Chapter Fifty-Three
Valentina
T he fire is horrifying. There’s no other word for it.
It surges forward like the wave of a tsunami, growing and looming as it bears down on us. Except unlike a tsunami, it’s coming at us from all sides.
We have no choice but to stumble and go deeper inside. My brain is yelling at me that this is wrong, that I’m sealing myself further into what’s going to end up being my tomb, but I ignore the voice.
I follow after Matteo.
He clutches my hand in his as we run down the hallway, his fingers strong and solid around mine. Looking at him, you wouldn’t believe that he’s pyrophobic. His features are set, his steps confident and determined as he runs. And yet, I know a look at his insides would tell a very different story.
When I first regained consciousness, Guido was pacing manically before me. His hands were shoved into his hair and pulling at the strands. His steps were frenzied as he went back and forth and back and forth in front of me.
When he’d noticed I was awake, he’d stopped in front of me, pulled the gag down, and fisted my hair. I yelped as he yanked my head back by my hair, forcing my neck into an unnatural position.
“Why couldn’t you mind your fucking business, bitch?”
“What did you do to Adriana?” I’d demanded.
His response had been to slap me across the face. This time, I screamed.
“Shut the fuck up. All of you whores are the same, always running your fucking mouths.”
He held my phone in his hand and turned it to show me a picture. It was of me, probably minutes prior. Tied up and unconscious, as still as a dead body. I could have passed for one.
“What are you doing?” My voice rose two octaves.
“You shouldn’t have dragged Matteo into this,” he announced, voice shaking with rage. “He didn’t suspect a thing. Then you come along and all of a sudden he’s poking his nose into our operation and ruining. Fucking. Everything .” He snarls. “Now I’m on the run because of you.”
Then, he typed something into my phone. A whooshing sound echoed, indicating a message had been sent.
And the blood went cold in my veins.
“What did you just do? Please,” I begged. “Please don’t hurt him.”
Guido grabbed my jaw in his fist. He squeezed it until I heard it click. Searing, radiating pain shot up my jaw.
I jumped at the sound of a mechanic click .
It was followed by a hiss, and then a flame burst to life between our faces. Guido was holding up a lighter, his features twisted into a taunting grimace when he caught the fear that flashed through my eyes.
“Rocco told me about Matteo’s little problem with fire. There’s something poetic about him conquering his fear to save you only to watch you burn to death in front of him, don’t you think?”
I’d spat in his face.
It hit him on the cheek and he jerked back. His eyes had met mine and I’d sneered. “You’re a monster.”
He landed a blow on my cheek that made my entire head snap to the side. I groaned and hid behind my hair.
Blood gathered in my mouth and I spat it out.
“When he comes for you, puttana , he’ll die too. And I want you to remember that this was all your fault.”
There was sick, depraved pleasure on his face and a matching terror in my chest and nausea in my heart at his words. Then he shoved the gag back into my mouth.
Matteo would come.
Even with the fire, even with the risk of death, even with every rational thought yelling at him to stay away, I knew he’d come for me.
I knew that with more certainty than I’d ever known anything else, because I knew he’d risk his life in a heartbeat if it meant saving mine.
And now he’s here with me and my worst fear is coming true, because we’re trapped.
He’s trapped.
“Come on!” he calls over his shoulder at me as we move quickly up the stairs.
There’s fire on this landing, but the flames are low. They’re still ground level and not licking up the walls. Yet.
We’re on the landing and moving swiftly when there’s a small hissing sound. It’s at odds with the rest of the noises somehow, and it makes Matteo and I pause.
We look down and around at us, searching for the source of the unique sound.
Matteo stiffens before me.
And then I see it.
A tiny line of flames flick and dance up a wire. It casts a red-orange glow as it moves upwards with impressive speed. As it nears the final destination it seems to burn faster, hotter.
A second before anything happens, Matteo grabs my arm in a bruising grip that makes me yelp and spins us around.
The flame hits the electrical socket. There’s a spark, a moment of eerie silence, and then it explodes.
Bright light flashes out of the eruption with a bang, temporarily blinding me. A wave of heat blows out from it and a fireball forms, swelling instantaneously into an enormous and angry mushroom cloud that barrels towards us.
The bottom of my stomach falls out and a fear unlike anything I’ve never known surges through me.
I’m frozen.
Matteo covers my head with both his arms and shoves me down, forcing me to curl into myself behind the wide expanse of his chest.
I feel the heat of the fireball around us as it hits his back.The smell of burning flesh rises into the air and punches straight into the back of my throat.
