Chapter 2 #2
Three Nights Later
Her eighteenth birthday.
Fucking finally.
The city hums below us, unaware that two of its most damned souls are about to play with fire inside holy walls.
Giada’s waiting for me in white. Not the blinding white of purity, but the soft kind… the shade of candle wax melting beneath a trembling flame. Her dark hair spills down her back, her fingers nervously twisting a silver rosary.
‘Happy birthday, beautiful,’ I whisper.
Her eyes lift to mine, all that light and faith and danger trapped in a single look. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ Her mouth says the words but her body sings a different aria.
‘Story of my life.’
We’re in our place. The old cathedral downtown.
The one place our families know well but neither family would ever look because the very thought is sacrilege.
The same church where her father takes confession. The same church where my mother lights candles for forgiveness neither of our families deserve.
The same church where, years from now, everything will go to hell.
But right now it’s just ours.
She moves closer. The sound of her shoes against marble is the only thing keeping me tethered to earth. I can smell her – sun-drenched apples and holy water and something darker, headier.
‘You know what happens if anyone finds out,’ she says.
‘I know.’
‘And you don’t care?’
‘Not even a little bit.’
I touch her cheek, and she leans into it. Her lips part, soft and trembling. ‘Then show me,’ she whispers.
The world narrows to the taste of her breath, the silk of her skin beneath my palms, the quiet echo of our heartbeats. There are no saints watching. Hell, even the devil keeps his distance tonight.
There’s only us – Renzo and Giada – standing on the edge of something neither of us can take back.
The shadows stretch, and candlelight flickers, warning us that we shouldn’t be here in the tiny side chapel hidden behind the choir loft I locked us in using the key I stole and copied three months ago.
Shouldn’t be pressed against the cool marble of the communion rail, where a lifetime of prayers soaked into stone now witness something far more dangerous.
But she’s trembling, looking up at me with those wide, luminous eyes, and I swear the cherubs watching from the stained glass bow their heads – not in judgement, but surrender. And for one breathless moment, time forgets us as I turn a virgin into a sinner.
Her breath catches as I lower my forehead to hers, whispering things no good man should say in a place like this: that I’ve wanted her for a year, that I dream of her mouth saying my name, then wrapping tight around my grateful cock, that I’d burn the whole damn church down before I let anyone take her away from me before I’ve fucked her sweet virgin pussy to hell and heaven and back again.
‘Tell me you want this, bella angel.’
When she whispers, ‘Yes, Renzo… I want this,’ I feel something inside me fracture with need.
I guide her to the cot, gently, reverently, stripping off her dress, pocketing pink panties she’ll never get back. Then I let her cling to me while she learns how desire feels – how my desire feels.
Every sound Giada Mancinelli makes after she surrenders her virginity to me is a prayer turned inside-out.
Every soft plea against my throat is a vow she doesn’t realise she’s making. I murmur against her ear, voice rough, telling her she’s killing me, telling her she’s beautiful, telling her she has no idea what she fucking does to me.
Her hands clutch at my shoulders, trusting, terrified, burning.
And when the moment finally takes her… when she clings to me as if the world is tilting as she comes on my cock for the first time, my own control snaps.
And I shatter with a kind of breaking devotion I didn’t think I was capable of.
I hold her tight, whispering her name like contrition, like worship, like a curse meant only for her.
She buries her face against my neck, shaking, and I breathe her in like absolution.
When it’s over, her softness presses to me, and I revel in her breath warm on my skin, her fingers curled into my shirt as if letting go might undo the universe we just remade together.
I look down at her – flushed, trembling, forever changed – and I say it again, quieter this time, reverent and ruined: Mine.
Everything is different and yet the same in the aftermath.
The city still spins and the world still roars, but I can’t feel it the same way. It’s like I’ve been rewired from the inside out.
She changed the rhythm of my blood that night and every night after that.
Every gear I shift, every risk I take on the track, every reckless decision… it all leads back to that night. The night I touched something pure and ruined it with my hands. The night I decided I’d defy the world for her if I had to.
The night I became hers, even if she could never be mine.
The memory fractures.
A shriek of sound pulls me backwards to monitors beeping and voices exclaiming.
The golden light of the cathedral dissolves into the sterile white of the hospital.
