Page 286 of Don’t Say Mafia

The words didn’t land at first. They hovered somewhere in front of me, shapeless and wrong, like they belonged to a different conversation. I stared at his mouth, waiting for it to rearrange into something that made sense.

Unit Twelve. My apartment.

“Hey—are you all right?” the firefighter asked, his voice closer now, urgency creeping in. Understanding dawned across his face a second later. “Unit Twelve is yours?”

He started to reach for me.

“I got her.” Jagger was suddenly there at my side, one arm sliding around me before I could even register how close I’d come to falling to the ground. “I’ve got her,” he repeated firmly as the firefighter paused, his gaze flicking between us with a brief, assessing look. He finally nodded once and stepped back, turning his attention toward the stairs.

My hands were shaking as I searched Jagger’s face like it might have answers. “I don’t understand,” I said, the words tumbling out unevenly. “How did this happen?”

“I heard someone saying your stove was on, and something sparked the gas,” he said.

I was shaking as I stared at him incredulously. “I didn’t even cook this morning. I didn’t eat anything. My stove shouldn’t have been on!”

His face tightened immediately, and his lips curled up in displeasure. “You didn’t eat?” he growled.

I shook my head, tears blurring everything. “No.”

His jaw flexed. “Zachary brought you food,” he said. “Did he not?”

“He did,” I said quickly, the words rushing out as panic clawed higher. “He brought food. I just— I got distracted. I never turned on the stove. That’s what I’m trying to say. I didn’t cook anything. I didn’t leave that stove on.” My voice broke at the end, the logic unraveling in my hands as I shook my head like that might make it make sense. None of it fit. None of it lined up.

“How did this happen?” I whispered.

Whatever fight I had left drained out of me all at once. I tipped forward, pressing into him without meaning to, my forehead hitting his chest as a sob tore free.

“Why do bad things keep happening to me?” I cried, the question ugly and helpless and unanswerable.

He didn’t respond, but his arms wrapped around me instantly, holding me together when I couldn’t manage it myself.

Jagger let me cry for a few minutes before I forced myself upright. I swiped at my face, embarrassed by the fact that once again . . . I was falling apart in front of him. “I need to see it,” I whispered, and he didn’t argue.

He kept one arm around me as we moved, guiding me past the tape, past the murmured voices and the flashing lights.

A firefighter stepped directly into our path at the base of the stairs, one gloved hand lifting. “I’m going to have to ask you to stay back. It’s not secure yet.”

Jagger shifted slightly in front of me so that the firefighter’s attention slid fully to him. “She lives here,” Jagger said calmly.

“I understand that, sir, but⁠—”

Jagger leaned in, close enough that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

The firefighter’s expression changed almost instantly. The fight drained from his posture as his eyes flicked from Jagger to me and back again. For some reason the color had leached from his face. “Right,” he muttered, stepping aside. “Just—be careful.”

Jagger gave him a brief nod, and then we were moving again. I didn’t have the energy to ask Jagger what he’d said to him.

The stairwell smelled like smoke and wet ash, and each step I took felt disconnected. My apartment was still standing, technically. The door hung crooked on its hinges, paint blistered and peeling like old skin. The frame was scorched black, the numbers warped and barely readable. I stopped short and stared at it.

“It was really my apartment that burned,” I said stupidly, a part of me unable to comprehend it until this moment.

His hand tightened at my back as we stepped through the doorway.

Inside, everything was ruined.

The walls were charred and streaked with soot, and the ceiling was warped and sagged in multiple places. My couch sat soaked and misshapen, its fabric melted in spots, springs poking through like it had been flayed. My coffee table was split down the middle, one leg completely gone, the surface blistered and warped beyond recognition.

The kitchen was worse.