Chapter 19
RENZO
‘I will,’ I murmur, my mouth brushing her ear, ‘if you take off your panties and give them to me. Right now.’
Giada goes crimson so fast it’s almost audible – a blooming rush of colour that shoots straight to my cock.
Her head whips around. ‘Renzo—’
My single sharp whistle disperses the crew in seconds. I turn back to her, brow arched. ‘Quid pro quo, sweetheart. I promise you a ride. You trade me the scrap of silk hugging that sweet pussy. Fair trade.’
She swallows, trembling not with fear, but with the kind of anticipation that makes her thighs press together.
Then, slowly… slowly… she looks around again, and when she sees we’re alone, she reaches under her dress.
I watch every second of it, the parting of her knees, the soft bite of her lip, the way her breath stutters as she works the fabric down. Off one heeled foot, then the other.
Then she places the warm scrap of lace into my palm.
I lift it to my nose, inhale once, sharp and deep. Fucking heaven.
I slide them into my pocket like a weapon. ‘Good girl,’ I say, voice low enough to vibrate through her. ‘Now come watch me show off.’
* * *
We might bicker and we might butt heads like brothers do, but one thing I’ll always be eternally grateful to Cesare for is enabling this dream to come true.
The Furia racing track he had built in Monza is absolutely world class.
And today when the world sharpens and my engine screams and the air tastes like fuel and speed, I want to howl just for the sheer exhilaration of it.
My girl’s gaze is glued to me like a brand as I strap in, and something dark and triumphant wakes in my chest.
She wants to see me drive?
I’ll give her something she’ll feel between her legs for a week.
I take my time driving out of the garage to the replica start-finish straight.
A shrink would probably have a field day with me because I don’t feel even an iota of fear or anxiety getting behind the wheel for the first time after my crash.
Maybe something in me is broken. Or maybe this is just how racing drivers are built – wired to flirt with death until it stops feeling like a stranger.
Also… I’m a Salvatore. I’ve stared down men with knives, guns, vendettas older than I am. I’ve watched bodies hit marble floors and kept eating my dinner.
A track doesn’t scare me.
A track is honest.
So I pull up to the mark, watch the red lights flick one by one up to five.
My middle finger hovers over the throttle. And when the lights flash green, I launch.
The car surges forward, a beast unchained, and every corner, every apex, every controlled slide is me carving her name into asphalt. I take the replica Ascari like a dare, Parabolica like a winning bet, and when I shoot down the straight I swear I can feel her pulse from the pit wall.
Because she’s there.
Not a blur of colour or a VIP silhouette behind smoked glass, but Giada – standing at the chain fence, hair loose, hands curled tight as she laughs and cheers like she’s forgotten how to be careful.
That smile hits harder than any podium roar ever has.
Harder than the hundreds of thousands who scream my name when I win.
Harder than the millions watching from sofas and bars and yachts around the world.
I’ve raced for trophies. For legacy. For blood.
But this – this audience of one – undoes me.
She’s missed so many races. Years of circuits and seasons she should have been at. And something in my chest aches with the vow that forms sharp and absolute: she won’t miss another one. Ever.
Sure, I’ll have to erase a few men from the earth to make that happen.
But isn’t that exactly what I was born for?
When I roll back in, helmet off, sweat still dripping down the back of my neck, she’s waiting. Eyes bright, breathless, and a little undone.
Just the way I fucking like her.
‘Enjoyed yourself?’ I ask, swiping a hand through my hair.
She nods, slow, dreamy, almost reverent. ‘You… you’re extraordinary.’
The pride hits hard. The hunger hits harder.
‘Come here,’ I say.
And the second she’s within reach, I pull her behind one of the trailers, into the quiet shadow where engines hum like a private soundtrack.
She plasters herself harder into my body and I snag her around the waist.
‘Hands on me,’ I order softly.
She does, palms flattening against my chest, sliding up my collarbone to curl at the back of my neck. Her dress brushes my thighs; her breath hits my jaw.
I press her back against the warm metal and lean in until her body melts into mine. ‘You’re trembling,’ I murmur.
