Chapter 21: Fire for Fire

RAYA

The SUV didn't slow down turning onto the driveway. Rain hit the windows hard, tires spraying gravel as we came through the gates.

Two security cars were already parked across the courtyard, lights flashing red and blue against the stone.

My heart was pounding. "Xavier—"

"Stay in the car."

"Like hell I am," I said, grabbing his arm.

He looked back at me, and whatever he saw on my face made him stop arguing. He took my hand instead and pulled me out into the rain with him.

Vance met us halfway to the door, soaked through.

"Someone got onto the grounds," he said. "We caught it on camera, chased them off before they reached the house. But they left something on the porch."

A single sheet of paper sat weighted down by a stone. No box, no theater. Xavier picked it up, read it, and handed it to me without a word.

You took everything today. Enjoy it while it lasts.

No signature. It didn't need one.

"Victor," I said.

"He's got nothing left to protect," Xavier said. "That's when men like him get dangerous."

By the time we reached the study, the smell of wet ash from his coat had followed us in. He crossed to the bar without a word, poured two fingers of whiskey, and drank it in one motion.

I stood by the door, dripping, watching him.

"The fire chief confirmed it an hour ago," he said, setting the glass down. "Victor hired someone to torch Bay 4. He thinks hitting my logistics buys him leverage."

I didn't say anything right away. I was thinking about the last time I'd stood in a room shaking like this, fourteen months ago, dialing a number I'd hidden under a fake name, my hands trembling so badly I'd nearly missed the call button. That version of me had been desperate and half-convinced she was making a mistake.

This version wasn't shaking from fear.

"He thinks you're going to sue him," I said finally, crossing the room toward the desk. "Wait for a hearing. Let the courts sort it out like a civilized person."

"I don't run to lawyers, Raya."

"I know." I pulled out the chair across from his desk but didn't sit in it, just gripped the back of it instead. "That's why I'm not asking you to."

Xavier looked up at that.

"He's spent his whole life hiding things," I said. "Money. Property. Whole warehouses that never once showed up on a filing. He got sloppy about it too, because he never thought anyone in that house was paying attention." I met his eyes. "I was paying attention."

He came around the desk slowly, stopping a few feet away, close enough that I had to tip my head back slightly to keep looking at him.

"How many?"

"Three that I know for certain still exist." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "His main warehouse, off the books. A freight depot he runs under a name that isn't his. And a vault my mother keeps her private inventory in before any of it touches a real ledger."

"You're sure."

"I sat at that dinner table for years, Xavier. I heard him brag about every one of those places when he'd had enough wine to forget I was in the room." I let out a breath. "He never thought the placeholder daughter was listening."

Something moved behind his eyes, quiet and sharp at once.

"You understand what you're handing me," he said. "This isn't a lawsuit. There's no version of this where he recovers."

"I know exactly what I'm handing you."

"And you're still choosing to."

"I stopped being able to save that family a long time before I died the first time," I said. "I'm done trying."

He studied me a moment longer, like he was checking for a crack that wasn't there, and didn't find one.

"Write them down," he said, sliding a sheet of paper and a pen across the desk toward me.

My hand didn't shake once as I wrote.

He picked up the page when I was done, read it twice, then reached for his phone and put it on speaker.

"Xavier?" Nadia answered on the second ring. "Legal's ready to file first thing tomorrow—"

"Forget the filing." He didn't look away from me while he said it. "Raya just gave me three addresses."

A pause. "Addresses?"

"Victor burned one of our buildings tonight." His voice stayed level, almost bored. "I want these three gone before sunrise."

"Xavier, that's tens of millions in inventory. It'll wipe out what's left of the Sinclair name by morning."

"That's the idea," he said, and ended the call.

The quiet after that had weight to it. I could still hear the rain against the windows, still feel the cold clinging to my damp clothes, but none of it felt as loud as my own pulse.

"You didn't hesitate," Xavier said.

"I've had a long time to think about what I'd do if the chance ever came."

"You could have told me to hire someone," he said. "Kept your hands clean. Let me be the one who did it."

"I don't want clean hands, Xavier." I held his gaze. "I want it done."

Neither of us moved for a second. Then he stepped back, picked his phone back up off the desk, and set it face up between us.

"Then you're going to want to see this happen."

I hadn't expected that. "You want me to watch?"

"I want you to know exactly what you did tonight." He pulled a second chair around beside his own. "Sit down, Raya."

I sat.

The first update came in a little after two, a single text from Nadia: Freight depot, confirmed. Xavier read it out loud, flat, like he was reporting weather, and I felt something in my chest loosen that I hadn't realized was clenched.

"One," I said.

"One," he agreed.

We waited. He worked through emails he clearly didn't need to be working through, and I sat curled in the chair across from him, watching the rain streak the windows, replaying every dinner where Victor had bragged about those exact properties, never once looking at the girl he'd assumed was too grateful to be listening.

At three-forty, another text. Vault confirmed. No losses, staff evacuated safely.

"Two," Xavier said, glancing at me over the screen.

I let out a breath I'd been holding since the study. "I didn't want anyone hurt. Just him."

"Nobody's hurt." He said it simply, like it had never been in question. "That was never the point."

The third confirmation didn't come until almost five, the sky outside already starting to gray at the edges. Warehouse, Sector 4. Total loss. Local fire crews on scene, no injuries reported.

Xavier set the phone down.

"All three," he said.

I sat with that for a long moment, waiting to feel something like guilt, or fear, or the old flinch I used to get whenever I did anything that might make someone in that house angry with me.

It didn't come.

What came instead was something quieter and far more permanent, the sense of a door closing somewhere behind me, one I was never going to open again.

"How does it feel?" Xavier asked, watching me carefully.

"Like breathing for the first time in fourteen months," I said, and meant it.

He crossed the last few feet between us, close enough now that I had to look up at him properly. He didn't reach for me right away. His eyes moved over my face slowly, like he was seeing something in it he hadn't quite let himself see before.

His hand came up slowly, brushing a strand of wet hair off my face, his thumb resting for a moment against my jaw.

"Satisfied?" he asked, quiet now.

"Not yet."