Chapter 58
Claire’s POV
I didn’t say a word when Vera chained him up.
I didn’t stop her when she dragged him outside.
I didn’t flinch when she doused the car in gasoline.
I just followed her.
Because whatever she needed to do—I was with her.
Antonio was screaming now. Not begging. Screaming. His wrists bruised from trying to break the cuffs, his face pale behind the window.
Vera struck the lighter.
The flame danced in her fingers, wild and trembling.
"You took Gabriel from me in the worst way,” she said, her voice low, steady. “Now you’ll know what that feels like.”
She flicked the lighter.
Dropped it.
The gasoline caught like it had been waiting for her.
The fire roared to life, a violent hiss followed by a rising wall of orange. Antonio’s screams became frantic, frantic enough to tear through the metal and air. He thrashed in the front seat, his eyes wild, his mouth open in a sound none of us could forget.
But Vera didn’t look away.
Neither did I.
Miguel turned his head. One of the others stepped back. But I stood right beside her.
I don’t know how long we watched it—five seconds, ten, maybe fifteen—before Vera finally moved.
She turned, slow and cold, and walked back to the hose.
No rush. No hesitation.
She opened the valve and sprayed the fire with ruthless precision. Steam hissed into the air. Smoke billowed and burned the sky black.
Antonio's screams faded into sobs.
When Vera dropped the hose, the fire was out—but the damage was done.
The door was charred, twisted, half-melted. The metal groaned as Miguel and another man forced it open.
Antonio tumbled out, barely conscious. Smoke-stained, his skin red and blistering, hair half-burnt, whimpering like something less than human.
Alive.
But barely.
I looked at Vera.
She stood perfectly still, her eyes locked on the wreckage. On him.
"You don’t get to die yet,” she said flatly. “You get to remember.”
And then she turned and walked away.
I followed.
And behind us, Antonio’s breath came in shallow, broken gasps.
Vera didn’t look back.
Not once.
Her eyes were set ahead, her body moving like the violence hadn’t even touched her skin. Like she didn’t just set a man on fire and put him out because death was too easy.
Miguel caught up to us, glancing back at the wreckage. “What now?”
Vera stopped. Her voice was calm. Quiet. But it cut through the smoke like a blade.
“Take him to the cliff.”
Miguel blinked. “The one by the old trail?”
“The one where Gabriel died,” she said. “Tie him there. Let the wind gnaw at him. Let the vultures circle.”
I could barely breathe.
Vera’s jaw twitched once. “No food. No water. No shade. Nothing. He doesn’t die quick—he rots.”
Miguel hesitated, searching her face like he needed to know she meant it.
She did.
“And leave him there,” she added. “Until there’s nothing left to bury.”
Miguel nodded once and walked back toward Antonio, who now lay crumpled and smoke-stained on the ground, barely clinging to consciousness. He wasn’t screaming anymore. Just breathing—ragged and afraid.
Good.
I stepped closer to Vera, the wind catching her hair as she stood there—unmoving. She wasn’t trembling. She wasn’t crying.
But something about her silence was louder than both.
I touched her arm gently.
She didn’t pull away.
She just whispered, “I want him to feel everything Gabriel felt. Everything I felt. I want the earth to take him slowly.”
I nodded, my throat tight. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
Because this time, I didn’t need to understand it.
I just needed to stand beside her while the world burned down behind us.
Claire’s POV
The screams had stopped.
The wind didn’t.
It licked at my skin like it could steal the fire still clinging to my bones. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I watched the trail of smoke rise above the cliffs until it blurred with the sky.
Miguel’s footsteps faded into the distance, dragging that hollowed-out shell of a man toward the edge where Gabriel had breathed his last. Where I had lost the only person who ever stood beside me without needing to be asked.
Until Claire.
I didn’t realize she was still there until her fingers brushed my wrist. Warm. Grounding.
“You did what you had to,” she said softly.
“No.” I closed my eyes. “I did what I wanted to.”
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t moralize.
She just stepped closer.
The silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t empty. It was full of everything neither of us knew how to say. The blood still under my fingernails. The ache still carved into my chest.
“I thought it would feel better,” I murmured.
“And does it?” she asked.
I looked at her—really looked.
Her eyes weren’t afraid of me.
“No,” I said. “But I needed it.”
She nodded slowly and reached up, her hand curling around the back of my neck as she pulled me gently into her. I let my forehead fall to her shoulder. My hands finally unclenched.
“I don’t want you to think this is all I am,” I whispered, my voice cracking against her skin.
She held me tighter. “I never did.”
I let out a shaky breath, my fingers curling in the fabric of her hoodie.
“I wanted him to die,” I confessed.
“I know.”
“I wanted him to scream.”
“I know.”
She leaned back just enough to lift my chin, her eyes wet but steady.
“But I want you to live more.”
I blinked, breath catching in my throat.
“I want you here. With me,” she said. “Not haunted. Not lost. Not stuck in the same grave you left him in.”
I stared at her like she’d just peeled the armor off my ribs.
“I don’t know if I can,” I whispered.
“I’ll help you try,” she whispered back.
Claire’s POV
Everyone left when Vera gave the order.
Miguel didn’t ask questions. The others didn’t speak. They just did what she said, and one by one, their footsteps faded, leaving us standing alone under the early night sky, the smoke still clinging to our clothes.
Vera hadn’t moved.
She stood with her arms limp at her sides, eyes on nothing, breathing like every inhale might be her last. I watched her chest rise and fall too fast, too shallow, like her lungs were trying to outrun something her body hadn’t caught up to yet.
I reached out carefully, fingers brushing her elbow. “Come inside.”
She didn’t blink.
“Vera,” I said softly.
Her eyes turned to me. Vacant. Distant. Like she didn’t quite recognize who I was through the fog of everything she’d just done.
And I got it.
I didn’t say anything else. Just took her hand, gently, and started walking. She followed.
Inside, the safehouse felt like a dream. Dim lights. Old walls. Familiar dust. We’d lived so many lives in these places—where danger slept in the next room, where silence was safer than comfort. But this time it was just us.
I led her into the bedroom and pulled her jacket off. It dropped to the floor. She didn’t resist when I tugged her down to sit on the bed. Her shoulders slumped forward, elbows on her knees, eyes on the ground like it was the only thing that would hold her.
She looked like she was about to shatter.
I dropped to my knees in front of her.
Her hands were still red—gasoline, ash, blood, rage. I reached for one of them slowly, as if she might flinch. She didn’t. Just let me cradle it in my lap as I grabbed a clean rag and warm water from the bedside table.
I started wiping gently.
She didn’t say a word.
Her hand trembled in mine, but I held it steady.
“You’re shaking,” I whispered.
“I burned him, Claire,” she said, and her voice cracked open.
I looked up. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes still far away.
“I dragged him across gravel, poured gas on him like he was nothing, and then listened to him scream when the fire kissed his skin.”
I swallowed hard. “He killed Gabriel.”
She didn’t move.
“You didn’t do it because you wanted to burn someone alive,” I said. “You did it because your heart got ripped out in front of you, and no one let you grieve.”
She looked at me, really looked at me then, and I saw the crack in her armor split wide.
“I don’t feel better,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said, wiping her other hand. “That’s not how grief works.”
Her lips parted like she wanted to say more, but nothing came. Just a single breath that turned into a sob before she could stop it.
She looked down at our hands. “I feel like I’m losing myself.”
I leaned up, cupped her face gently. “Then let me hold the pieces.”
She broke.
Not loudly. Not all at once. But in that quiet, shaking way that said she’d been holding it in for far too long.
I pulled her down onto the bed with me, laid us both sideways, and wrapped my arms around her like I could stitch her together with just the strength of my body.
Her breath hitched against my shoulder.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered, over and over. “I’ve got you.”
And for the first time since we found her… she let herself be held.
Not because she was weak.
But because she knew I wouldn’t let her fall.