Getting frustrated, Elias starts to swing, his fists coming down against my body, but the adrenaline keeps me going, and I barely notice the pain as I’m able to scramble back across the bed, my bound hands making it a million times harder.
He reaches for me again, and just as he grips my bloodied ankle and drags me across the bed, I frantically reach up and wrap my bound hands around the old oil lamp on the bedside table. My skin burns against the glass, but it doesn’t last long as I launch it with everything I have. The burning lamp smashesagainst Elias’s face, instantly burning his skin as oil splatters through the dirty cabin.
He roars in agony, the burning oil eating at his skin as the room plunges into a terrifying darkness, but it quickly brightens again as the flames catch on his clothes, the bed, and the shitty curtains.
Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Elias wails in agony, rolling around on the ground, trying to put out the flames, but as the bed goes up in flames, catching quickly, I barely have a chance to roll off it. The heat in the room is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
The cabin quickly fills with billowing smoke, and I begin choking on it as I hastily get to my knees, trying to avoid the flames as they spread throughout the room, licking up the walls and destroying everything in its path.
My skin burns from the proximity, and I hastily get to my feet, racing past the only section of the room that’s not engulfed in flames. As I sprint to the door, Elias’s hand grips my ankle, yanking me back and knocking me off my feet.
I slam to the ground, my chin cracking against the hard floor as he holds me down. “Oh, you’re not going anywhere, kitten,” he roars through the flames, my body beginning to burn under the heat. “If I’m going down, you’re coming with me.”
I frantically kick at his face, doing everything and anything to free myself before the flames come any closer. My hand skims past the blade he used to cut the tape from my ankles, and without a second thought, my joined hands grasp the handle. Then, with a loud battle cry, I launch it toward him, the blade plunging right through the center of his throat.
I yank it out, my chest heaving from exertion, and blood instantly spurts. The choked noise he makes only spurs me on, and I stab him again, plunging the blade into his chest over and over.
One for the parking garage. Another for Izzy. And one for the sister he stole from me.
When the heat becomes too much, and his body begins convulsing on the ground beneath me, reality floods back to me, and I manically look around, realizing that in the past few seconds, the flames have consumed the whole fucking room. The door. The bed. The walls and ceiling.
“No,” I cry out, fear rocking me as I realize I’m trapped. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape, and as the thick smoke fills the room, I drop back to my knees, the flames just moments from claiming me too.
The wild flames lick closer, threatening to take my hair, singeing the hairs on my arms, and as I cry out, the smoke burning my lungs, the fiery door is kicked off its hinges, and there, standing in the doorway is my fucking white knight, looking in at me like a goddamn warrior ready to burn the world to the ground.
He starts toward me, but my eyes widen in fear, the flames already crowding around him as the fresh oxygen adds fuel to the fire. “KNIGHT! NO!” I panic. I can’t have him go down with me. I can’t have him sacrifice himself because I was too reckless, because I ran headfirst into that damn mansion instead of waiting like he begged me to. “RUN! YOU CAN STILL SAVE YOURSELF.”
It’s as though he doesn’t even hear me as he rushes straight through the flames, reaching me within seconds, his arms crowding around my heated body. “Knight,” I cry.
“What’d I tell you, doll,” he murmurs, lifting me right into his arm, the flames closing in. “If you burn, I burn too.”
My heart explodes with overwhelming love as I realize just how much this man would sacrifice for me. With that, he curls my head into his chest, his arms protectively around me, andraces back through the flames, taking us out into the darkness and leaving his brother to burn.
We break out onto the deck of the massive ship, and Knight immediately sets me on the ground to look me over, making sure nothing is on fire. “Are you okay?” he demands as gunshots ring out across the deck.
I nod. “I think so.”
“Good,” he says, pulling a blade from somewhere on his uniform and slicing it straight through the tape binding my wrists. The flames at our back begin spreading to the next cabin, quickly threatening to devour the whole damn ship. “We’ve gotta go.”
I nod, letting him run the show, more than happy to do whatever he needs me to do if it means getting the fuck off this goddamn ship. He grips my hand so damn tight, I know I’ll have bruises come tomorrow, and when we move, I hear him speaking into his radio. “Package secured,” he says, letting his team know what’s going on. “Time to go.”
We break into a run, bypassing dead bodies in heaps on the ground, and just as Knight turns to take a corridor to lead to the opposite side of the ship, the flames catch up with us, blocking our way. “Fuck,” he grunts, starting to double back and searching for alternate routes.
He kicks through a door and pulls me along when he comes to a screeching halt. “FUCK!” he yells, his hands frantically on my body as he turns and bails, dragging me away so goddamn fast that I barely get a chance to look back and see what has him so rattled.
And there, in the center of the room, is a stack of brown wooden boxes with red warning labels painted on the side reading CAUTION: EXPLOSIVES.
“No,” I cry, my feet barely able to keep up as Knight hauls me away from the room and toward the very edge of the ship,his hand not daring to break away from mine as the flames roar toward the room of explosives.
He grabs for his radio again, his words bellowed across the ship. “ABORT NOW,” he commands his team, his tone full of fear for every one of the lives he’s responsible for. “EXPLOSIVES ON DECK. ABORT NOW.”
My eyes are wide, and as I stare around the chaos, I watch men in black tactical gear leap off the edge of the massive ship, not a single care for who is currently shooting at them. They simply throw themselves into the cold water below, trusting Knight implicitly.
As we race toward the edge, Knight grips my hand tighter, calling over his shoulder toward me. “Don’t let go of my hand,” he demands. “Just like at the waterfall. Don’t fucking let go.”
“I won’t,” I promise, and with that, he effortlessly scoops me into his arms without missing a step, and in the blink of an eye, he launches us off the edge of the ship. Just as gravity pushes us toward the pitch-black water below, the ship explodes, sending a wave of fiery rubble shooting around us just moments before we drop straight into the depths of the ocean.
