The savage, p.1
The Savage, page 1
THE SAVAGE
ZARA COX
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Thank you!
More from Zara Cox
About the Author
Also by Zara Cox
Boldwood Ever After
About Boldwood Books
PROLOGUE
THE MESSAGE JOB
Renzo
There’s a reason I prefer New York to Rome.
NYC doesn’t apologise for what it is, rotten through and through but shiny and fucking wild in its rottenness.
Rome? Rome is worse.
Rome smells like sanctity and rot. It pretends to bless you while fucking you in the ass.
Always has.
Always will.
Tonight it clings to me like a curse as I stalk up the marble steps of the Fondazione San Bartolomeo – a Vatican-front ‘charity’ whose books my brother Cesare and grandfather Orazio Salvatore discovered last week were more fictional than the saints frescoed on its walls.
I’ve been in a foul mood for months. Hell, years if anyone’s counting.
And by anyone I mean me.
But lately, this mood? It feels like a fuse burning under my ribs – too slow to satisfy, too loud to ignore. But roasting me alive, all the same.
Where is she?
I’ve asked the question over two dozen times today alone.
No reply.
The ghost in the wires has gone silent on me.
Nightowl.
Nobody knows who they are, but for years they’ve slipped through firewalls and crime syndicates like smoke, dropping breadcrumbs of truth where they please. They’ve saved my life twice, ruined enemies I never asked them to, and answered just enough of my questions to keep me loyal while refusing the only one that matters.
Where is she?
Nightowl hasn’t answered my last six messages.
It’s almost as if they have a death wish.
I, Renzo Salvatore – twin brother to Dante, one of the three racing prodigies behind Furia Racing, and a senior capo in a mafia dynasty older than half the saints in Rome – may only be third or fourth or whatever in line to the Salvatore mafia throne, but I still grew up with grease on my knuckles and blood-thirst in my heart. And I may have swapped my favourite brass-knuckles for a steering wheel to win Formula One races by day, but I still deliver Orazio Salvatore’s justice by night, and sleep too little in between.
It’s almost as if they have a death wish… when they know that for the last six years, I’ve been searching for a girl the world swears is dead.
That every time I close my eyes, something tightens in my blood, a whisper that feels like a warning.
I suck in a breath and ignore all of it now.
Focus on the job.
I check my surroundings for my twin, then check my watch.
Where the fuck is he?
I have a race to get to. Free Practice One of the British Grand Prix is only a few hours away, but before I strap into a car that can kill me on a good day, I need to put an end to the loose-lipped little worm who decided stealing from the Salvatores was a stellar retirement plan.
Inside, the overpriced marble gleams like fractured bone.
A statue of Saint Michael towers above the foyer, sword raised, smiting a demon whose face looks suspiciously like it’s smirking.
‘Fitting,’ I mutter. ‘Let’s smite a bastard.’
The receptionist, a woman in her fifties wearing an expression carved from old guilt, starts to stand. ‘Signore, the bishop is not—’
I walk past her, delivering a thin sample of my deadliest stare. She sinks back down and reaches for her handbag without finishing the sentence.
The bishop banker’s office is on the third floor. Top of the building accessed via a private lift and glass doors with gold trim.
There’s a security guard outside – or what passes for security around here. At twenty paces away I can see the big guy is too slow.
By the time he rouses his pea brain long enough to sense the menace coming his way, I’ve slammed his head against the wall. Just once.
He drops like wet sand.
The banker – Paolo Moresci – is sitting behind a desk the size of a dining table, writing something with a fountain pen that probably cost more than my racing car tyres.
He looks up and goes pale. ‘Signor Salvatore – I-I didn’t expect—’
‘Me?’ I close the door behind me. ‘Yeah. I get that a lot.’
I move fast, my restlessness seeking desperate release.
His chair tips back and he crashes to the floor in a satisfying heap, but I’m already hauling him up by his collar, dragging him across the desk, slamming him onto the polished surface hard enough to crack the glass pen tray.
