Chapter 7 - Blood and Ash
The retaliation came faster and more violently than even I had anticipated.
For four days, I lived a life I had never known. I woke up at 4:30 AM, drove a nondescript sedan to the wholesale flower market, loaded crates of fresh roses and baby's breath into the back, and brought them to Claire’s shop.
I swept the floors. I hauled five-gallon buckets of water. My hands, once pampered and soft, became calloused, scratched by rose thorns, and stained with dirt.
And I watched my children.
Maya was a firefly—bright, laughing, and endlessly curious. By the third day, she had decided that my broad shoulders were the best place to sit while Claire trimmed stems. She would tug on my dark hair with her sticky, jam-covered fingers, babbling nonsense words that sounded like the sweetest symphonies I had ever heard.
Leo remained cautious. He would sit near me, watching with his sharp, quiet eyes, occasionally handing me a fallen petal or a roll of green floral tape. Whenever our eyes met, a quiet understanding passed between us. He was protecting his mother; I was trying to earn the right to stand beside him.
Claire spoke to me only when necessary. But the ice had begun to thaw into a cautious, fragile peace. She no longer flinched when I entered the room. She allowed me to pour her tea. Once, when she nearly tripped over a wooden crate, I caught her by the waist, our bodies pressing together for a single, electric second.
Her eyes had widened, dark and breathlessly vulnerable, before she gently stepped back. But in that second, I saw it: the embers of the love we had once shared were still alive, buried deep beneath the ash.
Then, on Friday night, the ash caught fire.
It was nearly 8:00 PM. The shop was closed, and Claire was in the back office tallying the week's receipts while the twins slept peacefully in two small travel cribs in the corner. I was in the front room, locking the heavy brass deadbolt on the front door.
A sudden, sharp shattering sound came from the alleyway behind the shop.
My instincts screamed. "Claire! Stay in the office!"
Before the words had completely left my mouth, the back door of the shop—a heavy steel service entrance—was kicked violently off its latch.
Two men in dark balaclavas burst into the hallway, smelling of gasoline and cheap adrenaline. One of them held an iron crowbar; the other held a heavy glass bottle stuffed with a rag—a Molotov cocktail.
"Get the woman!" the first man shouted, his voice muffled by the ski mask. "Burn the stock! Burn the whole damn block down!"
They were hired muscle. Cheap, ruthless street thugs paid to send a message. Sophia Reynolds had realized her family was on the brink of total financial annihilation, and in her madness, she had chosen arson.
"Alexander!" Claire screamed from the office, throwing her body over the cribs where Leo and Maya were just waking up, crying out in terror.
Rage—pure, primal, and blinding—erupted through my veins.
I didn't think. I didn't hesitate.
I launched myself down the narrow hallway, slamming my shoulder into the first man before he could swing the crowbar. The impact drove him backward into the brick wall with a sickening crack. The crowbar clattered to the floor.
The second man struck a lighter. The rag on the bottle ignited with a sudden *whoosh* of orange flame.
"Die, you bastard!" he yelled, cocking his arm back to hurl the firebomb directly into the office where Claire and the children were trapped.
I lunged forward.
I didn't care about my life. I didn't care about the flames. In that split second, the math was simple: my family lived, or I died.
I caught the man’s wrist mid-swing, twisting it violently until bone snapped. He screamed in agony, the bottle slipping from his grasp.
I pulled him downward, shielding the doorway with my own body as the glass bottle struck the concrete floor between us and exploded.
A wave of liquid fire erupted.
The heat was instantaneous, an inferno of white-hot agony. The flames splashed upward, catching the fabric of my heavy coat and searing across my back, my left shoulder, and down my arm.
The pain was unspeakable, a screaming agony that tore the breath from my lungs. But I didn't retreat. I grabbed the burning thug by his jacket, dragged him through the flames toward the shattered rear door, and hurled him out into the alleyway snow.
The first man, clutching his fractured ribs, scrambled backward out the door, dragging his screaming, burned accomplice with him into the dark.
"Alexander!"
Claire’s scream pierced through the roaring in my ears.
I turned back toward the hallway. The floor was ablaze, blocking the path. Without a second thought, I grabbed a heavy wet wool blanket from a nearby soaking barrel and smothered the flames on the floor, beating them down with my bare, blistering hands until the fire choked into thick, suffocating black smoke.
Then, my strength gave out.
The fire on my back had burned through my clothing, blistering and charring the skin beneath. My vision tunneled into gray static. My knees hit the charred floor.
"Alexander! Oh God, Alexander!"
Through the haze of smoke and blinding pain, I felt soft, frantic hands pulling at my coat, tearing the burning wool away from my skin. Claire was on her knees beside me, coughing, weeping hysterically, her hands trembling as she touched my face.
"Stay with me! Look at me! Alexander, please!"
I looked past her.
In the office doorway, safe behind the fire line, Leo stood holding Maya’s hand. Both of them were crying, terrified by the smoke and the noise, but they were unhurt. Not a single spark had touched them. Not a single drop of fire.
A broken, bloody smile pulled at my lips.
"They're safe," I whispered, my voice a ragged gasp as the darkness closed in from the edges of my sight. "Claire... they're safe..."
"You idiot," Claire sobbed, pressing her forehead against my unburned cheek, her tears mingling with the soot and sweat on my skin. "You stupid, stubborn idiot... don't you die on me. Don't you dare leave me again!"
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The last thing I felt before the world went black was the warmth of her hand clutching mine, tight and refusing to let go.
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