I angle my neck back and look up at Matteo in horror. His face is twisted in pain. His teeth dig into his lower lip, his eyes screwed shut and his breathing absent. A strangled, garbled groan rips from the depths of his throat. The fireball rescinds as quickly as it appeared and Matteo sags forwards. He gasps out a breath as his body falls into me.
I straighten and catch him by the chest. “Matteo!”
His forehead is pressed into his forearm against the wall just above my shoulder. He traps me beneath him.
“Are you hurt, cara ?” he asks, his voice a guttural grunt.
“ You’re hurt!” I exclaim. “How’s your back? Show me.” I try to weave under his arm to twist around his body and take a look, but he lowers it and blocks my passage.
“Later,” he croaks, intransigent. “We need to keep moving.”
“But—”
Matteo reaches for my face. He clasps it softly, running a gentle thumb right underneath the cut on my cheekbone. “We’ll take care of your wounds when we’re out of here, and then we’ll look at mine.”
He’s pale as he says the words, his hand clammy against my skin. His pulse is threadbare beneath my palm.
My gut twists in worry.
“You’re hurt.” A hacking cough attacks my lungs. “I can tell you are. We need—”
“We need to get out of here,” he croaks, looking ahead.
I follow his gaze and find a fresh nightmare ahead of us. The flames have consumed the entire left side of the hallway and moved to the ceiling. The wooden beams glow from the inside out like embers, illuminated by the inferno that consumes it from within.
Fear barrels through my bones, my organs, my blood. It destroys everything in its path.
Matteo takes a step forward but stumbles to one knee, revealing his bare back to me.
A violent rush of nausea shoots into my throat.
The entire left side of his back is covered in red, angry welts. The skin is twisted to begin with because of his scarring, but now it raises and deforms grotesquely.
He’s burned, badly.
A strident wail rises inside me, but I swallow it.
I can’t panic now.
“Here,” I call, injecting calm into my voice and bending forward. I grab him by the arm and hoist him to his feet. He helps, propelling his weight upwards as I lift. “I’ve got you.”
I steal a glance at his face. He grimaces but doesn’t reveal the extent of the pain he undoubtedly feels. He doesn’t want me to realize how badly he’s hurt. He does it to protect me, to keep my focus on getting out.
His strength crushes my heart.
He leans his body into mine as we push forward, our progress slow. Hope explodes in my chest when I see the flames haven’t reached the window yet. If we can make it to the end of the hallway, we can escape through there. I have to believe the firefighters will be ready with some kind of mattress to catch us. I cling to that hope.
Matteo grunts as we advance. A swift glance at his face reveals the ashen pallor of his features. The color leaches out of him with every passing second.
“We’re almost there,” I say encouragingly. “We just need to make it to that window and we’ll be safe.”
He grits his teeth and nods, fresh determination crossing his face. His feet falter and he stumbles, but my hold on his arm keeps him from falling. I lift his arm and wrap it around my shoulders.
“I’ve got you, Phantom,” I vow. “I’ve got you.”
With my side glued to his chest, I force him to lean more of his weight on me.
We make it five meters before I’m forced to stop and readjust. A heavy coughing fit bursts out of me as I place his arm differently around my neck. The air is thick with smoke and barely breathable.
“I’m slowing you down,” Matteo groans, removing his arm entirely from my shoulders. “I can walk, cara .”
He takes a stubborn step forward before I grab his forearm and curl it around me once more. “We’re doing this together, Phantom.” Sweat rolls down the side of his face. “ Together . Now, come on, lean on me again. We’re almost there, I promise.”
A slight creaking echoes in the air.
It’s followed immediately by a substantially more terrifying cracking, ripping sound.
Matteo and I both look up at the same time.
There’s a tense beat of uneasy silence amidst the discord of the raging inferno, and then the massive wooden beam above our heads separates from the ceiling in a blazing ball of flames and comes hurtling towards us at speed.
Terror opens up a gaping hole in the bottom of my stomach, but I’m stuck. I can’t make my body react, I can’t make myself move , even as I watch the beam approach.
Matteo isn’t similarly affected. It feels as if time slows to a near stop as his arm slips off my shoulders, his head tips back down and his eyes find mine. The flames reflect a gruesome dance in the green of his irises.
He smiles at me.
Later, I’ll remember the feeling that twisted my gut seeing acceptance wash over his face. I’ll remember the panic that flooded into my veins, the lump that jerked into my throat, and the voice that started screaming in my head.
But in the moment, time accelerates back to normal and I don’t process the realization. It all happens too quickly.
Dread shutters my hearing, leaving me to stare only at the shape of his next words when they find a home on his lips.
“I love you,” Matteo declares.
