Page 3 of BRATVA'S Avenging Bride
"The dumpster will catch you. Trust me. Jump!"
She does. I watch her fall, watch her land hard but alive, watch her scramble away from the building holding her arm and limping.
The flames are behind me now. Licking at the floor and walls. Everywhere.
I'm trapped.
This is it, I think. This is how it ends. Poetic, maybe. Deserved, probably.
But then something in me snaps. Some animal part that refuses to die in the cage it burned down.
I climb onto the window ledge. The ground is so far below. The dumpster looks small, impossible, a stupid gamble.
I jump anyway.
The impact knocks the air from my lungs. Pain explodes through my shoulder, my hip, but nothing breaks. Nothing stops me.
I roll off the dumpster and hit the pavement running.
I don't look back until I'm across the street, until I'm far enough that the heat doesn't sear my face anymore.
That's when I stop. That's when I turn.
The building is an inferno. Orange and red and gold, beautiful in its destruction. I can hear banging on the doors, but I don’t go back. Would never go back.
Boris doesn't come out. Abram doesn't come out.
Good.
I hope the smoke took them first. I hope they choked on it.
Mira sees me from across the street. Her eyes are wide as she holds onto Lena, her face streaked with tears. She mouths one word.
Go.
So, I do.
I turn and walk away from the fire, from the shouting, from the three years of hell that just went up in flames.
My hands are black with soot. My clothes smell like chemicals and fire. I should be terrified, should be running, should be planning how to disappear before the cops figure out who started it.
But all I feel is the heat on my back and the sick, twisted satisfaction of knowing I did this.
I burned it down, and I'd do it again.
I don't stop walking until I reach the flat.
I collapse onto the sleeping bag and stare at the ceiling, my whole body shaking now that the adrenaline is gone.
I didn't plan to live. The fire was supposed to take me too. A pyre for all the things they stole.
But I'm here. Breathing. Alive. And if I survived, if I clawed my way out of those flames for a reason, then I'll live my life on my own terms.
Even if it kills me.
Matvey
The smoke is still rising when I arrive.
