Page 5 of Devil Among Men

“Fire!” I shout. “Everybody up! Move, now!”

Doors bang open around me. Maurizio’s shouting orders from the floor below, controlled even in the chaos. He’s barking at the guards near the front to open the gate and bring the cars forward.

I reach Portia’s door in three strides, my fist slamming hard against the wood. “Portia! Fire! We have to go, now!”

She yanks the door open half-dressed, tendrils of hair peeking out from her silk scarf, eyes wide with panic.

“Stay behind me.” I grab her hand before she can answer. “Don’t let go of me, no matter what.”

Her fingers lock around mine.

The stairs are worse than the hallway. Smoke’s thick along the ceiling, curling down toward us in slow waves, and heat rolls up from below. A fire in the wiring doesn’t spread this fast. A candle left unattended doesn’t either.

“Rafael, I can’t—" Portia coughs hard, stumbling on the step, one hand pressed against the wall to keep herself upright.

“I’ve got you.” I pull her arm over my shoulder, half-dragging her the rest of the way down, my own eyes stinging, lungs begging for air that isn’t thick with poison.

Somewhere below us glass shatters, then a frightened woman’s voice cries out.

It can only belong to Jayla.

“Side door! Move!” Adagio yells, voice cracking with urgency.

We round the last flight together, the heat climbing fast. I keep Portia pressed close against my side the entire way down, refusing to let even an inch of distance open up between us again tonight.

We hit the main hall together, flames climbing the wall, curtains catching, the old ceiling beams groaning under heat they were never built to withstand.

Suddenly the wood cracks open above us, fire eating through the support faster than any of us accounted for.

“Jayla!” Adagio shouts.

I look up in time to see the beam come down, and Jayla goes with it, crumpling underneath the wood before anybody’s fast enough to stop it.

Maurizio makes it there first—he’s closer than Adagio—hauling the burning wood off her with his bare hands.

“She’s breathing.” He scoops her up against his chest, blood dampening her hairline, which is slick and shiny in the firelight. “Go! Everybody out!”

Adagio freezes for half a second, hands hovering uselessly as if he doesn’t know where to put them, torn between reaching for her and getting out of Maurizio’s way. “Give her to me⁠—”

“There’s no time.” Maurizio’s moving toward the door, Jayla limp against his chest.

There’s nothing left to argue about when the ceiling above us groans another warning none of us can afford to ignore.

“Portia, this way.” I pull her clear of a section of ceiling that folds in behind us in a shower of sparks, shielding her body with mine as embers rain down around us. The side door’s ahead, barely visible through the smoke which is now thick enough to taste.

The night air rushes us the second we’re through it.

My lungs finally get clean air worth breathing. I drag in one ragged gulp after another, half-carrying Portia the last few feet ’til we’re clear of the smoke entirely. I don’t let go of her hand once through any of it, not ’til we’re standing in the drive with the villa burning at our backs and the sky lit up orange like the pit of hell itself.

Maurizio lays Jayla down in the grass a safe distance from the flames, and Adagio drops beside her.

“Jayla, look at me.”

She stirs, eyes fluttering, blood dribbling down one side of her head.

“She needs a hospital!” Maurizio barks. He turns toward the men near the gate and orders them to pull up a car. “Sicily’s got one thirty minutes out.”

Adagio climbs in beside her the second the car pulls up, cradling her head against his shoulder as gently as I’ve ever seen him handle anything, murmuring in Italian I don’t catch from this distance. The car’s gone down the long drive before the rest of us have even caught our breath, taillights swallowed by the dark.