Page 141 of Safe Word

Cain’s head snapped towards the sound of my voice. His eyes widened, then narrowed into something far more dangerous.

‘Paula?’ he said – but the name was devoured by the bloodthirsty symphony of cheers and boos.

Then the masked man lunged. The blade flashed, and I screamed as the edge slashed a clean, vicious line across Cain’s chest, splitting fabric and skin alike.

The crowd erupted. It wasn’t joy – it was mania.

‘Fuck this shit,’ Gianna snarled and yanked aside the zip of her bag.

I turned half a heartbeat too late.

‘What are you—’

A small, matte-black gun was already in her hand, gleaming wickedly beneath the lights. She lifted it without hesitation and fired three sharp cracks into the air. Ducking instinctively, I pressed my hands to my ears. Smoke curled, the scent of gunpowder biting at the back of my throat.

The world exploded.

Chaos tore through the room like wildfire. People screamed, shoved, clawed their way towards the exits in a stampede of panic and flailing limbs.

I rose slowly, nearly frozen, my mouth forming a horrified ‘O’, unable to process what had just happened – how she managed to sneak that weapon in after we’d been thoroughly checked at the entrance.

‘What?’ Gianna asked, not even blinking, as if this had been her backup plan all along. ‘They know who I am.’

‘Cazzo!’ the guard swore, taking a rapid step towards us. ‘Put that away, Bellini! Your old man will skin me!’

He knew her last name?

He... knew her?

Did I? Did I really?

Before I could even start processing that, bodies slammed into me as they surged past, and for a moment I thought I’d be swept away with them. But I planted my feet, pressing myself against the side of the ring, refusing to move until my eyes locked on Cain.

Gianna was rushed away by the crowd, shouting something about meeting me outside. As if they were really going to let her off the leash that easily after this.

They know who I am, she’d said and the words rolled around my head even as I witnessed Cain clutching his chest, his breath shallow, eyes scanning the chaos. The line of his jaw tightened.

My gaze followed his around the ring. That was when I realised what he was looking for. The masked man was gone.

Then his eyes locked onto mine and he jumped down, closing the space between us in three heavy strides, his arm curving around me protectively.

My hand trembled as I reached for the blood blooming across his shirt.

‘What the fuck are you doing here, Paula?’ he snarled, steering me towards the exit as the crowd dissolved into a sea of bodies and noise.

‘Same to you, D’Angelo! You’re bleeding!’ I shot back, glaring at the spreading crimson stains, each heartbeat pushing more of it out into the open.

‘Surface wounds,’ he muttered, jaw set like iron – as though this were a mere nuisance. A fucking routine. ‘I’ll be fine.’

I snorted a brittle kind of sound, but it cut off just as his arm dropped lower and wound around my waist.

The sheer size of him – hot and solid from the fight – wrapped me in a cocoon of muscle and heat. His skin burned through my clothes, and the scent of sweat and blood curled into my lungs until I couldn’t see the path ahead, let alone care where we were going.

Outside, the cold night air slapped my face, but my head was still trapped in Obsidian – trapped in the echo of fists against flesh, the scent of iron, the violent glint of his eyes under neon lights.

And only then did I realise how much this version of him unnerved me.

How much I wanted to touch him anyway.