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THREE

Jamie

I climbed a tree far enough away to watch the house burn.

Flames licked up the side where Mitchell’s office had been, caught the porch pillars, greedy and elegant, curling around the old wood as if they’d been waiting all their lives to consume it.

The windows shattered one by one, sharp cracks echoing through the night, sending glass spraying onto the grass like scattered stars.

Inside, I knew John Mitchell was already dead because of what he’d done to Robbie. That wasn’t why I was sitting here watching it burn. Not revenge. Not justice. It was about seeing something awful become magnificent for a few fleeting minutes.

“You’re beautiful,” I murmured, voice low and reverent, and palmed my cock, which was so hard I could blow right now.

I didn’t often get hard when I burned, but tonight, killing Mitchell, watching him fight to stay alive, getting revenge for Robbie, that made me unsettled and yeah, hard.

I winced as sirens grew close, hoping they didn’t get there quickly enough to save any of it.

My breath hitched, pulse slow but heavy, and a low throb tightened in my gut.

I was hard, and I didn’t care. It wasn’t about lust—it was about awe: that rush, that worship, that moment when everything ugly turned sublime.

Fire made sense in a way nothing else ever had.

No therapist, no drugs, no midnight walks had ever quieted the noise in my head the way flames did.

It wasn’t about beauty alone—it was necessity.

A language I spoke fluently, the only thing that reflected my chaos back at me, and said, I understand .

I loved fire most when it came alive at night.

It moved as though it knew it was being watched, as if it performed just for me.

Brighter, freer, untethered. I wasn’t close enough to feel the heat, but the smoke brushed over me and went partway to dissolving the tension I carried.

A bit of peace bloomed in my chest when the house didn’t look ruined but transformed into art.

Every flame a kiss against the surface of something that used to matter .

My heartbeat was steady. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look away.

There was peace in the heat, something holy in destruction. And as the roof caved in and sparks floated toward the stars, I felt that strange, guilty ache in my chest again. Not regret—not quite—but something close to longing.

I stayed until the fire had eaten everything, until the house’s bones gave way and the night smelled like ash.

I watched from the shadows as the first cruisers rolled in, lights flashing.

Cops strung up tape as if they thought they’d find any evidence of what we’d done.

The trucks followed, bright and hulking, and their men swarmed the yard with heavy boots and shouted commands, turning my masterpiece into steam.

I hated them for it.

Every jet of water felt like an insult, like someone pissing on art. They drowned her, but she didn’t go quietly, furious and defiant until the last of her breath curled into the air and vanished.

I waited even then, long after the blaze was gone. Only when the final ember dimmed and the heat finally lifted did I turn away, the taste of her still on my tongue.

Only then did I leave her behind .

I wanted more. I needed more. Tonight had been for Robbie, for family. I needed something for myself. I headed out to the highway turnoff where I’d left my car, pushed back into the shadows, and all too soon I was back on the road, and connecting a call to Rio.

“I’m heading out,” I said as soon as he answered.

This was the rule: if I needed more , I told Rio first. He understood that my world made sense in those moments when the spark and choice were mine, but he gave me guidelines, he held me accountable.

I wasn’t allowed to go out and burn things whenever I wanted, I had to have it make sense.

“Why?” Rio asked, exasperated. He told me I’d go too far one day, and then, they’d take me in. But I was careful. My marks were researched, and there were reasons for every place I burned and every kill I made.

“For me,” I said. I needed the fire—the flicker, the pulse, the ache in my fingers to strike a match and feed it fuel.

Just the thought of flames licking up walls, devouring oxygen, made something in my chest tighten and release.

I could almost feel the blistering heat against my skin, smell the scorched paint, hear the deep whoosh as fire found fresh fuel.

My fingers twitched, itching for the spark, the flare, the roar.

It wasn’t a want—it was a need, curling tight and hot in my gut as if hunger and desperation had collided and set each other alight.

I needed to feel in control again, to be the one who decided what stayed and what turned to ash.

Like the first time—kneeling in the yard behind my childhood home, a tin can stuffed with newspaper and twigs, my hands shaking as I flicked the lighter.

When it caught, all the screaming inside me stopped—just smoke and crackle and glow.

I remember the way it warmed my palms and lit up the dark.

Nothing else ever did that, not like fire.

I didn’t know where to start with what Mitchell had told us tonight, but we had names now, and tracking the others down was for later, once the monster inside me calmed down—so for now, it was another target from my list.

“Call me as soon as you’re done,” Rio ordered.

“I’ll come straight home.”

Rio sighed. “I’ll wait.” His voice caught a little, as if he wanted to add more but didn’t trust the words not to betray his fear.

He was my best friend—the only one who understood me, and I owed him more than he could ever know.

He and Tudor both. Tudor for taking me in, teaching me a trade, and financing my hacking.

Rio for keeping me within rigid guidelines when the need to burn took over.

There was a long pause on the line before he finally said, “Don’t go dark on me, Jamie. ”

“Once, Rio. It happened once.”

“And I nearly lost you.”

“It won’t happen again. Later, Rio.”

I found a spot to park, jogging the final distance to the house I wanted, run-down, blacked-out windows, and cars that came and went at hours too specific to be anything but business.

Meth. A distribution spot. Maybe more. And it was too close to Redcars.

I’d been surveilling it for weeks, cataloging faces, memorizing plates, and recording hours of footage using cameras no one else had noticed.

Police presence was a big fat zero. I guessed they either didn’t have the resources or had been paid off, and Drift MC was moving into the space.

Meth and bikers. The place had to go, and tonight was the night to get shit like this done.

It needed to go. Burned from the map.

