Page 137 of Safe Word

‘What if I run into him and he’s with another woman?’ I whined, despising the reflection staring back at me from the mirror, looking as if I were ten seconds away from stomping my foot like a petulant child.

I shut my eyes tight.

I’m not going to keep orbiting a fantasy persona who had already walked away, I told myself.

‘It’s a full circle,’ Gianna then said. ‘You started your journey there, you’ll end it.’

I stared at the red gloss smeared at the corners of my mouth. The mirror held my gaze without mercy.

‘With blood,’ I whispered, more to myself.

‘Esattamente.’ My cousin grinned through the line – exactly.

Cain D’Angelo stepped into the ring like a sinner approaching judgment. Clad in black, with hands bound in blood-hungry wraps, his every movement reeked of arrogance – of pride.

The oldest sin.

The crowd cheered as if he were worthy. As if he hadn’t defiled something sacred.

But I knew the truth. He was filth. Blasphemy draped in skin.

I watched from the shadows of my office that overlooked the ring, where the neon didn’t reach. Red and blue lights blinked like sirens across his body, bathing him in the colours of bruises he hadn’t yet earned. He moved with the ease of a man unafraid of consequence.

He had broken her. He had taken her.

He had marked her in places that always belonged to me.

And now he stood in the ring like a god among mortals, while my little lamb wandered poisoned through the wilderness, whispering his name like a prayer instead of what it truly was – a curse.

But to truly set her free – to cleanse her flesh and blood so that it might receive me – his shadow had to be purged. Purity demanded sacrifice, and he had offered himself willingly. The fool walked into my sanctum like prey led to slaughter, and I hadn’t even needed the snare I’d laid out to bring him here.

‘You’re up, boss,’ Marco murmured in Italian from behind me.

He never asked questions. That was why I kept him, why he was the only soul permitted to stand this close to the altar. He didn’t ask why I wanted this fighter, why I had circled his name on the list.

The reason was divine in its simplicity: I needed to scrub him out of this world. And that world would know that Cain D’Angelo had a dark streak once they learnt he’d died in an illegal fight. Some would condemn him, others would love him all the more for it.

Reaching for the mask, I drew it over my head. I never wore the same face twice – but this one… this one was special. An angel’s visage, radiant gold and holy serenity carved into a smile that thirsted for blood. A sanctified executioner’s face, hungry to be baptised in Cain’s desolation.

Descending the steps slowly, I let each bootfall echo like a drumbeat in a funeral procession. The crowd roared around me – faceless sinners howling for blood, blind to the reckoning unfolding before their eyes. Unaware that I had built this place to cleanse the world from those like them.

The neon licked the surroundings like the flames of hell itself.

And there he was: the beast I had come to wrangle – and in some way, the reflection I had spent a lifetime denying.

I saw it in the way his jaw clenched, in the black fire smouldering in his eyes, in the stillness that wasn’t calm but coiled fury waiting for any reason to burn. It was a language I knew by heart – rage dressed as control, sin disguised as discipline. I knew it because it was my native language.

We were forged from the same metal. Violence was our inheritance, written into the marrow of our bones long before either of us had had the choice to resist it. We were born to hurt, to break, to claim. Only… I had learnt how to mould it – how to cut away the rot and leave only devotion. With every sacrifice I had brought to Him.

I’d washed myself of the world’s filth: the weakness of mercy, the corruption of doubt, until what remained was purpose and piety.

But he still wallowed in it. He wore the grime of this world. He dragged it into his bed and branded it into her skin, mistaking desecration for salvation.

He was the monster who’d never sought cleansing.

As he shifted his stance, muscles rolled beneath his skin and sweat clung to his shirt. Filthy.

I felt the twisted thrill of comprehension rattle through me in that moment – he was not my opposite. He was my unsuspected twin, stripped of faith, order, shackled to his flesh, while I had transcended mine.