He doesn’t wait for me to say it back.
His palms find my chest and he shoves me violently away from him.
“No– No! ” I shriek.
My hand reaches out for him, my arm outstretched. Our eyes stay locked on each other as I fall, mine in sheer disbelief, his steadfastly determined. My fingers close around nothing but air as I hit the ground, the momentum making me skid backwards. Distantly, I’m aware of stinging pain shooting up my palms and into my wrists from where I catch my fall.
The throbbing barely registers.
I can only watch in horror as the fiery beam hits Matteo where he still stands. It makes contact with his bare back and the force of it flings his body brutally forward. His face is frozen, contorted into a grimace of indescribable pain as an agonized howl erupts from the depths of his chest. It’s the last thing I see before he collapses. The beam moves with him, pinning him to the ground beneath it.
A throat ripping scream echoes around us, piercing through the flames like a blade. It’s jagged and raw, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.
The sound of a soul being crudely ripped in half.
I feel it reverberating in my bones, shaking my insides, and stabbing at my mind.
That’s how I realize I’m the one screaming.
“Matteo!” I howl, rushing to my feet. “Oh my god, Matteo .”
I’m dizzy, unsteady, and my legs give out beneath me. I crawl to him instead, the tears washing down my face.
It takes barely a few seconds to reach him, but time feels like it’s moving at warp speed against me.
Every extra second is added pain.
Every breath, the difference between life and death.
I don’t let myself look at him just yet. Barbed wire strangles my throat shut—he’s not dead.
He can’t be.
The tears well even more thickly in my eyes, nearly blinding me. Through the sheen, I shove at the beam. Over and over and over again, I drive my palms into the glowing, flaming, red-hot wood, working to move it off his prone body.
“Matteo,” I sob brokenly, shoving the beam once more. “Hang in there, my love. Please… please . Please, just hang in there.”
It weighs a ton, but otherworldly strength slips into my veins and powers my forearms. The smell of Matteo’s flesh being consumed chokes my nostrils and crushes the air out of my lungs.
And then, I hear it.
Matteo groans.
It’s a thin, breathy sound, barely there.
I cling to it like it’s the last thing tethering me to this world.
My answering cry is crushed between anguish and hope. “Matteo!”
With a furious, vengeful roar, I ram into the beam once more. It rolls off of Matteo and onto the ground next to him.
Finally, I allow myself to look down at the love of my life.
His face is pressed into the ground, his eyes closed. His thick hair is disheveled and his features are untouched. When I drag my eyes down the rest of his body, fresh dread yawns in my belly.
His back is gruesome. The skin is charred raw in most places. It’s peeling and falling off of him in others, revealing cartilage and bone underneath.
Nausea shoots violently into my throat. Not in disgust, in realization that this is all my fault.
“Matteo,” I try again, laying next to him on the ground and clasping his face. “Matteo?”
He doesn’t open his eyes.
His breathing is pained and threadbare, hardly enough to feed his lungs.
“Len…L-Leni…” he utters with difficulty.
“Yes,” I nod, tears flying off my cheeks. “It’s me, my love. I’m right here.”
Matteo seemingly goes in and out of consciousness as the fire continues to grow and close in around us.
“Can you get up, Matteo?” I ask, unwilling to face the truth. “We’re so close, you only need to go a few more steps.”
Keeping the tears out of my voice is impossible. I hear them echo loudly, desperately, in every single pleading word.
Matteo’s mouth parts. I lean closer.
“Leave…me…”
I recoil like I’ve been struck, shaking my head furiously like he can see it. “No.”
“Len—”
“No. I won’t.” I tuck my arm beneath his and tug it as I get on my knees. “Get up, Matteo. Please, get up.”
His breaths, already weak and unsteady, grow further apart. Shallower and raspier, until my heart jumps into my throat waiting for the next one.
I’m hearing him die, I realize.
I’m watching the life drain out of him, right before my eyes.
He’s dying .
In front of me.
Because of me.
For me.
"L—lea..ve…”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. NO.
I lay back down beside him. My hand dives into the strands of his hair and I cup the back of his head lovingly.
“Then I’m staying here with you.”
Matteo’s eyes spring open, fueled by a rush of outrage. His blood vessels are shot, the green of his irises heightened by the blood red around them.
“Get out of here, Valentina,” he says, angry now.
I grip his face, adamantly declaring, “Not without you.”
His eyes squeeze shut once more. This time, I know the pain has nothing to do with his back.
A thunderous crack erupts around us. Further down the hall, near the top of the stairs we just came from, another beam tumbles to the ground.
