60. Chapter 52
Lorenzo
The door finally gives on the fifth hit, the wood splintering around the frame, and I burst out into blistering, painful heat.
I’m in a long, dark hallway, like a passage to hell. On the far end of it, the air is thick with sparks and smoke.
That’s my way out.
I cover my mouth and run toward it, my head pounding in pain, my muscles aching. Flames climb the wall in thick, confident sheets. Smoke rolls, black and suffocating, across the ceiling.
And when I burst out the end of the hallway, I find myself in a room I’ve been in many times before: the main room of Lo Scandalo.
No, I think. Not here. Not this place.
“Pepe!” I scream, as loud as I can. “Are you here?!”
There’s no answer from the fire. The room is empty, I think. Just me and the flames.
The fire and smoke are so thick I can’t even see if there are any firefighters here.
No one left to rescue me.
I stay close to what’s left of one of the walls, keeping as low as I can, one of my arms pressed over my mouth. My eyes stream from the burning smoke. I have to find the exit.
From somewhere ahead of me, past a section of collapsed ceiling, I suddenly see movement.
A person, a dark figure. Someone walking not away from the fire but toward it.
Then, a support beam gives somewhere above me, a groan, followed by a terrible crash as sparks shower across my path. I jump back, losing my footing and going down hard on one knee.
“Fuck!”
The fallen debris stirs the smoke just enough that I can see, now, the figure ahead of me, disappearing into the fire.
I would know him anywhere.
My brother.
“Giovanni!” I try to call, but my voice is so raw, so broken, that I can hardly hear myself.
What’s he doing?
I force myself to my feet. My hands and wrists are raw from the ropes, blood mixing with soot and pain. Everything in me wants to give up, to sit against a wall and let the flames take me.
But if I did that, then Giovanni would win.
If one of the Diamante brothers is going to perish tonight, it will not be me.
With a cry of pain, I surge to my feet and stumble forward through flames, toward my brother.
He sees me coming, his eyes widening in fear. His clothes are torn, soot-stained, charred around the edges. “Lorenzo!” he cries.
Flames lash out behind him, consuming the darkness.
“You motherfucker!” I cry, launching myself at him, tackling him onto a broken table. The remains of it collapse beneath us, sending us in a tangle of limbs to the floor. “I’m going to kill you!”
The fire is close, so close.
He grins up at me. “You’ll die with me, brother.”
Then he grabs me by the shoulders, gripping me as if in a tight embrace, and rolls us closer to the flames.