Page 79 of The Savage

What I am bothered about is that if I stop pacing, I’ll run back to her door.

If I stop, I’ll see the imprint of my mouth on her mouth.

That kiss is a bruise I keep pressing. Every time I blink I feel it again: the way she rose into me like instinct remembered, the way her fingers bit my shoulders, the falter and then the fall.

I tasted confession on her tongue and didn’t take it, because for once in my life I wanted the thing clean. Not stolen. Not extorted. Given.

It should scare me that wanting her clean and remembering is a more dangerous addiction than taking her dirty and ruthlessly seduced. I’m not a fucking saint so I know I can seduce Giada Mancinelli in five minutes flat.

Have her flat on her back before she can draw breath.

I lean my forearms on the balustrade. Far below, waves comb the black water into shards. I catalogue what I’ve done and the list reads like a case file: crashed and nearly died; woke and stole a nun; bribed a doctor; moved off-grid; turned off my phone; told my family to mind their own business and then made it their business by breathing.

I tell myself it’s temporary. A stopgap. A chamber I’ve carved in time to keep her and the rest of the world from touching long enough for the shape of us to harden.

I’m a Salvatore. Even my tenderness comes with an exit strategy.

The phone I swore I wouldn’t switch back on sits on the console table, humming with a battery like a beating heart. I turned the thing off outside Modena and, for six days, the quiet has been a drug.

No Bibiana pressing sponsor crises into my ear like poison.

No Orazio booming commandment through the receiver.

No Rafa laughing as he threatens to kill me if I die.

No Cesare counting sins and exchanging them for alibis.

Bliss. Isolation. A lie.

With a sigh I turn it back on. The screen lights, once, as if offended by my thoughts. Immediately, it rings. I let it vibrate a second time before I pick up.

‘Tell me you’ve learned how to be boring,’ I say.

Rafa doesn’t bother with a greeting. ‘Did you really think you could pull a fucking stunt like that without us finding out?’

I smile into the dark. ‘Got away with it for six days, haven’t I?’

‘Six fucking days,’ Cesare cuts in before Rafa can snarl again. He’s scarily measured and precise, the ice to Rafa’s fire. ‘You vanished with our medical staff, disappeared from team operations, and turned your fucking phone off. Six days isn’t a success, Renzo. It’s a countdown to complete insanity.’

‘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.’