Page 247 of Safe Word

‘Don’t,’ he rasped, stepping sideways, careful. His boots skimmed past a thick smear of blood trailing across the uneven floor like a dragged scream.

But my eyes had already found him.

A figure lay twisted in the middle of the room, caught in a grotesque sprawl – as if dropped from a height.

Blood pooled around him like a dark halo, seeping into the cracked cement.

The tattoos on his face were almost unrecognisable beneath the splatter, but I noticed them.

Travis was so mangled I couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. His skin looked like it had been dragged through thorns; ripped, scratched, shredded.

Still leaking.

For a moment, everything went silent. I didn’t hear the incessant dripping of a pipe, the ragged sound of Cain’s agonising breath, even my own pulse. All I could see was the ruin of my past, and the silence that followed it.

A sickened tremor rolled through me when I looked at his slack mouth, the blood still pulsing sluggishly from the gashes that had stolen his voice for good.

Horror clawed up my throat, meeting the salt of tears I hadn’t realised I’d shed.

I should have looked away. I should have felt only pity, or rage, or grief.

But beneath the nausea and the shaking, something darker stirred – something quiet and dangerous in its stillness.

Relief.

Because my monster was finally gone. And for the first time in years, the world didn’t taste like blood.

Outside, the night broke open with noise again as people shouted, boots trampled the gravel. Life came back in fragments, like someone turning the world’s volume too fast. Cain and I both looked up at the same time.

Matteo and Zio were staggering towards us, half-carrying, half-dragging someone between them.

Only when they got close enough did I register a mop of blood-stained blonde hair hanging dishevelled over his face.

‘Fuck! Vinnie?’ Cain’s voice cracked, his eyes scanning him from head to toe, lingering on his hands.

I realised why, then – he’d seen the box. Seen the finger. He must’ve thought it belonged to his friend.

I looked at Vinnie's hands myself and exhaled in relief when I counted all ten fingers.

But he looked as though he’d been mauled. Blood was crusted over one eye, lip split wide, shirt torn and soaked. Yet the bastard still managed to lift his head and grin stupidly.

Bruised lip, broken tooth, purpled jaw, one eye swollen shut – but he smiled like he’d just won a simple bar fight.

‘Took you long enough,’ he wheezed.

‘Zio found him on the roof,’ Matteo muttered, crouching as he eased Vinnie’s battered frame onto the gravel. ‘Unconscious.’

‘I was just resting my eyes for a bit,’ Vinnie rasped, trying for cocky but wincing hard as he slumped down next to a boulder.

Then he looked at me. The grin dropped as his gaze traced my split lip, the dark marks blooming across my half-naked body.

Gianna was already throwing a blanket over me as Cain set me down onto the ground.

Aunt Francesca was right behind her, cracking open the first-aid kit with surgical focus.

Vinnie didn’t take his eyes off me. Then he glanced at Cain.

‘He really did a number on you two,’ he murmured, voice low and strained.