Page 26 of Savage Saint
I exhale slowly, forcing my voice to stay even. “I had a nightmare. Or rather a flashback. Either way. it wasn’t pretty.”
Alessa nods like she already knows. Maybe she does.
She doesn’t react right away, just watches me carefully. “And?”
“He came,” I say simply, because the details feel too complicated to unpack. “Stayed with me.”
“And then?”
“He left.”
Her brows knit together, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Left? As in—”
“As in, he pulled away the second he woke up, like comforting me was a mistake,” I finish, my tone sharper than I intended. There’s something bitter in it. Something I don’t want to examine too closely.
Alessa scoffs, shaking her head. “These men... He’s an idiot.”
A humourless laugh slips past my lips before I can stop it. “Yeah well. So am I.”
She studies me for a moment, her gaze searching. “What makes you say that?”
I push off the counter, squaring my shoulders. “Because I let myself think, even for a second, that I was safe here. That I was...” My throat tightens. The words won’t come out.
Alessa watches me carefully, her expression unreadable. Then, softly, “That you mattered?”
I look away. Because, yeah. That.
I shake off the thought, forcing myself to focus on something else. “It doesn’t matter. He made it quite clear this morning. He doesn’t want me here. I should leave.”
She doesn’t immediately respond. Instead, she just watches me, like she’s deciding something, weighing her words before speaking. When she finally does, her voice is calm, steady, but firm.
“You should stay.”
I blink at her, caught off guard. “What?”
“You should stay,” she repeats, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
I let out a short, incredulous laugh. “You didn’t hear him, Alessa. He’s counting down the minutes until I’m out of here.”
She shrugs, unfazed. “Let him. But that doesn’t mean you should leave just yet.”
I shake my head, trying to make sense of her logic. “Why?”
Alessa places her coffee mug down with a soft clink, her eyes locking onto mine. There’s something unshakable in the way shelooks at me, something that sees past all the barriers I have up, and finds the parts of me I’m trying my hardest to keep hidden. “Because he’s being ridiculous and he knows it. Like it or not, you’re safest with the Saints.”
I blink at her, the name hanging between us, the weight of it pressing down on my chest, thick and suffocating.
The Saints.
The words feel too big, too heavy, too familiar in a way I can’t place. Like a half-remembered dream, a song lyric stuck on the tip of my tongue, a language I should know but don’t. There’s something about it. Something that doesn’t sit right, something that makes my skin itch and my stomach twist. The feeling is immediate, visceral, and it takes everything in me not to react, not to let it show that the mere sound of it has sent a ripple through me, unsettling something deep, something I can’t name.
“The Saints?”
“Yes. The Saints—The Santoro’s.” She watches me carefully, waiting, like she expects something. A reaction. A flicker of understanding. Maybe even fear.
Santoro’s.
The name repeats, echoes, claws at something inside me, something buried.