He starts to whimper.
Very good.
‘Orazio sends his regards,’ I say, leaning down until he feels every ounce of the anger I’ve been tamping down for half a year. ‘The books you cooked for the Vatican, however, do not send their compliments to the chef.’
His mouth drops open on a loud gulp. ‘Wait! I-I can explain—’
I grab the fountain pen he dropped, admire the weight of it, the gold nib glinting like a promise. ‘Explain into this.’
‘No – please—’
I ram the nib into the desk beside his ear. He screams anyway.
I laugh. ‘You scream already when I’ve barely touched you?’
Another stab, this one through the hand clinging to his desk. He screams harder.
‘That’s more like it. You stole from us. You rerouted funds meant for our Sicilian operation. Made a few people miss some crucial deadlines that made even more people very jumpy.’
Stab, twist, stab.
His whole body shakes like he’s in the middle of an epileptic episode. ‘And worst of all, you thought we wouldn’t notice.’
Stab. Right into his cheek.
Ink and blood spatters everywhere. Fuck, I’ll have to dispose of my favourite Tom Ford loafers. Dante would’ve smirked and told me not to wear them in the first place if he’d been there when I left.
Where the fuck is he?
‘I’ll give it back!’ the bishop sobs. ‘Every cent – every centissimo – just tell me what you want.’
‘You know the problem with you assholes? You sin with greedy hands and eyes wide open because you believe forgiveness is a short knee-to-altar away from a clean slate.’
I pull the pen from his jowly cheek and hold it a half inch from his left eye. ‘You have two choices. Your eyes or your throat. One will kill you, the other will give you a killer patch look you can tell your Vatican cronies about.’
Spittle flies from his mouth as his pleas increase in volume. I glance pointedly at my watch. Slide the jagged pen tip towards his throat.
‘Il mio occhio! Il mio occhio!’
The howl echoes up to the painted saints overhead, and for a second it sounds like the whole damn room is laughing at him.
‘Your eye it is. Now, your offshore accounts and passwords,’ I say simply. ‘All of them. And remember, get even one wrong and I’ll come back, take the other eye.’
He babbles out passwords while his tears drip onto the polished oak. I record everything. Then, because fear without pain is a hollow currency, I take his right hand and pin it to the desk with my forearm.
He starts to struggle. I tighten my grip. ‘Paolo,’ I murmur, ‘focus.’
‘I-I swear, I’m telling you everything—’
I twist his wrist until the bones grind.
He screams again.
Angels stare down at us from the ceiling, their painted eyes full of pity they don’t mean.
‘See, here’s my problem,’ I say conversationally. ‘You didn’t just steal from the Salvatores. Some of that money was supposed to go to a project I care deeply about. So you stole from me. And I don’t take kindly to being robbed before a race weekend.’
Another twist. Crack.
He collapses against the desk, sobbing. Then, through his tears, he whispers something. Something that shouldn’t matter, yet sinks its teeth straight into the place I keep buried deepest.
‘You’re looking for someone. Maybe I can help.’
My blood stills.
Freezes.
Not because it’s a secret – everyone knows I’ve been a man possessed for years – but because he dares bring her into this room. ‘Say that again,’ I murmur.
He looks up, eyes wide, terrified and yet resigned. ‘A girl… You’ve been looking for her for years. I heard things.’
Everything inside me goes black.
Cold and ancient.
‘And what exactly,’ I ask softly, ‘have you heard about her?’
He shakes his head violently, tears dripping onto the ledger. ‘That she is very important to your family.’
‘So?’ I lean in, voice soft enough to flay skin. ‘Half of Sicily whispers about the Salvatores. Give me something I don’t already know. And tread carefully, old man. You’re this close to never seeing again.’
His lips tremble and his voice breaks. ‘The convent… the one in the mountains… it burned down last year. Completely destroyed.’
I stare at him. Then I laugh, quiet and murderous.
