Aiden Blackwood had always believed fire was a civilized thing.
A quiet crackle in a marble hearth.
A companion to aged scotch, expensive silence, and the predictable rhythm of an orderly life.
The fire that destroyed his world was not civilized.
It was a monster.
A living, breathing, raging beast that roared through the west wing of the Blackwood estate like it had been waiting a lifetime for permission to kill.
Aiden woke to the alarm—shrill, hysterical—followed by the unmistakable scent of smoke. One breath. Then another. Bitter. Chemical. Wrong.
He didn't think, He ran.
The hallway was already filling with grey, a snake of smoke sliding under doorframes, curling up the walls. Heat slammed into him as he pushed toward the west wing, pounding barefoot across marble now littered with burning debris.
His chest tightened. Something inside him whispered what he already knew.
Mom and Isabella are in the gym
Beginning the day with a workout wasn't just a habit—it was their rhythm..
A scream sliced through the crackling chaos—a sound so raw, so terrified, it paralyzed him for half a second.
Not his mother, not his sister.
"ISABELLA!" Aiden shouted, lungs burning.
Smoke clawed at his throat, relentless. The heat became a physical force, pressing, suffocating, blistering.
He shoved open the double doors to the gym hallway—and hell swallowed him whole.
Fire raced across the ceiling in waves. Curtains melted into fireballs. Marble cracked. His mother's grand piano groaned as the heat warped its frame.
"ISABELLA!" he yelled again.
A thin, trembling cry answered.
He saw her at the base of the staircase, curled, coughing, tears streaking through soot. His seventeen-year-old sister, usually dramatic and loud, was reduced to a shaking shadow.
He lunged through the flames.
A burning beam snapped overhead. He ducked, shielding her as sparks exploded around them. His skin screamed from the heat, but he didn't slow down.
"Hold on," he whispered, voice breaking as he pulled her into his arms. "I've got you. Stay awake. Don't close your eyes."
Her fingers weakly clutched his shirt.
"Aiden… it h-hurts."
"I know, sweetheart. Stay with me." He held her tighter, stumbling through smoke thick enough to blind, to suffocate. His eyes watered as each breath seared his lungs.
The exit was just ahead.
And then—
A violent collapse behind them—the Gym roof giving way, a thunderous groan shaking the ground.
He burst into the freezing night, collapsing onto the lawn with Isabella in his arms.
Firefighters swarmed him instantly.
"Sir—sir, let us—"
But she wasn't moving.
Her chest wasn't rising.
"No." His voice cracked. "No—Isabella, come on, open your eyes. Open your eyes!"
He shook her gently. Then harder.
"ISABELLA!"
She didn't stir.
His world… simply ended.
The chaos around him faded. His ears rang with a hollow, chilling silence. He barely felt the hands pulling her from him… the stretcher… the desperate attempts of medics who already knew the truth.
He didn't hear anything.
He didn't feel anything.
He just watched the fire.
The Blackwood estate—four generations of legacy, secrets, power—collapsed piece by flaming piece. Columns crumbled like sandcastles. One final beam cracked, falling into the inferno with a sound like the sky tearing open.
Ash drifted across his face like a morbid snow.
His mother.
His sister.
Gone.
He didn't know how long he knelt there, clothes soaked with soot and sweat, throat tasting of metal and smoke. When dawn finally broke, the estate was nothing but a smoking crater. A ruin. A grave.
Detective Marcus approached slowly, carefully.
"Aiden," he said softly. "We found them… I'm so sorry."
Aiden didn't respond.
He had no space left for condolences. No space for anything except the hollow, echoing silence inside his chest.
Marcus hesitated, then lifted something in an evidence bag.
"We found this in a patch of ground that didn't burn as hot. It's… evidence of origin."
Aiden's eyes locked onto it.
A small, cheap, silver lighter.
Scarred with smoke.
Engraved with delicate, looping script.
E.H.
The letters hit him like a blow.
Feminine.
Deliberate.
Left behind.
"Prints on a jerry can cap matched a woman named Elara Hayes," Marcus added, voice low. "We'll be questioning her as soon as the doctors clear her. She's in the city hospital—smoke inhalation, minor shock."
The name rang in Aiden's ears.
Elara Hayes.
He didn't know her. But she had been here.
At his home.
At the fire.
Where his mother and sister died screaming.
Something cold and monstrous unfurled inside him.
Aiden stepped forward and took the evidence bag straight from Marcus's hand. The detective flinched at the expression on Aiden's face—a terrifying emptiness that had wiped out every trace of the man he used to be.
"Aiden," Marcus warned gently, "let us handle this. We have a solid case for first-degree—"
"No."
His voice was barely a whisper, but it pulsed with lethal certainty.
"You think the law works?" Aiden asked, hollow laughter escaping him. "She'll get a lawyer. She'll claim insanity or shock. The system will give her bail, give her time, give her the chance to disappear."
He glanced over the ruins of his estate, eyes stinging—not from the ash, but from the promise forming inside him.
"I'm not giving her time."
He dropped the evidence bag to the ground, the lighter thudding against the wet earth.
"Aiden—" Marcus tried.
"Do not touch her," Aiden said, turning his deadened gaze onto the detective. "Do not question her. You will tell your superiors you need more time, that evidence is inconclusive."
"Aiden, that's not—"
"You owe my family that much."
Marcus fell silent.
The wind shifted, carrying the last hot embers across the lawn. Aiden stared at the smoking ruin of his home, something inside him sealing shut.
The grieving man died with his sister.
What rose in his place was sharper. Darker. Designed for vengeance.
Elara Hayes would pay.
Not with a trial.
Not with a sentence.
With her freedom.
Her sanity.
Her life as she knew it.
Aiden would take her.
Break her.
Own every breath she fought to keep.
The fire had ended—but the reckoning had only just begun.