Page 34 of The Savage

Accept that this is far from over. I’ll deal with you later.

A little typing bubble appears, flirts with existence, then vanishes. Coward. Or smart. Depends on the night.

‘Comms,’ the lead soldier murmurs to no one, then two fingers press his collar. ‘Delta, confirm.’

A chorus of invisible confirmations ticks through whatever net they’re riding. The leader tips his head, listening, then says flatly, ‘Understood. Orders complete.’ He turns to the squad. ‘Move out.’

They peel off the walls like shadows recoiling from light. Boots. Doors. Gone.

The room exhales a fraction. The old doctor doesn’t. Smart man; he knows storms have eyes and vicious reach.

I look back at her.

She hasn’t moved. Chin high, hands clenched in her lap tight enough to whiten knuckles under the rosary. She won’t look at my bare chest where the sheet has slipped to my waist or the blood at the bandage edges. She’s trying to keep her eyes on a point just to the left of my shoulder like she can make me less real by misaligning me.

‘You’ll hurt yourself,’ she says, quiet, formal, as if we’re strangers in a church. Or the fucking opera. ‘Please lie back.’

I don’t. Lying back means more distance. ‘Say my name,’ I say.

She blinks. ‘I don’t know who you are so how can I know your name?’

I stare deep into green eyes that still… all these years later… mesmerise the fuck out of me. She’s claiming memory loss? Is that really what we’re doing right now?

‘You know it.’ I tip my head, bite back a hiss as my shoulder complains. ‘It’s somewhere in there.’

I drill my stare into her. Nothing.

‘Renzo,’ I rasp.

The name knocks at a locked door inside her and comes back empty. As a Mancinelli, granddaughter of my family’s worst enemy born into the mafioso famigghia, she was tutored in lying with a straight face even before she was out of diapers. Just as I was in extracting deep truths from common and hardened criminals.

My every instinct shrieks she’s not pretending.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘We’ll start simpler.’ I gesture at her veil. ‘Take that fucking thing off.’

Her hand flies to the edge like I’ve asked her to strip and bare her pretty pussy to my eager gaze. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘I want to see your hair.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I belong to God,’ she says, and the certainty in it slices cleaner than a scalpel.

‘Nah, baby. You belonged to me first,’ I say, my certainty just as sharp. Because fuck yes, I will fight Him for this girl. All day every day until eternity. Wherever He’s hidden her for six damn years, it’s over.

I’m keeping Giada Mancinelli if I have to break into heaven itself to reclaim her.

Something flickers through her. A tremor. A memory with no picture attached. She crushes it with a breath. ‘You’re not well, Signore. Your mind is… confused.’

‘I’m not the one cosplaying a saint,’ I snap, as pain and exhaustion begin to sap the life out of me.

The doctor clears his throat, a desperate intervention more than a cough. ‘Signore, per favore, your heart. You need to remain⁠—’

‘My heart’s fine,’ I snap. ‘It’s hers that worries me.’

She rises a fraction from the chair, the urge to flee flashing across her face before duty slams it down. ‘If you continue to distress yourself I will leave.’