24. Kylie
— ? —
Kylie
The Marlowe had never been this full.
A packed house filled the restored lobby, champagne glasses catching the light from chandeliers I’d spent three months convincing the preservation board to let me repair.
The whole town was here. Miss Dot holding court by the original ticket booth, my mother actually making herself useful by charming the Savannah Historical Society board, even Brendan lurking by the emergency exit like the world’s most obvious security detail.
The benefit was working.
People were writing checks. Big ones. The kind that would let us finish the restoration properly, replace the damaged sections with materials that matched the original, turn this hurricane setback into something the building would survive for another hundred years.
I was winning.
Then the front doors opened.
She walked in like she owned the room.
Bianca Russo. Dressed in cream linen and understated jewelry, her hair pulled back in a style that screamed old money and good breeding. She looked like every other donor in the room, elegant, polished, the kind of woman who served on museum boards and organized charity galas.
She looked like the victim she’d been playing for months.
“Ms. Jordan.” Her voice carried. Pitched to reach the whole room without seeming to try. “I hope you don’t mind that I stopped by. I heard about the fire, and I wanted to offer my condolences.”
The packed lobby went quiet.
“Miss Russo.” I kept my voice pleasant. “What an unexpected surprise.”
“Is it?” She stepped closer, and I saw it, the glitter in her eyes, the particular brightness of someone who’d stopped pretending to be stable. “I would have thought you’d expect me. After all, we have so much in common.”
“Do we.”
“We do.” Another step. “We were both promised to Ferraro men. Both of us learned that love was just another word for captivity. We both-”
“I’m going to stop you there.” I held up a hand. “This is a private event. Invitation only. I don’t recall your name on the guest list.”
“How strange.” Her smile was sharp. “I don’t recall needing your permission to go where I please.”
The room was frozen now. Every eye on us. Every phone in every pocket suddenly very interesting.
“Miss Russo-”
“Do you know what it’s like?” Her voice was rising. “To be erased? To watch everything you built stolen by someone who doesn’t deserve it?”
“I know what it’s like to build something myself.”
“You?” She laughed. The sound was ugly. “You were born into one crime family and married into another. Everything you have was handed to you by men who wanted something in return.”
“Bianca-”
“But me? I had nothing. I came from nothing. And I climbed-” Her voice cracked. “I climbed so high. I made myself into someone. And then they took it all away because the man I was promised couldn’t keep his pathetic word.”
I could feel the room holding its breath.
“This isn’t the place for this conversation,” I said quietly. “If you want to talk, we can step outside-”
“Outside?” Her voice went shrill. “So you can have your security dispose of me quietly? Make this disappear like you’ve made everything else disappear?”
She was spiraling. I could see it happening in real time, the careful mask cracking, the rage underneath bleeding through.
“No one is disposing of anyone,” I said. “I’m suggesting we have this conversation in private because whatever you’re feeling, you don’t want a room full of witnesses to it.”
“Oh, but I do.” She smiled. “I want witnesses. I want everyone to see what kind of person you really are.”
She reached for the nearest tray. A wine glass, full, red.
It was coming, and I saw it. Had time to brace myself, to turn my head, to minimize the damage.
I didn’t.
I stood still and let it hit me.
The wine was cold. It splashed across my face, down my neck, soaked into the silk blouse I’d chosen specifically for this event. I felt it drip from my chin, felt it stain the fabric, felt the gasp of the crowd like a physical wave.
Bianca was smiling.
Waiting.
This was what she’d come for. The footage. The breakdown. The moment when the don’s ex-wife crumbled in front of everyone who’d just started to believe she was different.
I reached for the napkin a frozen waiter was holding.
Blotted my chin.
Turned to the room.
“Well,” I said calmly, “I guess that answers the question of whether the restoration survived the hurricane. The original floors? Waterproof since 1932.”
The laughter started slow.
Then built.
By the time it crested, half the room was covering their mouths and Bianca was standing frozen, the glass still in her hand, realizing too late that she’d miscalculated.
She’d come to film my breakdown.
She’d produced her own.
“Security.” I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t need to. “Please escort Miss Russo to the exit. And someone call her a cab - she’s clearly had a difficult day.”
Bianca’s face went purple.
