The second and third ignite simultaneously, sending cascades of red fire racing up the walls like living vines.
Then it’s the incendiaries’ turn, and they catch next. Controlled blazes erupting along our path, sealing the exit behind us with a wall of hungry flames. The heat hits us in a wave, and I feel Raven press closer to my back, her breath hot against my neck.
The warehouse transforms with each explosion—darkness retreats, shadows dance and multiply, every surface gleams wet with reflected fire. Smoke gathers near the ceiling, thick and acrid.
More explosions follow, each one precisely timed and placed. I’ve turned the area into an arena of fire and light, a shifting landscape of danger that I control. This is my element. This is where I was forged.
“Jesus,” Raven whispers, her voice almost lost beneath the crackle and roar of the flames. Her hand finds mine again, squeezing hard enough to hurt.
I turn to face her, watching the firelight paint her pale skin in shades of gold and crimson. She looks both terrified and alive, her eyes reflecting the dancing flames. For a moment, I almost forget why we’re here—mesmerized by how beautiful she is in this hellscape I’ve created.
Then movement catches my eye. A shadow separating from the darkness behind a stack of crates. I shove Raven behind me, my body automatically positioning itself as her shield.
The gunshot comes a heartbeat later, the sound sharp and definitive even against the backdrop of burning chaos. The bullet misses me by inches, embedding itself in the concrete wall with a spray of dust and fragments.
I feel rather than hear Raven’s sharp intake of breath against my back.
“I was wondering when you’d arrive, Matteo.” Finn Kearney’s voice cuts through the roar of the flames, eerily calm. He steps into view, gun held steady in one hand. But this isn’t Finn anymore—this is Salvador Greco, the boy who lost his family because they took mine. “Though I have to admit, I didn’t expect you to bring the fire to me.”
“I thought it would be poetic.” My voice sounds alien to my own ears—flat, almost conversational, despite the inferno raging around us. “Your family killed my parents with fire. I killed your family with fire. And now, here we are again because you had to look a gift horse in the fucking mouth.”
He smiles, the expression cold and empty as a shark’s. “Indeed. Though I think you’re forgetting who has the gun.”
The second shot comes without warning. I feel the bullet pass my cheek, just as Raven makes a choked sound and she drops down. The world stops. Everything—the fire, the smoke, the roar of flames—recedes into distant background noise.
All I can see is Salvador, with the gun still raised, the barrel now aimed directly at where Raven crouches behind me. All I can feel is rage, white-hot and consuming, burning through my veins like liquid metal.
“You missed,” I say, and I don’t recognize my own voice anymore. It’s too calm, too controlled for the violence building inside me like a storm.
“Did I?” Salvador’s smile widens. “I wasn’t aiming for you that time.”
Fury unlike anything I’ve felt before stirs inside me. The part of me that’s been holding back, that’s been calculating and planning and thinking, falls away. What rises in its place is something older, something primal.
My body changes with it—shoulders lowering, stance widening, muscles coiling with lethal intent. I see Salvador recognize the transformation, watch as uncertainty flickers across his face for the first time.
“You shouldn’t have touched her,” I growl, my words barely audible over the crackling flames. “You shouldn’t have even looked at her.”
I begin moving toward him, each step deliberate and unhurried. The fire spreads around us, consuming crates and pallets. Smoke thickens the air, but I don’t need to see clearly. I know exactly where he is. I can smell his fear beneath the cologne and gunpowder.
“Stay back!” Salvador shouts, firing again.
Behind me, I hear Raven’s ragged breathing, sense her rising to her feet. The knowledge that she’s still standing, still fighting, fuels the fire in my blood. Salvador Greco is already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.
I smile at him, and whatever he sees in my face makes him take a step back. “You wanted the monster who burned your family,” I say, still advancing. “Well, here I am. Boo.”
Our bodies collide like wrecking balls. Salvador’s gun skitters across the floor as my shoulder drives into his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs in a satisfying whoosh.
We crash into a stack of crates, wood splintering around us as we go down hard. My fist connects with his jaw; the impact jolts up my arm. He retaliates with a knee to my ribs. I barely feel it. All I feel is the need to tear him apart with my bare hands for daring to touch what’s mine.
“I should have killed you all those years ago,” I snarl into his face, driving another punch into his stomach. “But don’t worry, I never make the same mistake twice.”
“You’re going to pay,” Salvador hisses as he continues to throw punches that I mostly manage to avoid.
Blood runs into my eye from a gash on my forehead. Salvador’s face is a mess of cuts and forming bruises, his clothes torn and dirty.
“How did it feel?” he asks, voice ragged as we circle. “When your parents burned? Did they scream? I’m sure mine did. I heard them in my imagination for years.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl, feinting left before driving right, my fist clipping his shoulder as he dodges.
