Nobody was watching me.
I grabbed the candelabra.
“You know what the funny thing is?” I said, my voice louder than necessary. “You tried to kill me with fire once before. That microwave in my room? That was you, wasn’t it?”
Marcus glanced at me, distracted. “Pressure tactic. Make you want to leave. You didn’t take the hint.”
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t.”
I hurled the candelabra at the curtains.
“TASHI, NO—” Ares shouted.
The flames caught instantly. The old fabric went up exactly as Leo had predicted, fire racing up the heavy drapes toward the ceiling. Smoke bloomed thick and black. The fire alarm shrieked, that piercing wail that meant automatic dispatch, automatic response, witnesses and help, and evidence.
Marcus spun toward me, and in that split second of distraction, Ares moved.
He tackled Marcus low and hard, both of them crashing into the bar cart. The gun went flying. Leo dove for it while Orion grabbed me, pulling me away from the spreading fire.
“Are you insane?” he shouted over the alarm. “You could have killed us all!”
“He was going to kill us anyway!” I shouted back. “But fire alarms can’t be disabled! Security’s coming!”
The sprinklers finally kicked in—apparently, Marcus hadn’t managed to disable them completely—water cascading down in sheets. The curtains hissed and smoked, yet they continued to burn, the fire too strong for water to quell.
Ares and Marcus fought on the floor, brutal and efficient. Marcus had training, but Ares had fury and motivation and twenty pounds of muscle. Blood mixed with water on the marble floor.
“The timer!” Marta screamed, pointing at the device Marcus had dropped. Three minutes, ten seconds.
Leo grabbed it, his fingers flying over the controls. “I can’t disarm it! It’s military-grade, encrypted?—”
“Then get it out of here!” Orion ordered.
“The windows!” I ran to the glass, grabbed a chair, and smashed it through. The wind whipped in, feeding the fire but giving us an escape route for the device.
Leo didn’t hesitate. He ran to the window and hurled the timer out into the night.
We watched it arc down toward the empty construction lot beside the hotel, a small black shape disappearing into darkness. The explosion lit up the night three seconds later, a ball of flame that would have killed us all if Leo hadn’t?—
“Move!” Ares roared.
The curtains had fully engulfed the wall. The sprinklers were useless. Smoke was everywhere, thick and choking. My eyes burned. My lungs burned.
Marcus was unconscious on the floor, blood streaming from his head. Ares had zip-tied his hands with something from his pocket—of course he carried zip ties—and was already dragging him toward the door.
“The stairwell is still locked,” Orion said, pulling me toward the exit. “Security can override from below, but?—”
The door burst open.
Hotel security flooded in, led by Neville with a fire extinguisher and a look of absolute terror on his face. “The fire department is on the way!” he shouted. “I overrode the locks! We need to evacuate now!”
We ran. Through the smoke, down the emergency stairs, Ares dragged Marcus’s unconscious body while Neville and security cleared the path ahead. The building’s fire alarm was deafening now, with everyone evacuating and chaos in the stairwells.
We burst out of the parking lot into a scene of controlled chaos. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Police. Media was present, as expected—someone likely live-streamed the explosion from the construction lot.
Paramedics descended on us immediately. Oxygen masks. Blood pressure checks. Questions about smoke inhalation and injuries.
I watched them load Marcus—now conscious and snarling—into a police car. Watched the firefighters disappear into the building to fight the blaze I’d started. Watched my suite—our home—burning on the top floor, smoke pouring from the shattered window.
