Chapter 5 #2
‘I’m not sure what game you’re playing but my patience is wearing thin, sweetheart.’
‘I’m not—’
‘You fucking are,’ I say, forcing breath past my lungs. ‘You’re Giada Mancinelli. And you need to get your sweet ass over here, right fucking now.’
Her mouth trembles. ‘No. And would you please stop cursing so much.’
‘Yes to the first. And if you want the second, you know what to do, Giada.’
‘Please – stop saying that name.’
I can feel my pulse hammering like it’s trying to crack bone. The doctors exchange a glance; one reaches for a syringe, whispers to the other. Sedative. They think they can put me down like a wild animal.
‘Don’t,’ I warn, still without taking my eyes off her. Jesus, I don’t think I’ve blinked since I open my eyes from the way they burn. And I won’t. Not if she intends to run.
‘Signore,’ the younger one says, ‘we have to stabilise you. Your vitals—’
‘Put me to sleep,’ I snarl, cutting him off, ‘and you better fucking kill me. Because when I wake up’ – I lean forward, eyes locking with his until he pales – ‘I’ll peel this place apart, brick by brick, starting with you.
And if she’s gone, I’ll hunt down your family, kill every last one of them. Capisci?’
The room goes silent.
Even the machines hesitate, as if afraid to make a sound.
* * *
The doctors step back, raw fear filming their eyes.
Good. Whichever family member dumped me here… Cesare, Rafa or most likely Orazio, they’ve adequately apprised the staff of the Salvatore power and might.
So I can safely return my focus where it craves to be.
On the woman still standing too far away.
After all this time, what the hell was she doing in that place? And why? The Giada I remember had zero plans of giving herself to God.
Unless under the colossal weight of guilt?
The thought isn’t a sentence so much as a detonation ripping through my skull. She’s five feet away in a habit like a cross between a dare and the filthy temptations entertained at stag dos or red rooms.
Her skin is too pale for my liking, eyes too wide for my sanity. The room reeks of antiseptic and fear. Mine. Hers. Theirs.
Too fucking much.
The younger doctor takes a nervous step forward, still holding his syringe like he’s summoning the courage to tranquillise a tiger. I don’t bother looking at him.
I only point. ‘Out,’ I say, eyes on her. ‘You. The puppy. Get out.’
He glances to the older doctor for permission. The older one with grey at the temples, hands that have cut into bodies and pulled lives back out, lifts his chin a fraction.
‘Go,’ he tells him, voice even.
The door whispers shut behind the kid. Good. One less heartbeat cluttering the air and my thought process.
‘Dottore,’ I rasp, ‘tell her to come closer.’
The older doctor studies the monitor, then me, then her. He knows what he’s seeing. Spikes that will turn into storms if he picks the wrong word. And he knows what will make his very much hanging-in-the-balance life easier.
His gaze flicks to the soldiers hugging the walls. They don’t blink. He turns back to her with a professional calm I almost respect.
‘For the patient’s own good,’ he says gently, ‘come a little closer, Sister.’
My spine stiffens at Sister.
Everything inside me screams but I strive not to show it.
I’m willing to give the Unhinged Salvatore a rest for a second if it’ll get her to move closer, dammit. The veil shadows her throat as she swallows. ‘If the patient calms himself, I’ll pray from here.’
‘No. Closer,’ I growl.
The chair moves closer, swift and silent, conjured by one of the soldiers who has learned obedience and the art of diffusing volatile situations well. I keep an eye on him to interrogate later. He sets it two metres from the bed and fuck, they’re really determined to make me lose my mind.
‘Closer,’ I grit out without looking away from her.
Another scrape. One metre.
‘Jesus Fucking Christ. Closer.’
The legs of the chair bump the bedframe.
A full minute passes while nobody moves. It would almost be comical if entire sanities and families didn’t depend on her next move.
Finally, she jerks forward, a gorgeous feline, with one foot almost fully extended in a balletic arch before she sets it down. Then moves the other.
Whatever Giada Mancinelli has been up to, the innate grace of a ballerina she yearned to be way too long ago hasn’t deserted her.
She still moves like a dream.
And before this mad circus is over, I’ll have her moving that ballerina body right over my cock.
The appendage which I abstractedly note is very much alive and functioning – thank fuck – twitches beneath the expensive cream sheets as she moves closer.
She perches like a bird that knows the hawk is hungry.
I could reach out and touch her now. I don’t. Not quite. But I lift my hand, slow enough not to spook her, and skim the edge of her wimple with my knuckles. Shitty wool hard enough to strip the hide off a donkey rasps on my skin. Holy cloth against unholy man.
Something like a smile twitches at the corner of my mouth despite the burning in my ribs. Of all the things I’ve imagined in six years, this wasn’t one. Her wrapped up like temptation with a halo stapled on. The filthy things I could do to that halo…
I pull my hand back before my heart explodes from a combination of lust and stitches.
‘Who authorised your presence here?’ I ask the soldiers, not her. ‘Who do you answer to?’
The closest soldier keeps his eyes front. ‘Not you, Signor Salvatore.’
I let the silence stretch until it threatens to choke him. ‘That wasn’t the question.’
‘We don’t answer questions,’ he says after a beat. ‘We execute them.’
‘Cute,’ I mutter. ‘Phone.’
No one moves. I turn my head slow and menacing until the doctor flinches. ‘My phone.’
He hesitates. One of the soldiers taps his ear, listening to ghosts, and then, clearly annoyed, pulls a handset from a sealed pouch and drops it on the tray beside me.
My thumb is clumsy with tape and disuse, but muscle memory wins. I unlock it, ignore the flood of unread messages, and open the only app that matters.
There’s a single message waiting.
Nightowl
YOU’RE WELCOME.
The sound that rips out of me is part fury, part snort, and it hurts like the worst torture. I type with deliberate slowness.
Renzo
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.’
‘No, you won’t. Because if I die, my blood with be entirely on those pretty little hands.’
The monitors shrills as if daring her to try. The doctor lifts both hands like he’s calming a brawl. ‘Please. Sister. Stay. Only a little longer, sì?’
Her gaze flicks to the door, to the empty corners where soldiers had been, to the doctor, to me. She sits again. Barely. The chair protests with a whisper.
‘What did the soldiers tell you after I passed out?’ I ask, voice lower now.