61. Chapter 53
Dashiell
Where is he? The smoke is so thick, the fire so punishingly hot, that I can hardly see anything. My sweat has dried, evaporated by the heat around me. The air is hot in my lungs. I know exactly how dangerous what I’m doing is. If I don’t find Giovanni now, I’m going to die in here with him.
That thought should scare me, but it doesn’t.
I don’t see them until I practically stumble over them.
Two men, tangled together on the floor, surrounded by flames. For one disorienting second I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing. Someone being rescued? Two men fighting? But then the shapes resolve themselves into two men trying to kill each other, to force the other into the flames first.
“Stop!” My voice barely carries over the roar. My eyes sting with smoke and dried-out tears and I can barely see who they are. One of them, I gather, is Giovanni.
And the other…
I throw myself into the tangle of limbs, grabbing and clawing and trying to separate them with my bare hands.
Lorenzo and Giovanni.
“Stop!” I scream again, the word cutting off when I catch an elbow to the chest. They’re both so much bigger than me, both fighting so desperately, that I hardly stand a chance.
I manage to get one arm around Lorenzo’s shoulders before Giovanni’s knee catches me in the gut, sending me sprawling back into the heat.
“Fucking STOP!”
I dive back in, knowing this is the stupidest thing I’ve done in my entire life. I’m about to get crushed by these brothers, and they hardly even know I’m here.
Lorenzo, without even looking at me, casts me off, throwing me to the floor.
Hard.
“LORENZO!”
At the sound of his name in my voice, he finally stops, pinning Giovanni beneath him.
Looks at me.
All the rage and pain and adrenaline in his face breaks. Shock, fear, terror burst through. “Dash? You need to get out!”
My body trembling, I push myself up from the floor. “Let go of him,” I wheeze.
Lorenzo’s face is dark with soot and sweat, his eyes wide and wild. His shirt is off, lost somewhere, and his broad, bare torso shines with burns and scrapes. “He tried to kill you!” he shouts over the roar of the flames.
“That doesn’t mean you can kill him!”
I force myself to crawl forward, reaching for his face in both my hands. “Look. Maybe this is you. Maybe you are a killer. But I can’t let you do this.” I cough, tasting blood on my tongue.
All the rage I’ve felt over the past two weeks, all the pain and confusion over what happened between us, funnels itself into the words that come out of me now.
Maybe Lorenzo is as terrible as I didn’t want to believe.
Maybe he really is a monster, like his brother, who would rather find fiery revenge than peace.
But that’s not me.
“You want to kill him?” I hiss. “Fine. But I made a promise that I would save people. That’s my job. That’s who I am. So if you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to drag me into the flames with you.”
“Dash…”
His moment of weakness is enough. I shove him to the side, so that I’m the one crouching over Giovanni. He sags beneath me, coughing and gagging, all of his energy spent.
“I’m going to get you out,” I promise. “You don’t deserve it, but I’m going to get you out.”
That’s when the flames catch his sleeve.
It happens quickly, a lick of orange on his forearm, spreading up his shirt. He screams, high and raw, flailing desperately against the fire that has finally come for him.
I don’t think twice before throwing myself on top of him, smothering the flames with my body, beating my hands against the burning fabric. Pain sears across my palms, so bright and terrible that I feel it through all my adrenaline.
The flames are too strong. They’ll consume us both, even as I pull Giovanni into a desperate roll, trying to use the ground to smother the deadly fire.
Pain.
Burning, awful, nerve-ripping pain.
Maybe this is how I go.
Maybe this was what was always meant to happen.
But then—
Lorenzo, grabbing for me, using something—a tablecloth, maybe?—to smother the flames that are trying to consume his brother and me.
“Fucking hell, Dash,” he growls. “What the fuck?”
“Shut up,” I snap. The pain is bright and numbing, but I fight to ignore it as I look down at Giovanni, his sleeves blackened, the skin on his arms and torso melting and raw. “I need your help. He can’t walk, and I can’t carry him alone.”
Lorenzo looks at his brother. At me. At the flames all around us. “Okay,” he says in a hoarse voice. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”