Page 2 of The Savage

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.’