Page 60 of The Savage

The phone slips from my hand as the sedative pulls me under, thick and fast.

Through the fog, I picture her. Giada… standing by the window, veil fluttering like a dove’s wing, eyes full of questions she’s not ready to ask.

When I wake, I’ll start getting the answers.

And God help anyone who stands in my way.

* * *

The sedative is a thick, slow river.

It doesn’t drown me so much as make everything float like words through cotton, light through water.

Still, I can hear. That’s the best and worst part. I can hear the world gossiping about me while my hand clutches her rosary, and my broken arm and ribs throb like a motherfucker.

Dante’s voice fills the room like surround sound.

He always talks slower when he’s angry or nervous, like he’s trying to systematically chisel the edges off a thought until it’s safe to touch. He sits on the chair with two legs kicked up, elbows on knees, and starts in – rambling, complaining, prodding at the places I can’t reach.

‘Nonno and Cesare are back in New York,’ he says, voice edged with the kind of mischief I remember from stealing joints and racetrack bets. ‘Old man’s ordered a thousand saints candle for the church in Manhattan and the chapel in Fallbrook and won’t shut up about the plaques.’

What? What the fuck…

The words come in waves, only half making sense.

When he’s not looking, I swallow through the thick fog. The movement hurts in my ribs but it’s good to feel the ache of being alive.

‘He and Maddie are bringing the baby to see you this weekend,’ Dante goes on. ‘She’s riding Cesare’s ass hard about taking your seat for the next race instead of letting the reserve driver. She’s not going to let him out of her sight for the foreseeable.’ He snorts. ‘As if she does anyway. Make sure you don’t drool on your nephew when he comes, capisci?’

Something in me wants to laugh. Nothing in me is light enough to make the sound. My throat tightens. I taste the metallic sedative and the memory of my mother’s laugh like a ghost of her old perfume.

A ghost made so by my Giada?

‘Rafa and Sofiya?’ Dante’s voice dips a little. ‘They’re MIA, which is… odd but the fuck else is new, eh? He texted me last night with a message for you. “Tell that little shit if he wakes and doesn’t thank me personally, I’ll make him kiss the ground he drove on” – and then Sofiya sent a picture of herself wielding something with a fake cigarette in her mouth, looking mean. Romantic, really, but fuck if I understand the hidden meaning in anything those two get up to. Probably some kinky shit that’ll give me hives for a month.’

I almost let the corner of my mouth move. A smile is a betrayal right now. It tastes of stitches and nuns’ habits and memories I’m not allowed to have.

Dante’s cadence changes.

He grows quieter, and that’s when the rest slips in – things that scrape the drilled-out hollows clean. He says the stupid, small things that matter: how pissed he was when I stole the better parts of his car as a kid; how he used to hide my jumpers so I’d have to beg him; how once, during a rainstorm on the coast, we shared a sandwich and he pretended not to know I’d put the last piece in his pocket because I was ashamed to be seen as soft.

The images hit me like shrapnel.

My chest tightens and for a second I feel the panic that made the doctors fuss earlier. I hate him for making me feel it. I hate myself a bit more for liking it. I hate him for reminding him how much I love my family. I hate myself for this stunt I’m forced to pull.

It’s necessary, I remind myself.

‘You know,’ Dante murmurs, softer now, ‘I sat in the paddock the first practice after the crash. I watched the footage loop, and I prayed for you. Not like a sermon – like a selfish prayer. “Bring him back so I can fight him for parking spaces and top podiums.”’ He snorts, then sighs. ‘Fucking selfish. But it was a prayer. Yeah, surprised the fuck out of me too.’

The sedation makes his words stick to my brain like molasses. I wasn’t supposed to hear confessions; I was supposed to hear gripes and tough love.

I keep my face slack, pulse steady on the monitor, but inside my head something unclenches and an ache that isn’t pain comes for me – wet and honest and dangerous.

Dante keeps talking. He talks about the press, Bibiana handling sponsors with more fangs than usual, and how the team is juggling the season without me like a circus, and how Cesare is pretending he’s calm but calls to check my vitals every hour like a man who’s finally learned to love the thing he’s been ordered to protect.

He hits home with an honest shot then, the kind you can’t see coming because you think you’re prepared for every blow. ‘Woke up this morning with an urgency, you know? This need to… to tell you things. Fuck if I know why but it better not be because you’re… you’re… Yeah, I’m not going to fucking say that out loud. Just wanted to tell you I was sorry… for the times I spat on your audacity, for the times I let Orazio ride your ass when I should’ve told him to go fuck himself because I knew you were going through things. For the day Ma died, when I didn’t come when you needed me. I thought… maybe I thought you’d always be there to take the hits so I wouldn’t have to. Seeing you like this—’ His voice cracks. It’s a small sound. A body of a man admitting he’s human.

I wonder if God ever gives out medals for brothers who fail at protection and then try harder. I hate that Dante’s confession makes me want to cry. I hate that I’m proud of him, that the pressure inside my chest eases in a ridiculous, traitorous way.