Page 4 of The Savage

‘You thought wrong.’ I close my hand around the fountain pen until the nib creaks. ‘If that’s all you have, then you’re a bigger disappointment than I expected.’

His mouth opens, for apology, for prayer, who knows – but before I can react, before I can breathe, there’s a sound behind me. Bootsteps I’d recognise even if I was dead.

Dante.

I plunge the jagged pen into the traitor’s eye socket and liberate his eyeball as my twin stops in the doorway, eyes scanning the blood, the shattered pen, the mess I’ve made of Paolo Moresci.

His mouth tightens. ‘Jesus, Renzo.’

‘What?’ I say as I toss the pen away and wipe my hands on the screaming man’s shirt. ‘I did all the dirty work. You’re welcome.’

‘Yeah, he looks like he sang the whole opera.’ Dante steps around the broken glass, crouches to check the banker’s face. ‘You okay?’

‘No.’

He kicks the priest when he screams again, and the old man passes out cold. Dante looks up sharply from the mess. ‘What happened?’

I straighten my jacket, the leather sticky where ink meets blood, then snatch up my phone. ‘Nothing that a stiff drink and a race win won’t fixed.’

‘You sure?’

No. But I nod anyway. ‘And where the hell were you?’

‘One minute behind you, until I saw some old woman hightailing it out of here. She looked like she was about to summon the Papal army. I had to convince her we were really choir boys and not here to assassinate a priest.’

I grunt.

‘We need to go,’ he says, glancing at his watch. ‘Private jet leaves in forty-five. Cesare will have a coronary if we miss the slot.’

‘Then let’s move.’ I step past him, limping slightly from the kickback of adrenaline leaving my body.

He follows, sneers at the guard who’s still out cold like his master. But just before we hit the elevator, he stops me with a hand on my arm.

‘Frate… you don’t look right.’

I frown. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Renzo.’ His voice goes low. ‘Are you?’

I meet his eyes. My mirror. My other half. The only man who knows how much I’ve been unravelling these past months.

‘Ask me after the race.’

He studies me a beat too long, then grunts. ‘And if you crash because you’re carrying the weight of half of Sicily on your shoulders?’

I let out a humourless laugh. ‘If I crash, I’ll finally get some answers.’

Dante’s frown mirrors mine. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It means,’ I say, pushing open the lobby doors into the sullen Roman night air, ‘if I die on Sunday, I finally get to find out who’s waiting for me on the other side.’

I descend the steps, the marble hot under my feet, the ghost of a name burning under my tongue.

The same name that haunts me every time I close my eyes.

The one I haven’t stopped whispering for six years.

And as I climb into the car that will take me to the airport – towards the jet, the race, the sweet adrenaline and oblivion I only find on the track these days – my thoughts sharpen to a razor’s edge.