Page 208 of Safe Word

Ezio stiffened. Matteo grinned slightly, but it died soon.

I stared at Paula’s side, the way her jaw flexed, the way her body angled between me and him like a fucking shield.

‘Leave,’ she hissed, each syllable a blade poised at his neck. And the tone suddenly switched to a much darker note. ‘If I see you near him, I’ll put a bullet in your head.’

Ezio tried to pivot towards her, still wearing that worn-out smirk.

My knees shuddered when her voice dropped an octave. A calm that only came from hell.

‘Don’t push me. I’ve had a very… bad… week,’ she said, and I could hear the tremor beneath it – but she held. ‘If anything happens to Cain, I’ll find you.’

‘She’ll have company, too,’ Matteo added darkly, stepping in closer.

I couldn’t breathe.

Too much – all at once – was trying to rip through my chest: fury, disbelief, grief, fucking lust. This woman… she’d layered it all under the rising weight of something I’d never felt: safety.

Home.

Not because I couldn’t fight.

But because for the first time, I didn’t have to.

Ezio’s gaze slid across the room, weighing the heat pointed at his skull.

He didn’t apologise – he never did. Just buttoned his parka and adjusted the sleeves as if he’d been inconvenienced by a dinner party gone cold.

Turning slowly, he headed for the door with that same unnatural calm.

Just before he stepped over the threshold, he paused. Looked back at me.

And in a voice that left frost trailing behind, he said, ‘Good luck finding Cecilia without me.’

As though he’d wrenched Mum’s ghost out of an unmarked grave.

Then he stepped out.

I nearly lunged after him, fury spitting sparks down my arms – but Paula’s fingers slipped into my hand, mooring me back to breath’s rhythm.

No words. Just soft pressure.

Just home.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The building wasn’t finished yet.

Concrete pillars jutted out against the Roman night, half-formed and skeletal, suspended between creation and decay. Fitting. I was bringing something sacred here. Something that shook with borrowed divinity, begging to be remade in pain. Offered not just to the saints, but to the part of Him that smiled behind the veil.

Wind slid through the hollow floors and windows, whispering like a congregation caught mid-prayer, ready to bear witness. I stood in it and listened. The silence between each gust held meaning. It sounded almost holy.

I hadn’t been here long. Found this place by accident – though accidents weren’t real when He guided your feet.

I’d been heading to the hospice in Tivoli when I’d come across it. Dragging the ghost of D’Angelo’s past from whatever piss-limbo had refused to claim it.

I had kept the old man breathing longer than mercy ever would, because necessity was holier than pity. He was rotten, even his body was breaking up under the stench of it. But, once he had served his purpose, that decay would serve mine. He was to be offered to the saints, just like the others.

Tugging on the chains I’d looped around the naked beams above, I tested their bite. The metal groaned obediently in response. The hungry shackles caught the low light in glints, as delicate as broken glass.