Page 237 of Safe Word

Matt’s gaze followed mine and he swore under his breath. ‘Birdie, goddamn it!’

A fresh wave of dread hit me, slithering down my neck like ice. She’d opened it without thinking about the consequences.

A flash of something caught in the corner of my eye, then. Something black and metallic in the rose bushes. I stretched, picked it up—

‘That’s her phone,’ Matt said, cursing as he snatched it and started flicking through it.

Frustrated, I grabbed the box off the floor and flipped the lid.

The thing inside had long since lost any semblance of warmth or healthy colour – a severed piece of flesh that no longer looked human. It was just a dull, waxy relic now.

I couldn’t remember a single thing about my father except for his knuckles. Those, I would recognise anywhere. If he’d cut off his whole damn hand, I would’ve identified it in an instant.

Aside from the ring still clenched around the stiff digit, nothing suggested it had ever belonged to Ezio.

I frowned. Rage bubbled up.

Was he in on this?

Suddenly, the fact that Vinnie was missing detonated at the base of my skull.

Jesus Christ…

‘What’s that?’ Matt drew me back from the spiral and I clocked a piece of paper tucked beneath the soft bed of the box.

The cheap, glossy paper clung to my sweaty palms as pulled it out and turned it over and over. It was a promotional flier for some new business complex, boasting forty new office leases. Bold letters announced the grand opening, and for some reason, my mind latched onto the address and the construction completion date – one year from now.

The front door yanked open. Alessio stood framed in the murky light, his sharp glare climbing from the box in my hands up the length of me – and then snapping to Matteo.

‘Paula?’ he asked, voice thick with his Italian lilt.

Matteo didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The hard look in his eyes said enough.

‘How did he get in?’ Alessio asked.

‘He didn’t. She went out,’ Matteo rumbled.

With a curse and a heave, Alessio turned towards the staircase, his voice slicing the quiet.

‘Gianna! Francesca!’

Footsteps thundered upstairs.

His daughter emerged first – still in jeans and black T-shirt she’d been wearing earlier, but her hair was pulled back now, eyes wide and sharp with worry.

Francesca came behind her, tightening the sash of a red silk kimono, bare feet slapping softly against the wooden stairs.

‘Pistole, coltelli, primo soccorso,’ Alessio barked – guns, knives, first aid.

They scattered like trained soldiers.

My mouth opened, then shut again.

‘They’re not coming with us, are they?’ I asked, but my voice came out low, hollow.

The box’s weight dragged at my hand as I glanced down at it briefly.

Alessio didn’t answer immediately. He looked at the flier in my hands, tone far too calm for the chaos tightening my chest.