‘You know why.’
I ghost my mouth over her throat, her shoulder, the place where her breath turns into a sound she tries to swallow.
‘Want to feel how much you undo me?’ I whisper.
Her fingers clutch my shirt. ‘Renzo—’
‘Tell me.’
‘I…’ Her voice breaks. ‘I need you.’
That does it.
My hand drops between her thighs, sliding under her dress – and she gasps, tries to bite it back, fails beautifully.
‘So wet for me,’ I breathe against her ear. ‘And all I did was drive.’
Her knees buckle. I catch her easily, grip unyielding.
‘Say it again.’
‘I need you,’ she whispers, trembling.
I cover her mouth with mine, slow at first, then deep, consuming, hungry enough to shake her entire body. Her hands fist in my shirt; mine slide along the inside of her thigh, teasing, learning, claiming.
I fuck her into her shaking, flushed mess, ruined in the best way.
When she comes hard and breaks apart in my arms with a soft, desperate cry muffled against my throat, I hold her through it, savouring every second.
Then I kiss her temple.
‘Good girl,’ I murmur. ‘Now let’s get you out of here before I fuck you again on the tarmac.’
She blushes all the way back to the SUV.
* * *
The road narrows as Ragusa approaches, streetlights thinning and spacing out as the night presses closer around the car. We’re minutes from the safe house, close enough that my damn foot won’t stop bouncing in anticipation of being alone with my girl.
As days in the life of a mafiosi capo and racing driver goes, it’s been as close to fucking perfect as it can get.
And the plans racing through my head of how to end a perfect day are so X-rated I’m surprised I can see straight enough to drive.
Especially when Giada keeps glancing from beneath her lashes at me from the passenger seat, like she’s quietly taking inventory, committing me to memory while a probably tamer reel unspools in her head.
My arm throbs, not sharply any more, just enough to remind me it’s healing. I’m back in my body. Back in control. Alive.
‘Next weekend,’ I say, eyes flicking between the road and her smile, ‘I’ll take you to the next race. You’ll get to experience the whole wild ride properly. But no hugging chain link fences and sneaking around pit walls. Won’t be able to concentrate if you do.’
She laughs, tosses her hair, and the sound lands in my chest like a blessing. God help me, she looks breathtaking – soft dress, bare throat, eyes lit with something that isn’t fear for once. Five minutes from the Ragusa safe house. Five minutes from quiet. From walls and guns and order.
Should’ve fucking known that this would be the moment karma chooses to take a shit on my joy.
The first gunshot snaps the night in half. I’m already snatching at her nape, pushing her into the footwell.
‘STAY DOWN!’
Tyres scream as I wrench the wheel, shoving Giada down harder just as glass explodes inward. Bullets chew through metal. The car fishtails, slams hard into the kerb.
The door is open before we stop moving.
My eight capos spill out with machine precision. Luca, who’s been with me since my first F3 test, quiet as snowfall, deadlier. Enzo, a former Carabinieri. Marco, who lost two brothers to the Russians, never forgets a face.
Tito, Paolo, Sandro and Nico, who always travel closest to me as per Orazio’s orders. Then Bruno – old-school Sicilian muscle, scars like a map.
My trust in them is total but still I keep my head on a swivel as they fan out as one.
Silencers cough from the dark. Seriously, silencers? Fucking cowards. What’s the point of fighting if you don’t want it heard?
Must be Vittore’s style, cheap men pretending at professionalism.
I keep myself between the gun fight and the door of the passenger seat where Giada is crouched.
And for the next ten minutes I try to do the impossible and see in the fucking dark.
Ten minutes of hell, where I concede that maybe these bunch of assholes are marginally better than the last jokers Vittore sent.
I hear a curse and see Sandro go down.
Fuck.
Concrete erupts. Muzzle flashes strobe the alley. My men fire in disciplined bursts, covering angles, dragging wounded back, advancing inch by bloody inch.
We’ll be sitting ducks if we don’t move.
‘Cover me. We move back, now!’
Enzo immediately slams his Mack truck body in front of me. Tito joins him in a second without missing a single beat.
