Page 110 of Savage Lover

Seb watches, so quiet he’s not even breathing.

When I place it down successfully, he lets out a long sigh.

“It worked!”

“Of course it did,” I say, as if I never had any doubt at all.

“Alright,” Seb says, practically rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Punch in the code.”

“I thought you had the code?” I say, blankly.

Seb freezes by the vault door.

“What?”

“I thought you were gonna memorize it?”

“You never told me that.”

“Yeah I did. Remember? It started with 779 . . . something.”

Seb stares at me with a horrified expression.

I laugh. “I’ve got the code, ya dummy.”

“That’s not funny,” he says.

“It was for me.”

I punch in the code: 779374.

I hear four distinct clunking sounds as the bolts retract. Then I pull the vault door open.

I’m hit with the smell of stacked up bills. Cash has a distinct odor: ink, cotton, leather, grease, dirt, and a hint of metal, from coming in contact with coins.

But Seb and I aren’t here for bills. It’s too heavy to haul out that much cash.

We want the diamond.

I take the drill out of Seb’s bag so we can start drilling into the lockboxes. I drill out the locks, then Seb checks the contents. Ingots and gemstones go in the bags. Everything else stays behind.

“Don’t take anything sentimental,” I tell him. “I don’t want some gangster coming after us ‘cause we stole his grannie’s wedding ring.”

There are two hundred and eleven lockboxes in the vault.

In the hundred and eighth, I find what I’m looking for.

It doesn’t look like much: just a plain wooden box with a hinged lid.

Still, I feel the thrill of anticipation as soon as I see it. I grab the box and lift the lid.

The stone inside is unearthly in its beauty. It truly looks like it might have fallen to earth in the core of a meteor. It’s about the size of a hen’s egg, clear and sparkling, with just a hint of frosty blue. The Winter Diamond.

Seb sees my silence and stillness. He comes to stand beside me, gazing down on it.

“Fucking hell,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” I say.

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