Page 1 of The Savage

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.