The smoke after the Fire

The smoke after the Fire
Dante’s POV

The office was dim, the smoke from the night still clinging to the ceiling like it refused to leave. The windows were black with soot. The long table was covered in maps and scattered documents, but I was not really seeing any of them. I sat in the chair with my elbows resting on my knees. My eyes were on the floor, but my mind was somewhere else entirely.

Aria.

I saw her the way she looked the morning before the attack. Her hair falling over her face as she laughed softly at something Matteo had said. The sound was warm and light. It echoed in my head like I was standing in that hallway again. I could almost feel the weight of her body when she leaned against me by accident. I remembered how her breath brushed my neck when she whispered. I remembered how her hands clung to my shirt when she was startled. Her skin. Her warmth. The small shiver she gave when I touched the back of her arm days ago.

All of it came back to me in a heavy wave. Every detail. Every sound. Every part of her that felt too soft for a place like this.

The chair creaked under me when I leaned back. My chest felt tight. I should have been focused on the maps. I should have been looking at the safe house routes or the boat logs or anything useful. Instead my head was full of her voice calling my name. Her lips pulled into a small smile. The shape of her waist under my hands when I helped her up from the stairs last week. The way she breathed when she slept that night on the couch, slow and even, like she trusted the air around her.

She trusted us.

A sharp hit broke through the quiet. A palm against wood.

I lifted my head fast.

Enzo stood across the table, his hand pressed flat on the surface. His eyes were narrowed with anger.

“Focus,” he said. “We do not have time for you to drift.”

I forced my shoulders back and straightened in the chair. The room came into focus again. The smoke. The broken glass near the corner. The faint smell of ash. My thoughts left Aria and slammed into the present where everything felt sharp and wrong.

The door opened and Matteo stepped inside. His jaw was locked so tightly that a muscle jumped in his cheek. His clothes were still dirty from the fire and the fight. He did not speak when he entered. He only looked at me and Enzo like we were both one bad breath away from snapping.

Outside the office, guards moved through the hallway, giving quick orders. I could hear the wheels of a suitcase rolling across the floor. Chiara’s voice was small and shaky as she answered someone. Mama’s rosary clicked together as she walked. They were being escorted to the car that would take them to the new safe location. Far from the coast. Far from last night. Far from danger.

I stepped to the window even though I could barely see through the soot. Chiara glanced back once before she reached the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. Mama had her hand on Chiara’s back, guiding her forward. She never looked away from the path in front of her.

We were not going with them. Only the guards and the drivers. Only the people with orders to protect them no matter what.

The brothers stayed behind.

The house still smelled like burnt wood and gunpowder. Every corner felt wrong. Every hallway felt too quiet.

When the sound of the car engines faded, I turned back to the table. Matteo spread the maps wider, flattening the edges with short rough movements. Enzo opened a folder filled with pictures of docks and old reports from the Russian side of the coast.

“We need to find where the boat was registered,” Enzo said. His voice was sharp but controlled. “They could not have moved that fast without help.”

“We need to track Nathan’s contacts,” Matteo added. “Someone financed this.”

I stared at the map of the shoreline. The lines blurred for a second.

Nothing was making sense.

The smoke damage had knocked out half of our communication system. The guards were exhausted. The cameras were ruined. The boat had no clean trace. Every plan we tried to form broke apart before we got two steps into it.

Enzo dropped a photo onto the table. “This was not random. They knew exactly where the blind spots were.”

Matteo pointed at the hallway blueprint. “He stood here. He waited here. Nathan had help.”

My jaw tightened. Heat crawled up my spine.

“We should have known he was unstable,” I said.

Matteo looked up at me. His eyes were cold. “We cannot work with emotion.”

“That was not emotion,” I said. “It was fact.”

“You left her alone,” Matteo replied.

The words hit the air like a knife.

I stepped forward. “Do not say that.”

Enzo slammed a folder shut. “Both of you are useless like this. Matteo, you should have reached the hallway sooner. Dante, you were closest to her room. So do not start acting like only one of you failed her.”

The room went silent.

The tension was like weight pressing on all of us. I could hear my own breathing. I could hear the distant drip of a broken pipe somewhere in the hall. No one moved for a few long seconds.

Matteo let out a slow breath and rubbed his forehead. “We cannot trace the boat. Not yet.”

Enzo tossed another paper onto the pile. “We have nothing. No direction. No lead. The Russians have ten factions capable of this. It could be any of them.”

“They would not risk this without a target,” I said.

“You think we do not know that,” Enzo snapped.

The frustration built fast. The pressure of the night. The smoke. The fear. The image of Aria being dragged across the deck. All of it mixed together until the air felt thick enough to choke.

“We need to think,” Matteo said. “We are shouting over nothing. That helps no one.”

His voice was raised just enough to make it clear he was losing his own patience.

I put both hands on the table. The wood was cold under my palms. My breath came out uneven. “She is out there with them,” I said. My voice broke before I could stop it. “We are wasting time.”

Enzo stepped closer like he might shove me back. Matteo moved between us.

I did not want to hear anything else. I did not want another plan that fell apart or another argument about which route they used or another useless theory about who funded Nathan.

The pressure inside me snapped.

I grabbed the edge of the chair beside me and threw it against the wall. It hit with a loud crack and split. The sound echoed through the whole office. Pieces of wood scattered across the floor.

No one spoke.

I turned and walked out. My steps were loud in the hallway. The air felt cold on my face. My chest rose and fell hard like I had been running.

I did not look back.

I left Enzo and Matteo in the smoke filled office with the broken chair and the useless maps and the silence that felt heavier than the fire from the night before.