Page 45 of The Savage

Renzo

Why? And why now?

Nightowl

Bomb and Balls

Renzo

This is just a game to you? You know the shit storm this will start, right?

Nightowl

Why I did it. YOU. ARE. WELCOME.

My teeth grind and the pulse doubles until I hear its drumbeat in my skull.

Renzo

Thank you. But you owe me big fucking answers. We’re not done.

There’s no reply this time, just the quiet pulse of the connection closing.

Fucking cunt.

I toss the phone onto the bedside table and rub a hand over my face. Rafa’s going to lose his mind when he finds out the woman he’s been searching for, the woman last seen holding the gun that killed our mother, her hands covered in her blood, is alive and sitting next to my bed in a nun’s habit.

Cesare will probably unhinge right alongside him.

Dante – Christ, Dante will kill me for pulling the shit I’m about to pull while still half-broken. As for Orazio, who loved my mother like the daughter he never had, who, along with all of us, turned New York City into a blood and gore arena in retribution for her death, and has been waiting for answers just as eagerly. He’ll flay me so thoroughly, even my ghost will limp.

And… Pops. God, I can’t even think about my father, the man who’s been a very faint shadow of his old self since he buried the love of his life.

Jesus, it’s a motherfucker of clusterfucks.

By rights, I should place a conference call right now, hand Giada over to Salvatore justice. But fuck it, all I’ll be doing is throwing an angel to manic wolves. She won’t survive.

And even if she would…

I won’t.

Because none of that matters.

She’s mine. And I’m not letting her face what’s coming alone.

And the only way I get through what’s coming is if I’m strong enough to fight for it. For her. For the truth.

So I close my eyes.

I force my breathing to match hers.

And for the first time since the crash, I let the darkness come willingly.

* * *

When I wake again, sunlight is bleeding through the shutters in fine, gold threads. She’s already stirring beside me, blinking herself into wakefulness, her lashes catching the light. For a moment, she looks peaceful, almost ethereal. Then I see the panic flicker across her face as she remembers where she is.

Her lips part. She looks from the door to the rosary looped around our wrists, then to me.