59. Chapter 51
Dashiell
Fire.
Everyone backstage freezes for a second—dancers mid-costume change, a stagehand with a coil of cable slung over his shoulder, Kenny with his robe just half-tied—and then chaos breaks out.
I don’t freeze.
This is my element. This is my job.
There’s a part of me that never clocks out of firefighting, even at a club with Grandma Novak drinking a mai-tai and Kenny wearing a jockstrap stuffed with money.
“Grandma.” I grip her wrist tightly. “Stay with me. Kenny, where’s the emergency exit?”
“Second door at the end of the hallway, come on!” He’s already moving, grabbing a second robe from a rack and shoving it at a semi-naked dancer who’s frozen, wide-eyed and panicking. “Go! Get out of here!”
We move down the hallway. The smoke, wherever it’s coming from, is already there ahead of us, curling along the ceiling. I hear behind us the raucous noise of a hundred people fighting for exits.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Kenny says as we hurry to the emergency exit.
I shove Grandma through first, handing her off to Kenny. The night outside is cold and dark. People are screaming and I can already hear the distant sounds of the firetrucks.
They’ll get here quickly, but I know the sort of chaos that there has to be in the club right now.
I’m here.
I can do something.
“Get her out of here!” I cry to Kenny. “Do not come back in!”
Kenny’s eyes go wide and fearful. “What? Dash! What are you—?”
“I’ll be out in a minute. I promise.”
“Don’t you dare!” Grandma begins, but I’m already turning to go back in. “Dashiell!”
Kenny doesn’t waste time arguing. He grabs Grandma’s hand and pulls her down the alley, toward safety.
And I go back into the club.
The main floor is even worse than I expected. The flames climb the wall near the bar, fast and hungry. I would recognize that type of fire in my sleep. This isn’t an accident. This isn’t bad wiring. This is deliberate.
Exactly the same sort of fire we’ve been seeing in the arsons.
Giovanni, I think.
We were right all along.
The crowd is a mad crush by the main exit, too many people funneling into too small a door, panic making them all selfish and slow.
“Hey!” I scream, trying to raise my voice over the shouting and the crackle of the flames. “That way’s blocked!” I grab a random man by the shoulder and see that it’s Franco, the waiter. “Go! There’s an emergency exit back there!”
He grabs two others and they run, staying low beneath the smoke.
I rip my shirt off and hold it over my mouth and nose, trying to breathe through it. I work the room the same way I would if I were on the job. I redirect, pull up people who’ve fallen, shout through a throat growing rawer by the second. The ceiling groans overhead.
I have no gear. No oxygen. All I have is my training and my desperation.
Someone stumbles into me, coughing hard. I seize his shoulders and point him toward the emergency exit.
That’s when I see him.
Standing across the room, obscured by the haze of the smoke, loosely carrying a gasoline can and staring right at me.
Giovanni.
The flames nearest him are intense, thick, bright. He’s not running. Not screaming. Just standing there, with soot streaking down the side of his face, watching the flames with an expression of…awe.
Our eyes meet.
I know I should hate him. I know I should want him to burn. He caused all this, all this terror, all this pain. He killed Lorenzo’s father. Ruined Lorenzo’s life. Stalked me and terrorized me and threatened my family.
I should want him to get what’s coming to him.
But that’s not me.
“Giovanni!” My voice cracks through the smoke. “Get out! This way! You can get out!”
Even from across the room, I can see the expression on his face change. Confusion, at first. Like he doesn’t understand why I’m trying to save him. And then something else: fear, maybe, or relief, or acceptance. Perhaps all three at once.
He doesn’t move toward me.
Instead, he turns, and starts walking deeper toward the flames—toward a part of the club that’s already starting to collapse.
“Giovanni! No!”
He doesn’t look back.
The smoke is thick and painful, but I have one clear, burning thought that pierces my mind: he wants to die in this fire.
And I cannot let that happen.
Even for someone like him.
There’s not even a decision for me to make. The firefighters might be here, but they’re not close enough for him.
I take a deep breath of the cleanest air I can, drop low, and run after him.