Fuck. I’m dying for real now, aren’t I?
* * *
The Present
Cesare’s voice drifts through the fog first, steady and sharp as always. He’s pacing, probably barking orders even when I’m half-dead. Furia Racing can’t afford a scandal, not with the press circling.
‘The doctors say the concussion was quite severe,’ I hear him say to someone. ‘But they don’t know when he’ll wake again. Or if.’
If.
What a fucking word.
I fight it, dragging myself upward through the murk until my eyelids flutter open. The air tastes like metal and morphine, and the light burns like acid.
But, hey, surprise. I’m alive and I intend to keep it that way.
There’s someone in the chair beside the bed.
‘About fucking time,’ Dante mutters.
I blink, my throat dry as sandpaper. ‘You look like shit,’ I rasp.
His mouth twitches with half amusement, half relief. ‘You should see yourself.’
Then another voice. Older. Harder. ‘Agreed.’
Orazio.
Shit.
The old man fills the doorway like a storm cloud in an Armani suit, his silver hair slicked back, his black cane tapping once against the floor. Even at eighty-three, my grandfather looks ready to gut anyone who crosses him.
‘You were reckless,’ he says flatly. ‘I told you – the British are lucky, not blessed. They build engines like they build their weather – predictable, miserable but stoic. Go at it at your peril.’
I manage a weak laugh that makes my ribs ache. ‘Nice to see you too, Nonno.’
His eyes narrow. ‘You think this is funny? You nearly died. The team could’ve lost millions. The family—’
‘—would’ve survived,’ I croak.
He stares at me a long moment, then sighs through his nose. ‘It is not a theory I’m in the mood to test, stronzo. But I should’ve known better than to doubt. You’re my grandson. Too stubborn to die, too foolish to live quietly.’
That’s the closest thing to affection I’ll ever get from him.
He squeezes my shoulder once – his version of I’m glad you’re alive – then turns to leave. ‘Get well, nupito. You have debts to collect and pay.’
He narrows his eyes at Dante in a look I can’t decipher.
When the door closes behind him, the room exhales. Then one by one my siblings deliver their version of Orazio’s parting words, until only my twin remains.
Dante’s still watching me, a strange look in his eyes.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘You kept saying her name, frate.’
My pulse skips.
I don’t need to ask which name he means. I know. ‘What else did I say?’
Eyebrows so identical to mine they probably contain the exact number of strands arch upwards.
‘Saying the name of the woman who—’ He pauses, his jaw iron-tight.
‘Reciting her name like some fucking prayer, over and over, like she’s your personal saint instead of the woman who put a bullet in our mother isn’t enough?
You want to have said more?’ he barks harshly, unlike the laid-back brother I know.
I swallow hard, staring at the ceiling, listening to the heart monitor click back to its steady rhythm. ‘Nah… guess not.’
‘You’re lucky you knew better than to do it when Rafa visited you. He’d be even more pissed than he already is.’
‘Why is it that I’m the one lying in a hospital bed and he’s the one pissed off?’ I croak.
Dante shrugs. ‘Cesare and Sofiya told him he wasn’t allowed to kill Sebastian for T-boning you on the track. He’s not taking it well.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’
Rafaelle, the enforcer for our family, is unhinged at the best of times.
When one of us is threatened, he goes extra mental.
I probably need to add my voice to the petition to save Sebastian’s life before things get out of hand.
The British kid is a rookie, stupid-eager to please.
As bloodthirsty as every single Salvatore is, he doesn’t deserve to die for his mistake.
But I can’t think past the throbbing in my head. Past the flashes of ghostly white that won’t leave me alone.
She’s haunted every inch of my dreams, and now she’s crept into the waking world too.
I need to do something about that.
Before I lose my fucking mind.
* * *
Nightowl
The feed has been looping for thirty-two hours.
Four different camera angles. Three audio inputs. One fading heartbeat.
Renzo Salvatore – twenty-seven years old, professional Formula One driver, registered capo in a criminal organisation that still believes it can outrun its own ghosts and be born anew. Except ghosts have the habit of hanging around.
And right now, a host of them are gathered around Renzo Salvatore.
Ten hours ago, he was up and talking.
Now, he’s losing the battle.