Page 249 of Safe Word

Which was why this morning was important. And why I’d asked her cousins to help me set this up.

Symbolism. Closure. Melodrama.

I was clearly a sucker for all three – no wonder I ended up a fucking writer.

She glared at the building ahead, still half-dressed in scaffolding, its bare concrete resting like a corpse mid-autopsy. Nothing had changed since then.

Give or take a blood speckle.

She inhaled deeply, held, then slowly released through her nose. Her fingers trembled once in her lap, then stilled – as if she were holding something restless in her palms.

I glanced over.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

She didn’t answer at first. Just stared at her hands as if they cradled the entirety of her courage.

I covered them with mine. My palm made hers look absurdly small, fragile, almost.

‘It’s okay to be nervous. It’s okay to get closure, too,’ I said, gently. ‘You’re allowed both.’

A week after it happened, she’d told me everything. The belt. The chains. Even the machine she saw when we’d fled that night. The images had etched themselves into my brain ever since.

And it still burned me – that I wasn’t the one who ended him. That it had been left to chance. Gravity. Karma. Whatever.

Alessio was following up. According to his guys, the bastard had a broken leg – he was welcome for that. He must’ve slipped trying to climb up the stairs without railing.

Though… why he’d gone for the roof instead of going outside was still a question mark hanging in the air.

They’d already bagged the finger and the half-burned cigarette butts as evidence. Alessio was digging into Travis’ time in Italy – just to make sure there were no loose ends.

‘It’s not that,’ she said suddenly, ending my spiral.

I blinked, forehead softening as I turned to her.

She’d gone still, as if bracing for something. My arm went instinctively around her shoulders, and only then did she exhale – shakily, as though she’d been holding it in.

I leaned closer, kissing her temple first then murmuring into her ear, ‘Green?’

A small smile broke over her lips. Not quite peace, but close enough.

‘Green,’ she whispered. Then a pause. A swallow. ‘I took a pregnancy test this morning.’

She turned her face up to mine. Eyes wide.

The space between her breath and her words stretched like a held note.

‘It’s positive.’

The world didn’t exactly still – it felt more as if it had been shoved underwater.

The words echoed in my skull, distorted.

And something fierce, almost primal, lit up in my chest. Joy at first – maybe. But it was swallowed just as fast by a sick twist of fear.

What the fuck did I know about being a father?

The one posing as mine had been all fists and silence. Rage and retreat.