Page 97 of Firethorne
“No, Maya,” he said. “I need to do this.” And then, addressing his father, he seethed, “I told you if you touched her, I’d break your fucking neck,” he hissed in his ear as he added, “And now I’m going to prove to you that I’m a man of my word.”
Holding his father’s head in a vice-like grip, Damien yanked it to the side, breaking his neck with a snap that made me shudder. Then, Damien pushed his father’s limp body head firstinto the roaring fire, giving Firethorne the ending he deserved, burning in his own hell.
“I’m not ready to hear about what happened here tonight,” Damien said quietly. “But I will, eventually, and I want you to know I'll be there for you. I’ll help you in whatever way I can. We will get through this.”
“I know,” I replied, dropping the knife and going to him. I wrapped both of my arms around him, burying my face in his neck as I let my tears flow freely. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “But we have to go. This place is going to go up in smoke.”
Firethorne’s body was on fire, and the flames were spreading to the carpet beneath him. There wasn’t time to lose.
We bolted, racing out of the door and flying down the corridor.
When we came to the stairs, it suddenly hit me that Cora could be somewhere on the estate.
“Where’s Cora?” I asked. “We need to make sure she’s safe.”
“She’s not here,” he told me as we took the stairs two at a time. “She’s at her cottage in the town. She’s safe, Maya. But we’re not. We need to get away from here. Now.”
When we reached the foyer, we ran to the front door.
“We need to run as far away from this place as we can,” Damien said, pulling me by the hand, desperate to get us to safety.
And I agreed with him, to a point.
But the other half of me wanted to stay and watch this place burn. I wanted to see it razed to the ground like it should be. Like it deserved to be.
We raced down the front steps of the manor and then charged down the driveway, heading away from the chaos towards the wrought iron gates of the Firethorne estate. Whenthey came into view, I slowed down, letting the other half of my brain take over.
“I want to see it burn,” I told him, panting as we both came to a standstill. “Ineedto see it burn.”
“You need to see it burn like I needed to check that he was dead,” Damien replied, understanding right away where I was coming from.
I nodded, and he stood behind me, wrapping his arms around me as we stood facing the manor.
At first, the fire was just a glow in an upstairs window. But eventually, that glow spread from room to room, and then black smoke billowed into the starry night sky as the flames grew stronger.
It was surprising how quickly it spread, glass shattering as the building groaned from the pressure of the heat of the fire, all sounds we could hear, even from the distance we were standing. But even more surprising was the fact that no sirens were blaring in the distance. No one had called the fire brigade. Maybe no one cared. Perhaps, they wanted it to burn as much as we did. It wouldn’t surprise me.
As time moved on, and the flames engulfed the manor house, Damien reminded me that emergency services, or worse still, The Butcher’s people would be heading to the estate soon, and we needed to leave.
I thought how fitting it would be for The Butcher to find a pile of ashes. It was all he deserved. That, and the reception he’d receive from Damien’s men.
You see, Damien told me, as we watched his childhood home burn to the ground, thathemight’ve been exposed when his father tracked his movements, but by the grace of God, he’d managed to keep the identities of his associates secret.
It was one of the reasons his father had kept him alive for so long, torturing him to get those names.
But Damien didn’t break.
And he was confident that Trent, Isaiah, and anyone else working with him would have intel on The Butcher’s movements tonight.
Once he stepped foot on English soil, he was a dead man walking.
Chapter Forty-Three
Maya
The fallout from the fire and the days that followed were some of the hardest we’d ever lived through.