‘Old news, stronzo. I knew that the same day it happened.’
He flinches like I struck him.
‘I-I thought—’
‘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.
1
RENZO
It happens at Lap 52. Copse Corner. British Grand Prix.
I always expected my glorious life to flash before my eyes in the seconds before death, especially snuffing it at twenty-seven, the age of the most revered in the Twenty-Seven Club.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain.
Turns out it was all a pile of bullshit.
As the percussive hit from behind sends me careening towards the gravel at insane speed, there’s only one thing that flashes like a fast forward movie reel – her.
The tilt of her chin, the dark veil of her hair beneath a halo of sunlight, the sound of her laughter echoing in a cathedral. Her beautiful pale green eyes. Those sweet, plump, infinitely fuckable lips.
Giada. Always Giada.
The rear axle snaps with a gunshot crack. My car spins once, twice, then slams sideways into the barrier at 190 miles an hour before it launches into the air, suspends for a brilliant cinematic three seconds. Before the world detonates into fire.
Metal screams, my body jerks like I’m in a giant tumble dryer, and the smell of burning rubber and fuel floods my helmet.
The crowd roars in horror – or maybe it’s my screams? – an ocean of sound muted by the concussion ringing in my skull. My head slams against the seat restraint, and everything in me goes white-hot, then nothing but silence – no engine, no heartbeat, no air.
I should’ve been ready.
I’ve flirted with death since the day I could drive, kissed it on the corner of every lap as I ignored brake pedals. But this… this feels personal.
Before it all goes black, I remember the promise I made to that fucker Nightowl – the ghost in the machine who’s been in my ear longer than anyone realises. They promised to help me find her. To trace the ghost who vanished the night my mother died.
They failed spectacularly.
So yeah, if I die now, I swear to fucking God I’ll find their puny ass in the afterlife and haunt them into eternity.
But… maybe this far too early death is okay too. Because I’ll finally see her, even if I can’t touch her and taste her. I’ll know where she is, where she’s hidden all this time. If she’s safe.
Fuck, please God, let her have been safe. Don’t let her—
Static screams in my ear. Then voices. Loud and urgent.
Right. Okay. So I didn’t die. Unless the devil is shouting in my ear?
‘…Renzo – can you hear me? Stay with me, you little shit, stay—’ Rafa’s voice, rough, desperate, cutting through the crackle of radio and the roar of flames. Of course my second oldest brother would threaten me even as worry thickened his voice.
My visor’s gone. Something stings my eyes. I smell blood. Mine.
‘Get the extinguisher – now, now!’ someone screams.
Hands tug at my suit.
Metal shrieks as the marshals tear the cockpit open. Someone curses in Italian, then another voice, lower and colder, cuts through the chaos. Cesare. First born. Underboss. Everlasting pain in my ass.
‘Listen to my voice and hear me well. If you die, Renzo, I’ll drag your soul back and kill you again myself.’
Typical. My eldest brother doesn’t even believe in God but he’s making threats into the afterlife.
There’s movement. I smell smoke. I think I hear Rafa again, his tone splitting between command and panic.
Then someone on the medical team. I think. ‘Pulse is weak – Renzo! Hey, Salvatore! Stay with me. Open your eyes, sir—’
My tongue feels heavy. My throat burns. I want to tell him I’m fine. That I’ve had worse. That the spin was beautiful right up until the impact.
But all that comes out is her name. ‘Giada.’
The medics freeze. Someone mutters, ‘Who the hell is Giada? Does anyone know a Giada?’
If only they knew. That she’s everything.
Angel. Ghost. Soul-wrecker. Fucking traitor.
I drift again. Voices fragment into muffled radio chatter. Helicopter blades thump above me, whipping the smoke into ghosts. Pain pulses somewhere distant, like it belongs to someone else.
‘Move him… he’s burning up—’
‘Christ, he’s still breathing. But that pulse… Shit, it’s thready. We need to go!’