“You think you’ve won?” She was screaming now, all pretense of elegance gone. “You think this is over? I’ll destroy you. I’ll destroy everything you love. I’ll-”
“Ma’am.” One of the security guards, Marco’s guy, I recognized him, was at her elbow. “Let’s go.”
“Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am?”
“Yes ma’am. That’s why we’re removing you.”
They half-carried her to the door. Her screaming echoed through the lobby, threats, accusations, promises of revenge that grew less coherent by the second.
The doors closed behind her.
I turned back to my donors.
“Now,” I said, still dripping, “where were we? I believe we were discussing the second-floor restoration. The damaged sections will cost approximately forty thousand more than our initial estimates, but I’m confident-”
The first check appeared before I finished the sentence.
Then another.
By the end of the evening, we’d raised more money than the original goal by thirty percent.
***
The theater emptied slowly.
Donors leaving in clusters, congratulating me on the event, carefully not mentioning the wine still drying on my skin. My mother gave me a long look on her way out, something between pride and concern that I didn’t have the energy to decode.
By ten, it was just me.
Me and the Marlowe, quiet now, the chandeliers dimmed to their after-hours setting. I should have gone home. Nico was at the cottage with the security detail I’d finally agreed to, and every responsible part of me knew I should be there too.
But I wasn’t ready.
I needed this, the silence, the space, the building I’d saved wrapped around me like proof that I could handle whatever came next.
Walking through the restored sections, I checked the work, running my hands along the plasterwork I’d helped repair with my own hands. The fire damage had been extensive, but the bones were good. Another month, maybe six weeks, and we’d be ready for the soft opening.
I smelled it before the alarms went off.
Gasoline.
Sharp, unmistakable, cutting through the dust and paint smell of the ongoing construction. Coming from somewhere in the wings, somewhere near the stage-
The lights went out.
Emergency power kicked in a heartbeat later, but in that heartbeat of darkness, I heard her.
“Did you really think I’d leave?”
Bianca’s voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. The acoustics of the theater, designed to project sound from the stage, working perfectly even now.
“The security escorted you out,” I said. My voice was steady. My heart wasn’t.
“Security escorted me to the cab. The cab drove around the block.” Movement in the darkness. I couldn’t see where. “Your people really should check IDs more carefully. The construction crew entrance was so convenient.”
I was moving now. Slowly. Toward the fire exit I’d insisted on rebuilding to code, the one that led to the alley, the one that would get me out if I could just-
“I wouldn’t.”
Bianca stepped out of the shadows.
She was holding a lighter.
And behind her, I could see it now, the puddles of gasoline, spreading across the stage, soaking into the curtains that had survived the hurricane and the electrical fire and a hundred years of Savannah summers.
“Do you know what it’s like to lose everything?”
“I do, actually.” I kept my voice calm. The donna voice. The one I’d learned in rooms full of men with guns, weaponized now for a woman with a lighter and nothing left to lose. “I lost my father. My marriage. Three years of my life to grief I couldn’t process.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Maybe not.” I took a step back. Toward the exit. “But I know what it feels like to want to burn everything down. To make someone else feel what you’re feeling.”
“You don’t know anything about what I’m feeling.”
“You’re feeling cheated.” Another step. “You did everything right, and it wasn’t enough. You married the right man, played the right role, made all the right moves - and you still lost. Not because you weren’t good enough, but because the game was rigged from the start.”
Bianca’s hand trembled.
“Don’t try to sympathize with me.”
“I’m not sympathizing. I’m saying I understand.” Step. Step. “The families we married into - they use people like us. Train us for one thing, then blame us when we can’t be something else. You didn’t fail, Bianca. You were failed.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.” I was almost there. Ten feet from the exit. Maybe less. “It’s supposed to make you understand that burning this building won’t fix anything. It won’t give you back what you lost. It won’t make them respect you. It’ll just prove every terrible thing they already believe about women like us.”
“Women like us.” Bianca laughed bitterly. “There are no women like us. There’s you - the princess who got to walk away and build a new life. And there’s me - the cautionary tale they use to keep the others in line.”
“You don’t have to be a cautionary tale.”
“Yes, I do.” Her thumb moved on the lighter. “Because if I can’t have the seat, I can at least make sure you can’t have this.”
She flicked the lighter.
The flame caught.
I turned and ran.
***
The fire exit was exactly where I’d remembered.
