Page 74 of The Savage

He huffs a sound that isn’t quite laughter. ‘Sounds right. My little angel, always in sync with me.’

I glance at him. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

He hesitates. Then, ‘No.’

‘You’re… impossible.’

‘True. I’m also turned on more than is medically wise, I think. Care to do something about that?’ he says with a smirk.

I don’t rise to his lascivious bait.

Silence stretches, tight and charged between us. The wind from the sea finds us and cools my hot face. He watches me from the corner of his eye like he’s trying not to startle a skittish thing.

‘What is it, Giada?’

I shiver at the name. Shiver from how easy it feels on my skin. ‘How long do you intend to keep me in the dark? I can’t even look up a simple thing.’

‘And you think I’m controlling you with the tablet?’ he says, casual as an observation about weather.

I stiffen. ‘It doesn’t connect to anything.’

‘It connects to you.’ He shifts, pulls his phone out, holds it up. ‘You want the internet? Say the word. I’ll open the floodgates.’

I look at the device like it’s a snake and I’m tired of being Eve. ‘And drown so you can offer yourself as a lifeline?’

‘The world won’t be kind,’ he admits. ‘But I won’t let it eat you.’ He turns the screen over in his hand, then pockets it again. ‘We do this on my terms because my terms keep you breathing. But we’ll do it. You’ll get your answers.’

‘Why?’ The question leaks out raw. ‘Why do you care what I remember?’

He looks at me for a long time, expression stripped of everything but the thing he’s been trying not to say. ‘Because my life doesn’t make sense without you,’ he says finally. ‘And I’m tired of pretending it does.’

His words shake the very foundations of my being.

I should pray… should beg for a sign.

Instead I sit, cornered by a man who makes catastrophe look like salvation, and feel the ground under me tilt towards him. ‘This is… so heavy. So impossibly seismic.’

‘I know. And it was always going to be, bedda. No way around it. The Salvatores and the Mancinellis were the kind of families God warns prophets about, born to clash until the sky splits. We’re the sons and daughters of Cain and Abel, carved into Sicily’s spine, destined to love, then destined to destroy.’

‘Doesn’t that frighten you?’ I whisper.

His dark head shakes, his eyes gleaming. ‘No, baby. Very little does when you have something worth fighting for.’

His confidence is… intoxicating. I feel myself deluged in it and revelling in every decadent drop.

Then he inhales, decides something, and the energy in him shifts – hunter and philosopher to strategist in a blink. ‘All right.’ He pats his thigh once, a sharp little drumbeat. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’

‘What?’

‘A truce,’ he says, and the word fits strangely in his mouth. ‘No more stealing kisses in physiotherapy like teenagers. No more pretending you don’t want what you want. Tonight we do something simple and civilised.’

I eye him. ‘Civilised? You?’

He grins, quick and wicked, and it hits low in my belly. ‘Don’t faint. I’m capable.’ He counts on his fingers. ‘Sunset. The terrace. Candles. Music I won’t hate. And dinner.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ I lie.

‘You will be,’ he says, savage satisfaction in his tone. ‘I’m organising something for you.’