I pulled the hood up on my sweatshirt as I got nearer, walked the block like I didn’t care who saw me, and caught a kid posted up near the stoop—fifteen, maybe.

Scrawny. Nervous energy all over him. Lookout.

Smoking something cheap. He spotted me and squared up, but I was already on the move, my mask up over the lower half of my face.

I grabbed him by the collar, and shoved him back against the chain-link, my hands on his throat.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He trembled. His eyes were wide and panicked, and his voice cracked with something raw as he scrabbled at the hold I had. “Don’t hurt me, please.”

It hit me harder than I expected. He was terrified—barely more than a kid, caught up in something bigger than he could handle. I let go of his shirt and took a step back.

“How old are you?”

“F-fourteen.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“My mom… I needed money, I?—”

“Jesus,” I snarled, holding the man to my face and staring into terrified eyes—just a kid. I shoved my free hand into my pocket, yanked out the emergency cash I always had, well over a hundred if not more, then stuffed it in the kid’s shirt.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” he begged.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t hurt kids.” He fell to the ground and crab-walked back. “Run!” When he didn’t move at first, I took a step forward, and he was up on his feet instantly. “Fuck off,” I snarled, “Make better choices!”

He sprinted away, not looking back. Good.

In seconds, I was in the kitchen of 193 Maple Lane South, finding piles of pizza boxes, ashtrays spilling over, a couple of needles on one side.

I’d cased the place long enough to put it at the top of my burn list. There were four men inside, wearing cuts, not making meth with precision and dedication, but throwing shit into containers, cutting it with poisons, selling it low.

They were lucky the whole lot hadn’t gone up already.

Don’t worry, guys, I’ve got this.

I had four dead bad guys, one skull bashed in, three shot with guy one’s gun—not as pretty as a knife—but less likely to be investigated.

The kitchen backed onto the garage, and the whole structure was trash—drywall, grease, old plywood.

I slipped on gloves, then picked the lock before dropping a half-can of denatured alcohol in the corner.

I dumped accelerant across the counter and tossed in the bottle of heat gel I’d modified.

It hit hard and combusted on contact with oxygen—the perfect flash.

I grabbed one of the lab’s spare gas canisters, cracked the valve, and left it by the stove .

By the time I crossed the street, it was ready to blow.

I ducked into the abandoned duplex, found my cameras—five of them, all mounted on cheap magnetic backs—and began collecting them until only the one pointed squarely at the front of the house remained.

When the explosion came, it was perfect.

A silent bloom of flame in the dark, beautiful in black and white. The building swallowed itself. I watched it all through the lens.

When the sirens grew close, I took the final camera, slid it into my bag, and returned to the apartment I shared with Rio. When I got upstairs, Rio was waiting, arms crossed, hoodie slung over one shoulder as if he hadn’t moved since getting home after getting rid of Mitchell.

“Did Enzo get back to Robbie, okay?” I asked, as if this were any regular night.

“Yes. Jamie, what did you do?” he asked.

At first, I said nothing, only pulled my laptop from the bag, powered it up, and opened the footage. I turned the screen so he could see, and I hit play.

The image flickered. The house. Then the flash. Then fire—wild, bright, silent.

“They were on the burn list, right?” he asked as if it would be any other way. I didn’t burn shit for the sake of it.

“At the top,” I said, annoyed that Rio had interrupted the show and was questioning me.

“Did you need that second burn, J?” he murmured, pressing a hand to my shoulder.

“You promised me you wouldn’t escalate to more than one at a time.

” There was something raw in his voice, as if he’d already played out this conversation in his head too many times.

I caught the flicker of fear in his eyes—not fear of me, but of what might come next if I didn’t stop.

Of how far I’d push this, before the fire took something we couldn’t get back.

I shook him off, threw him a wide grin. “I never break my promises, asshole. Killing that Mitchell guy was for Robbie, I needed something for me, so it only counts as one.”

Rio didn’t smile back. His mouth was tight, eyes still locked on the screen.

His jaw twitched once, and he blocked the view.

“Jamie, this isn’t a game; two in one night is escalating.

” His voice shook slightly, and he ran a hand through his hair, pacing two tight steps before stopping to face me again.

His jaw was clenched, and he wasn’t just angry.

He was scared. The desperation and fear in his eyes stopped me cold.

“I saw you with Mitchell tonight— you enjoyed it. Jesus, I saw your expression when he died?—”

“He hurt Robbie. He touched my family,” I snarled, my voice raw and rising. “Are you telling me you don’t enjoy getting in the ring and fucking someone over?”

“Jamie—”

“Don’t tell me how I should feel about what we did, or what I needed after!

” I stepped forward, fists clenched at my sides to stop the anger inside me from exploding.

“You think I don’t know how far I’ve gone?

You think I don’t carry that? So don’t stand there and act like I’m broken for feeling this. For needing something to burn.”

“I’m not, but fuck, Jamie… swear to me you can stop. I can’t watch you lose yourself again—not after Stockton, not after what you did to that motel. I held your hand while you shook and begged me not to let you burn like that ever again. Please don’t make me watch it happen twice.

I shoved past him and hit play again, pretending I hadn’t heard. But the tension in the room didn’t fade. It thickened, coiled between us like smoke that wouldn’t clear.

We all carried something dark. Enzo found his purpose in the obsessive protection of the man he loved. Rio fought his temper, slipping sometimes, hurting before he could pull back. And me? I didn’t fight whatever lived inside me. I let it burn and created the fires of Hell on Earth.

I watched the video on repeat.

And sue me if I got off to thoughts of the fire that had consumed Mitchell’s house.