I hit the crash bar at full speed, expecting resistance, expecting nothing, and the door flew open, spilling me into the alley behind the theater just as I heard the whoosh of flames catching behind me.
The sirens were already coming.
Someone had seen. Someone had called. The response time in this neighborhood was good, we’d made sure of that, part of the insurance requirements.
“Kylie!”
Giovanni.
He was running down the alley toward me, his face a mask of barely controlled terror, Marco and two other men behind him. He’d gotten here. Somehow, impossibly, he’d gotten here in time.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m-”
He reached me. His hands on my face, my shoulders, checking for damage. Behind us, I could hear the fire crew arriving, the shouts of men trying to get the blaze under control before it spread.
“Bianca,” I said. “She’s still inside. The stage - she was on the stage-”
“We’ll get her out.”
“Giovanni-”
“Stay here.”
He was already moving. Back toward the building, toward the smoke now pouring from the windows-
“Giovanni!”
He turned.
“I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are.”
“That’s my theater. My building. My-”
“And you’re my-” He stopped. His jaw worked. “Please. Please stay here. Let me do this.”
I saw it then.
The same terror I’d seen in the cottage, the same desperate need to protect, but different now. Not controlling. Not deciding for me. Just asking.
Trusting me to choose.
“Go,” I said. “But you come back.”
He nodded once.
Then he was gone, disappearing into the smoke with his men, and I was left in the alley with my heart in my throat and nothing to do but wait.
They brought her out three minutes later.
Bianca, coughing and struggling, gasoline soaking her clothes and fire damage marking her hair. The firefighters had gotten the blaze contained, my sprinkler system, again, doing the impossible, and the building was going to survive.
But Bianca wasn’t fighting the fire anymore.
She was fighting the men holding her.
“Let me go! Let me - it was supposed to be ME! I was supposed to be the one who mattered! Supposed to-”
Her voice cracked. The fight went out of her all at once, and she collapsed against the firefighter’s hold, sobbing, ugly, broken sounds that made my chest hurt despite everything.
“It was supposed to be me,” she whispered. And then again, barely sound at all: “Supposed to be me.”
The police had arrived. Handcuffs appeared. Someone was reading her rights, arson, attempted murder, the recorded threats from earlier, the witnesses to all of it.
“No bail,” one of the officers said into his radio. “Flight risk with resources. Judge already signed off.”
Giovanni emerged from the smoke.
His face was smudged with ash, his shirt singed in places, but he was whole. Alive. Walking toward me with the particular steadiness of a man who’d been through worse and come out the other side.
He stopped in front of the officer in charge.
“Miss Russo will be charged with everything applicable,” he said quietly. His voice was flat. The don’s voice, but different now, controlled in a way that felt earned instead of performed. “Whatever the courts miss, gentlemen, I promise you I won’t.”
Nobody in earshot doubted him.
Bianca heard it too. I watched her face crumple, not fear, exactly, but the recognition of something ending. Whatever fantasy she’d been living in, whatever narrative she’d constructed to make sense of her choices, it was over.
She’d lost.
And she knew it.
They loaded her into the patrol car. The door closed. The sirens faded.
Bianca Russo exited the story.
The ambulance crew insisted on checking me out.
Minor smoke inhalation. Some bruising from hitting the fire exit at full speed. Nothing serious, but they wanted to monitor my oxygen levels, wanted to make sure I hadn’t damaged anything in the sprint.
I sat in the ambulance doorway with the oxygen mask around my neck, watching the chaos slowly resolve into something manageable.
Giovanni was across the street, talking to the fire chief. Coordinating something. Being useful, the way he always was in crisis.
Then he turned.
Saw me.
Started walking toward me with that steady, certain stride, and then stopped.
I watched it happen.
The moment when the adrenaline finally crashed. When the terror he’d been holding at bay for the last however-many hours caught up with him all at once. His face changed, not crumbling, exactly, but shifting. The mask of competence giving way to something raw underneath.
He took another step.
Stopped again.
His hand came up to his face. Covered his eyes. His shoulders started to shake.
Giovanni Ferraro, the don of the Ferraro family, the man who’d survived firefights and federal cases and three years of exile, stood in the middle of a Savannah street surrounded by firefighters and broke down crying because I was alive.
The composure snapped clean through.
And everyone saw it.