The entire structure is coming apart before our eyes. It won’t be long until the roof collapses.
“You talked about your grief…so beautifully when you told me about…Adriana.” I drag my gaze down to meet Matteo’s. “My grief, if I lost you? N-nothing beautiful about that,” he stutters. “Please go, cara .” His eyes squeeze open in agony. “Don’t make me watch you die.”
His gaze is resigned, like he’s reconciled himself to his fate. There’s a haze in his eyes that tells me he’s using up the very last reserves of his energy to talk to me.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“I am afraid.” His palm twitches. He inches one hand forward a miniscule amount before dropping it back down to the ground. I reach for it and knit our fingers together. “I’m afraid…you’re not going to make it out. That you’ll...die.”
There’s real fear in his eyes, except it isn’t for himself.
It’s for me.
Everything he’s ever done since we met has been for me.
“Remember your promise,” he rasps thinly, eyes closing once more. “Kiss me.”
“Remember your promise, Matteo,” I plead, pushing at his cheek to wake him up. “You said you’d get us out of here. Us . You promised you would.”
“Kiss me.”
“No!” I cry, shaking him again. “You don’t get to sacrifice yourself to save me, and then make me leave you behind. You don’t get to do that to me, Matteo,” I sob, every word painful on my lips and in my chest.
I sit back into my heels, watching the scene unfolding before me helplessly, overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all.
Small, flaming pieces of foam fall from the burning ceiling, landing all around us. It looks like it’s raining fire. The visual is both stunning and terrifying.
This place has already taken so much from me.
It’s taken and taken and taken.
I won’t let it take anything else, especially not Matteo.
Every minute of the last few months was leading up to this moment, I realize. I won’t let him die. I can’t lose him and I can’t let this be another death I carry the guilt of on my shoulders.
If he won’t save himself, then I have no choice but to do it for him.
With a surprising burst of energy, Matteo lifts his arm and cups my nape. He brings my face down to meet his and slants his mouth over mine. He kisses me with such blatant desperation… it’s… he’s saying goodbye.
He’s saying goodbye .
“I love you. You’ll never know…how fucking... much .” Matteo sighs and releases me. His arm falls limply back to the floor. “I can…die now. Leave… please… ”
With those final words, his entire body goes slack.
“Matteo?” I shove at him with progressively more rough and desperate hands, but he doesn’t regain consciousness. Fear claws at my chest. “Matteo!”
Jumping to my feet, I grab his wrist and try tugging him the rest of the distance to the window. He’s got twenty kilos on me on a good day. It feels like forty with the added dead weight.
He doesn’t move an inch. I’m only going to dislocate his shoulder if I keep yanking at him like this. I go around to the side of his body and try moving him using his belt, throwing my weight towards the window as I pull. The momentum helps, but barely. I’m only able to shift him a few inches before I fall to the ground.
A scream of absolute despair shoots past my lips.
I try again, refusing to admit defeat.
“I’ve never done anything you asked me to, Phantom,” I weep. “I’m not going to start with this.”
I lay down on my back beside him and push upwards against his shoulders.
When the side of his chest lifts partially off the ground, I scoot closer, wedging my body into the opening between his torso and the floor. Once I’m in and have better leverage, I push at his chest once more, widening the gap until almost the entirety of his body rests on top of mine.
With an explosive scream full of raw emotion, I shove him and simultaneously flip my body over so that my back is to his chest. Matteo’s arms fall limply to either side of me and his face tucks lifelessly into the crook of my neck.
His weight is suffocating.
“Come on, Valentina,” I grit to myself in a determined whisper.
It takes strength I didn’t know I possessed to free my knee from beneath me and pull it towards my torso. I bend it, repeating the same motion with my other leg until I have my knees under me. Then I push up into my throbbing palms.
Matteo’s body hangs precariously over mine. He’s draped across my back like a baby in a wrap, except there’s nothing holding his considerable mass up. Nothing, except the strong grip of my fingers wrapped around his arms, tugging him forward as he starts to slip off.
“? Tú puedes hacerlo !” I mutter before launching to my feet.
Matteo’s shifting weight unbalances me and I almost fall the second I’m back on my feet. I catch us by grabbing onto a sconce on the wall. It’s scalding hot and reawakens the burns adrenaline had rendered temporarily dormant.
Bent unnaturally at the waist and carrying Matteo’s body on my back, I take a step forward.
And then another.
I nearly yell out in relief when he holds in place and I manage to advance a few feet.
But we’re far from home safe.
Every step feels like a marathon.
It’s excruciating.
But it's nowhere near as painful as not knowing if Matteo is still alive. I can't feel his chest move against my back.
