He Mocked the Voice I Ruined to Save Him novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: One, Two, Three

"Who were you talking to?" Dario said.

His voice was flat and very quiet, and he still had not looked at the glass on the floor.

I sat up with the sheet against my chest. My heart was going hard.

"I had a nightmare," I said. "I was saying something. I say it every time."

"Stay with me. Count with me." He said the words slowly. "Who did you say it to?"

"A man in the fire."

The room was dark except for the light from the street.

"Stefano?" he asked.

"No. Stefano was already out. I dragged him to the door and went back in for the second man, in the loft."

"The second man."

"He was big. He was coughing, and he could not find the stairs." I pulled my knees up. "I got his collar. I got him halfway across the floor. Then I could not breathe, and I do not remember anything else."

"Stefano told me later that he died in the ambulance. I never knew his name."

Dario made a sound I had never heard from a man.

His legs gave out, and he sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Gianna," he said.

I waited.

"What month was it?"

"July. The harbor was hot. The boathouse had been shut for a private meeting."

"A Chicago man was meeting old Mr. Sartori in the loft," he said. "He sent his driver home and went up alone."

I did not understand. Then I did.

I felt it in my hands first, the way they had gripped a stranger's collar.

"Say it," I said.

"It was me."

The room had no sound in it at all.

"I was twenty-nine," he said. "I went up to the loft to see the old man about the lake docks. The fire started below us. He took the dock door, because he knew it was there, and I went for the stairs."

"I woke up three weeks later in a burn ward in Chicago."

I could not speak. I put my hand over my mouth.

"The first person I saw was Stefano Sartori," Dario said. "He was nineteen, and he sat by my bed with his arm in a sling. He said he had carried me out himself."

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