I yank open the bullet-proof door and jump onto the seat, slamming it behind me. ‘We’re going out the other side, angel. Be a good girl and don’t scare the shit out of me. You stay where I put you, no questions asked, do you understand?’
Her mouth tightens, fear flashing bright, but she nods once.
I suck in a swift breath, snatch her around the waist and step out, trusting my men to cover me.
I hear a groan from the side – fuck, it’s Marco – just as a shape breaks from the dark ahead, too eager but not fast enough, stepping into the spill of a streetlight like he wants to be seen. Big mistake.
My gun comes up without thought. One clean shot. Dead between the eyes and he drops where he stands.
Giada gasps, a sharp, broken sound, and her fingers claw into my jacket, clinging as I drag her with me.
I shove her behind a concrete pillar, my body folding over hers, blocking every possible angle. Bullets spark off stone nearby, angry and blind.
‘Stay down,’ I snarl, planting myself between her and the dark.
She nods faster this time, her beautiful eyes huge, trusting me with everything she has left.
That trust turns me feral.
I step out into gunfire and become something unholy.
Two shots – throat, eye. Another man drops screaming as Luca takes his knee out from fifty metres. Enzo cracks a skull with his rifle butt. Tito goes hand-to-hand, knife flashing, red spraying the wall like a fresco of violence.
A round grazes my shoulder, hot and familiar. I welcome it, using the rage as fucking fuel.
A man rushes me. I shoot him in the crotch as I snatch at his wrist, breaking it clean while taking his gun. Then I shoot him dead with it. Bruno laughs once, dark and pleased, as he drags another bastard into the open and finishes him.
Smoke thickens as time stretches.
They thought we’d be sloppy. Thought catching us happy made us weak.
Idiots.
These things always feel like forever and not fast enough. I know it’s been less than ten minutes when the night howls with louder noises.
Engines. Then pounding footsteps.
Blessed reinforcements, though a little too late.
Cesare appears out of the dark on my left, cold as winter, already firing to finish off what I think are stragglers.
Right before fresh gunfire erupts.
Fuck. Reinforcements aren’t one-sided. Apparently.
Rafa appears on my right, grinning like the lunatic angel of death he is. Dante strides through smoke and blood like he’s late to dinner, putting single bullets where faces used to be.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ Rafa calls. ‘But better late than dead, huh?’
“Sure. Whatever, pretty boy.”
He grunts and I grin.
Another five minutes of fire and shouts and bones breaking and the remaining men break.
They don’t get far.
When it’s over, the street and alley resembles a slaughterhouse, stone slick with blood, the air thick with cordite and iron. My men hold the perimeter as Cesare gives quiet orders. Rafa wipes blood from his jaw, still smiling.
And then – movement.
One of Vittore’s men, not dead enough, lunges like a fucking zombie off the sidewalk.
At Giada.
I cross the space in a heartbeat. Slam into him. His blade flashes and I catch it, twist, feel tendons pop as I redirect the knife into his ribs. His scream is wet and high.
‘You don’t look at her,’ I snarl. ‘You don’t breathe near her. Not in this life or the pathetic afterlife you’re headed to.’ I put the gun under his jaw and end him.
Silence crashes down.
I turn back… and Giada is caught in vicious tremors that shake her whole body.
Her eyes are fixed on me, but she’s no longer here. She’s somewhere else. Somewhere far and terrible.
‘Giada?’ Panic freezes for a split second before I’m charging towards her, catching her shoulders. ‘Giada!’ My hands and eyes frantically search her body. I swear to fuck, if she’s been hit, after all we’ve been through—
My thought chokes to a halt as I complete the search, telling myself to breathe because I can’t see any blood. But if she’s not hurt, then why—?
‘No,’ she whispers. Then louder, breaking. ‘No – no—’ Her hands fly up and she clutches her head.
‘Giada?’ My hands tighten on her shoulders.
I feel my brothers and soldiers edge in, equally tense.
She gives an inhuman little screech as her pupils blow wide and her breath shatters.
Then she says it.
One name. One truth. ‘Madre Superiora.’
And she screams.