around her back, pulling her tight against my chest. She gasps, startled, then melts into me, face pressed into my neck.
‘Mine,’ I mutter into her hair. ‘You’re mine. No one fucking touches you.’
No one challenges it. No one even looks surprised.
I carry her to the car myself, open the back door and slide in, hauling her onto my lap and cradling her as close as I dare without breaking her. She curls into me instinctively, her soft arms locking around my neck.
The engine roars and the convoy rolls.
I kiss her temple. Her cheek. Her hairline. Over and over. Grounding her. Grounding myself. ‘I knew,’ I tell her, mouth against her skin. ‘I fucking knew. I never believed it. Not for a second.’
Her breath stutters. She clutches my jacket.
‘My angel,’ I murmur. ‘My sweet fucking angel. What you’ve been through.’
She lifts her head, eyes red, searching my face like she needs to see it there too. I let her and I don’t hide a goddamn thing.
Floodlights cut through the dark ahead and I see steel and stone. Guns waiting and the safe house gates parting. I almost grimace at how close we were to home.
Just before we pass through, she shifts in my arms, her eyes still on me.
And I ask the question tearing a jagged path through me. ‘Giada,’ I say quietly. ‘What else do you remember?’
She doesn’t hesitate. ‘I remember everything.’
My heart slams hard enough to steal my breath. She cups my face, thumbs brushing my jaw, gaze steady now. Clear.
‘I remember you and me. I remember that I belong to you, Renzo,’ she says. ‘Only to you.’
Giada
The safe house seals behind us with a sound that feels final.
Steel and stone and power humming through the walls.
Inside, the Salvatore men station themselves around the room with a deathly stillness that would’ve terrified me if I didn’t remember that these are the kind who have learned to stand still through grief because if they don’t, they break things they can’t put back together.
And a sound escapes me when the deeper thought pervades.
I remember. I remember. Every single one of these men. Some I only saw from afar but one I know like the back of my hand.
I feel every eye on me.
Maddie reaches me first and wraps her arms around me and holds on like she’s afraid I’ll vanish if she loosens her grip. I clutch her back hard, my hands shaking. Her shoulder is warm. Real. She smells like home and fear and relief all mixed together.
‘You’re okay,’ she whispers, voice cracking. ‘Oh thank God, you’re okay. When Cesare said you were under attack—’ Her voice breaks.
I squeeze her tight and nod against her, breath hitching. ‘I’m here.’
Sofiya steps in close, hand firm between my shoulder blades. She leans towards Maddie, quiet, controlled.
‘She remembers,’ she says in her non-dramatic way. And yet it tightens the tension. Worse. Every man in here feels it settle into his bones.
Maddie’s head snaps up, eyes wide as the room changes. She glances at her husband, who nods. Then at Rafa, her blue eyes softening with sympathy but also questioning. Protective. A look that says she’ll go to war with her own husband’s family to protect me.
Just as she’s always done since I was little and she took beatings from our father and grandfather meant for me. Just as she did that day in the church when she snatched the gun from me and screamed at me. Run.
She saved me, even without knowing the full truth.
I hug her again just in gratitude for that moment of selflessness.
But the lethal restlessness intensifies and I know I can’t hold back any longer.
Renzo is a solid watchful pillar behind me, close enough that I can feel him without touching him. He looks like he’s holding himself together with will alone. His jaw is set so hard I can hear his teeth grind.
Dr Conti clears his throat from the edge of the room. ‘She should be examined,’ he says. ‘With the trauma and shock and the memory return like this—’
‘No.’ The word is out of my mouth before I think about it. I lift my head, ignoring the throbbing at my temples, the terror in my heart from experiencing that horrible gunfight. At the time it was so alien, so terrifying. But now, I know it’s par for the course for the famigghia. For the life I was born into. For the life running through my veins. So I shake my head again. ‘No doctors.’
Renzo turns to me sharply. ‘Giada—’
‘I need to say this first,’ I tell him. ‘Please.’
His eyes search mine, frantic and protective, furious at the world. He wants to pick me up. Lock me somewhere safe. I know it the same way I know my own heartbeat.
He exhales through his nose. ‘All right,’ he says, rough. ‘You say it.’
I step away from Maddie and move forward.
No one stops me. The men part without being told and I stand in the centre of the room, knees still weak, spine straight because it has to be.
Then I look at them. Every single one.
‘I know you’ve all been waiting years for this,’ I say. My voice doesn’t shake. I don’t know how. ‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t ease your pain earlier.’
Something moves through the room and I hold my breath a moment before I recognise it. Recognition. Acceptance of my acknowledging their pain. There’s lingering resentment too but I can’t deal with that for the moment.
Renzo speaks before I can spiral. ‘It wasn’t your fault, ragazza,’ he says, jaw tight. ‘Don’t take the blame for it.’
I look at him. Nod once.
Then I start.
‘You already know that the Russians and my grandfather wanted to strike a blow at your family. And Maddie has told you how we came to be there. Mama had gone to light a candle when the shooting started. I… I didn’t know where to run, whether to hide.’ The recollection chills my blood and shames me a little. ‘I was frozen when your… when Isabella saw me standing there,’ I say. ‘She was holding those flowers, and she… held out her hand to me, told me we needed to find a safe place. But… before I reached her, one of the Russians shot her.’
