The spoon presses harder. My eye floods with tears, and somewhere deep in the dark part of me that still thinks logically, I realise he will actually do it.
Then his grip tightens — and the world narrows to that small, terrible point of pressure as he pushes the spoon in.
Chapter 52
SAM
The vase on the windowsill is the nearest heavy thing and violent improvisation is Sam’s second language.
He swings.
The vase connects with a wet, indisputablethunkagainst the man’s temple. He drops the spoon as if it has burned him. For a dizzy second, he falls back, mouth open, eyes widening into the shape of a man who has miscalculated his currency of fear.
Tom gasps for breath as his attacker’s hand is released from his throat.
The assailant recovers faster than a person should. He lunges like a dog with a taste for chaos, grabbing at Sam with brittle anger, fingers clawing for anything to hold. The two of them collapse backwards, a tangle of limbs and rage on the landing. Sam feels a knee slam into his ribs, hears the breath leaving him in a harsh little knock. He tastes copper. He tastes adrenaline. He hits back.
They roll. His attacker lands a punch that stings across Sam’s jaw. Sam is faster, cleverer in the sorts of scrapes that require improvisation and answers with the heel of his hand to the face. He hooks an ankle — the man overbalances. Sam plants a foot and gives him a hard shove.
He tumbles down the stairs in a horrible, ungainly flop. The sound of him hitting wood is grotesque and final: a thud, a soft roll, a silence.
Sam is up instantly. For half a beat he stands on the landing with his heart in his palms, listening for a startled groan or the metallic clatter of someone reaching for a weapon.
Nothing. The body lies silently at the bottom of the stairs.
Sam massages his ribs, still stinging from the blow they received. He’s been in more fights than he can count — the kind that start with a look and end with a broken bottle. He grew up around people who solved problems with fists first and feelings later. He learned early that you don’t always win, but you make sure they remember you were there.
Violence isn’t new to him — it’s muscle memory.
After a final look at the crumpled body at the foot of the stairs, Sam rushes back to the bathroom. “You okay?” he asks.
Tom is still coughing and just nods through it.
Sam scrabbles through the bathroom cabinet like a man picking through pockets after a fight, until his fingers close around a pair of tiny nail scissors. He slices through the tape around Tom’s wrists in one decisive sweep. The skin underneath is red and raw and trembling.
Tom slumps backward against the tiles, still coughing. Sam pauses, allowing him to breathe. His eyes are enormous. “You… how did you—” His voice breaks. “Why are you here?”
Sam thinks fast. The truth that he’d been watching the CCTV, that he’d seen his attacker knock him out in the bedroom, can’t be shared.
“I came back,” he says instead. “James and Pete had a rough day. I came to give you the heads up.”
“What happened?” Tom fires back.
“That doesn’t matter now. How are you feeling?”
Tom’s face crumples into gratitude and something else — confusion, amazement, a raw kind of trust. “Thank you,” he manages.
“Who was that?” Sam asks.
“Daniel…my ex-husband,” Tom admits. “He’s been following me, coming into my house. He’s after money. You were right earlier when you said you saw him trying to get in. I think he has my spare key.”
“Shit, you might need to get the locks changed then.”
Tom almost laughs. “You think?”
So, it was an ex, Sam thinks.Exactly the kind of complication we don’t need right now.
Sam holds out a hand and pulls Tom up. They move to the landing together and peer down.
