Firethorne

Chapter 42

Chapter Forty-Two

Maya

I cowered on the cold concrete, covering my head with my hands as the sound of the gunshots rang in my ears. I didn’t want to open my eyes and see what’d happened. It was a reality I wasn’t ready to face.

Had they shot Damien?

Were they about to shoot me?

I whimpered, scared out of my wits as I forced myself to open my eyes. And there, lying before me on the ground in pools of their own blood were the two men who’d tortured Damien.

Damien was still chained up, still breathing, but his eyes weren’t on me. He was looking at the doorway.

“I couldn’t leave you here to die,” a voice said from behind, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Lysander, standing there with a gun in his hand. “I’ve taken care of Beresford. And I’ll do the same to anyone else I find on my way out, but I meant what I said earlier. You need to get out.”

I swallowed through the razor blades embedded in my throat, trying to calm my racing heart as I blinked through my tears.

He took a moment, then nodded and turned around, leaving without uttering another word.

I was in shock.

I couldn’t believe he’d come back to save us.

But fear soon eclipsed everything, and I sprang from the floor, running over to Damien.

I took his face in my hands as I asked frantically, “How do I get you out of these?” I reached up to grab the cuffs that he was enslaved in. “Where’s the key?”

“His pocket,” Damien rasped, coughing through the dryness in his throat. “The key is in his pocket.”

He nodded to the dead guy to the left of him, and even though touching either of these men was the last thing I wanted to do, I stalked over to his body, knelt beside him, and pushed my hand into his pocket.

“He hasn’t got it,” I cried, after checking both pockets.

“Then that one’ll have it,” Damien said breathlessly, with urgency, and I scrambled over to the other guy, shoving my hands into his jeans in desperation.

And there, I found a key.

I jumped up, racing over to Damien, and I pushed the key into the lock. The cuffs clanked open, and Damien fell into my arms, relief at being free over-powering him in a rare moment of weakness. But he soon righted himself, strength flooding through him as he wrapped his arms around me and said, “I’m so sorry, Maya. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I’m fine,” I told him, but he clenched his jaw and shook his head.

“I can see the blood and bruises on your face. You’re not fine.”

“I will be,” I urged. “Once we get out of here. Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk,” he said, standing taller, but giving a quiet moan as the sting and ache of his wounds hit. But he was strong, and he knew what he had to do to survive, just like I did.

Damien took the knife out of my hand and put his arm around my shoulders as I wrapped mine tentatively around his waist. With fierce determination, we walked out of that cellar and headed towards the staircase that led back up to the house.

“Is he dead?” Damien asked, and I faltered.

“I stabbed him in the chest. Twice.” I left out the other part. It wasn’t something I wanted to admit out loud.

“But is he dead?” Damien repeated, urgency clear in his voice.

“I think so. He looked dead.”

Damien’s head fell back as he let out a frustrated breath.

“I need to see him,” he demanded. “I have to make sure he’s dead. I can’t leave here without knowing that.”

“But he is. I’m sure of it. And we don’t have time for this, Damien. We have to go.”

I didn’t want him going up there and seeing what had happened.

“If he’s dead, then there’s no rush,” he stated plainly. “He can’t chase us if he’s dead, can he?”

I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I begged, “I don’t want to be here for a second longer. Please, Damien. Come with me. Let me get you to a hospital.”

“You can wait for me down here, or outside on the driveway,” he told me. “But I can’t let this go, Maya.”

That was out of the question.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that I was letting him out of my sight again, not after I’d just found him. But I didn’t want him seeing what I’d had to do to escape, not without me being there.

“I go where you go,” I said, placing my hand gently over his blood-soaked chest. “If you want to see his body, I’ll go with you.”

“No, Maya.” Damien took my hand from his chest and placed a gentle kiss on the back. “I want you safe. That’s what I’ve always wanted. That’s what I live for. I’ll be happier if you’re out of this house.”

“And I’ll only be happy if I’m with you. I’m not leaving you again, Damien. I’m never leaving you.”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against mine, and with the gentlest whisper, he said, “You know I love you, don’t you?”

“I love you, too.” I sighed. Wishing those words could’ve been spoken at a better time, and yet, the timing couldn’t be more perfect if I really thought about it. Because we’d won. Love had kept us going and brought us to this place, where we were free. Nothing could hurt us now.

Or so I thought.

We held on to each other as we walked up the stairs that led to Firethorne’s office. As we came to the top, we saw Beresford’s dead body slumped against the wall. The bullet wound that Lysander had inflicted went straight through his forehead.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Damien quipped as we passed him.

Then we came to the office door, and Damien pushed it open.

I expected to find Firethorne on the other side, lying on his back where I’d left him.

But he wasn’t.

He was sitting up against his desk, his breaths short, sharp and laboured, as red stained the front of his shirt.

He had a blanket thrown over his lap to hide the mutilation I’d inflicted, and he looked ashen. But he wasn’t dead, and that thought sickened me.

“And here... they are...” he managed to croak. “My beloved... son... and his... little... whore.”

Even as he sat there, with no hope of fighting back, he still lashed his wicked tongue at us, thinking his words could hurt us.

“Father,” Damien said, letting his arm drop from my shoulder as he stepped forward. He puffed his chest out as he pointed to his wounds with the knife in his hand and announced, “Is this the best you could do? A few lashings from two useless fuckers who wouldn’t know how to torture a man if they tried.”

Firethorne huffed.

“Looks like... I employed... the wrong... people,” he stammered as his breaths became weaker. Then, pulling the blanket off his lap to expose his own wound, he added, “I should’ve... paid her... to do it. She really... knows... how to... get a job done.” He glanced towards the fire, where his severed dick lay in a pool of watery vomit on the carpet in front of it.

Damien saw it, too.

And I almost threw up all over again.

Damien flew across the room and launched himself at his father, grabbing him around the neck, and dragging his limp body over to the fireplace where his dick lay.

The urge to finish what I’d started burned viciously inside me, and I ran over to them, taking the knife out of Damien’s hand, desperate to use it again. But Damien blocked my attempts to fight, forcing me to move back so I didn’t injure him.

“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 first into 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. When they 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. “I need to 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, that he might’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.