Please let him live.
Please.
Tears slide freely down my face, unencumbered and unconfined. Emotion leaks quietly out of me as resolve drives me closer and closer to the window.
Ten steps.
Nine.
Five.
Three.
Searing heat finds my ankle, drawing a yelp from my lips. When I look down, I find that the leg of my trousers is on fire.
I gasp and jump back in surprise, momentarily forgetting my position. It’s a split second of loss of focus, but it’s enough.
Matteo tumbles off my back and drags me down with him. He hits the ground with a thud , landing on his back.
The pain jolts him awake with a heart-rending scream. I nearly cover my ears at the visceral agony echoing deafeningly in the animalistic wail.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, my love,” I chant, reaching for him.
For the second time that night, my fingers close around pure air.
I’m yanked backwards by my shoulders. I’m slow to react, taken aback by what’s happening. It’s only when I realize I’m being pulled out of the window that I start fighting.
“ Stop ! Let me go!” I scream and thrash in the arms of the person carrying me but never look away from where Matteo lays unmoving. “Get off me!”
Surprise turns into panic when I clear the window frame. I can only watch helplessly as I’m taken away from Matteo.
“Please, let me g—please! I can’t leave him!” I beg, verbally pleading as vehemently as I’m physically assaulting the faceless man holding me. “Matteo! MATTEO!”
I latch onto the frame and refuse to let it go, howling his name again and again, letting my fear corrode through every layer of me as I keep my gaze fixed on my fiancé.
“Please, he’s on his back,” I sob brokenly, my throat murdered raw. “I didn’t have a chance to flip him over, he’s in pain. Please help him… Please .”
I’m being carried down a ladder to safety by a fireman. No matter how hard I fight him, I can’t get him to release me.
Matteo disappears from my view.
And I lose it.
I kick and scratch and claw at my rescuer. I attack his chest, his hands, his face. Any and all available skin I can get my nails into. I don’t want to be saved if I can’t save him.
A pair of strong arms wraps around me and locks my arms down by my side.
“Valentina!”
The sound of my name momentarily freezes me.
A face comes down next to mine, words are pressed into my ear.
“Calm down,” Enzo orders coolly. “They’re getting Matteo next. He’s going to make it out, but we need to make sure you’re safe first, okay? That’s what he would want.”
His voice is endlessly comforting. I don’t know if it’s the familiarity of it or that his tone is restrained and controlled, leaving no room for my hysteria, or maybe the fact that I know he won’t let Matteo die, but it instantly soothes.
I nod thickly, a large mass suddenly present in my throat.
“I’ll take her,” I hear him tell the firefighter before I’m passed into his arms.
He carries me the rest of the way. I don’t look down towards safety. I look up, towards the burning building inside which the love of my life is still trapped.
The firefighter who initially held me jogs back up the ladder and disappears into the club. Enzo sets me gingerly down on the ground. His hand stays at my back for a second to make sure I’m steady before he pulls it away.
“Let’s get you to an ambul—”
I whip my head to look at Enzo. “No.” He opens his mouth but I stop him. “I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s safe. Until I know he’s alive. ”
Whatever Enzo sees in my eyes makes it clear to him this isn’t a debate he can win. His lips flatten into an unhappy line, but he nods.
His eyes lift above my face and into the distance. A unique vulnerability flashes through them. His throat works with difficulty as he drags his gaze back to mine. “Look.”
I turn to find two firefighters making their way through the window and slowly onto the ladder.
Between them, they’re carrying Matteo.
He’s bloody, burned, and covered in soot, his arms swinging limply to either side of him.
But he’s my Matteo.
“He’s okay?” I hear myself ask, as if detached from my body.
“He will be. You saved him, Valentina,” Enzo continues from behind me. “You got him out.”
A fresh batch of tears swell seeing him being rescued. The relief nearly takes me out at the knees.
I didn’t think we’d make it.
The world spins on its axis.
Dizziness clouds my vision.
“Valentina!” Enzo calls.
I stumble backwards, falling into his chest. His next words fill with soft horror.
“Valentina...your hands …”
I look down. A startled gasp falls from my lips when I find them a burned mess. My palms are full of raised welts, some burst, others not. Blood and pus leak out of the open wounds.
The earth beneath my feet shifts, rising and falling like the open ocean during an angry storm.
You saved him. You got him out.
I cling to those words as spots dot my eyesight. I wrap them around myself like a blanket, reassured by the knowledge that Matteo is going to survive.
It’s as if my body was waiting for that permission to finally give in. The moment those words filter through, my vision tunnels, the ground rises to meet the sky, and everything goes black.