Page 241 of Safe Word

Was she indoors? Outdoors? Was she cold?

An ugly, evil voice in my head whispered then: if I didn’t get to her in time… something worse than the cold would happen to her.

‘Stop with the fucking knee,’ Matt snarled through clenched teeth. The engine roared louder as he hit the accelerator.

I stopped my leg from moving – I hadn’t even noticed it.

My mind dragged back to that box.

That finger. The ring. The way the flesh had stiffened as if it had been severed a few hours ago.

It wasn’t Ezio’s despite the family crest. I knew that in my bones.

Whose, then?

The answer kept circling back until it landed where I didn’t want it to.

Vinnie.

Christ…

The thought pushed in like a blade into my chest. The silence in the car only made it worse, amplifying the churn of remorse clawing up my throat.

I should’ve sent Ezio back to the hospice with a taxi. I should’ve known something might happen to him.

I shut my eyes tight, his easy smile flaring behind my lids.

He’d always been the one to keep the world steady while I was falling apart; cracking jokes, dragging me out for drinks, patching up the chaos I’d left behind. And I’d repaid him by tuning him out, too wrapped up in my own obsessions to see anything else.

Now all I had left was a piece of a body, and the gnawing realisation that maybe the last time I’d heard his voice was the last time I ever fucking would.

Anger climbed up to meet the guilt until it was near-blinding. I gripped the seat beneath me so hard the leather bit into my palms.

If Travis had done something to him…

My vision flared red for a moment.

The part of me that had buried too much past trauma already whispered the truth I didn’t want to hear.

Vinnie might be dead.

The sceptic in me clawed to be let out. The hum of the engine masked the echo of his growl.

What of the ring then?

I dialled the hospice one-handed, not trusting my thoughts to stop spinning.

A nurse always patrolled the night. One picked up on the third ring.

She checked. Ezio was asleep.

Alive, then. Intact, or he wouldn’t be sleeping. But my chest didn’t ease.

So the digit wasn’t his.

My jaw flexed as I cut the call. Hollow thudding reverberated in my ribs.

‘Hm?’ Matt nodded a question at me.