Chapter 8
Outside the burning mansion, Luigi’s friends shrieked with excitement at the growing inferno, wildly snapping photos and videos on their phones like it was a concert finale.
“Holy shit, revenge ninety–nine is going to be LEGENDARY!” Tyler howled, capturing an Instagram story of the
flames.
“Finally, Luigi can dump that clingy bitch and move on with his life!” Blake slapped his knee, grinning maniacally.
“When we ‘rescue‘ her, I’m going to record her ugly crying face and blast it all over TikTok. Let the whole fucking campus see what a pathetic mess she really is!” Josh laughed, already planning his caption.
The hellish red glow illuminated their faces like demons at a bonfire, casting long, distorted shadows behind them.
Standing slightly apart from the group, Luigi listened to their callous banter with growing discomfort. Something felt deeply wrong.
His mind kept replaying Ariana’s face from moments earlier–that strange, peaceful expression. Those words that
now seemed so final.
Wait–she’d been abnormally calm, hadn’t she?
Every previous anniversary, Ariana had practically vibrated with excitement. She’d plan for weeks, creating Pinterest boards, texting him countdown updates, handling every detail personally with almost manic enthusiasm.
Luigi had always been happy to let her take over. Why waste effort on someone who was just a means to an end? He’d even internally justified his coldness–if she hadn’t humiliated Leila, she wouldn’t be with him anyway.
But tonight had been completely different. Ariana had been unsettlingly quiet.
During the entire drive, she’d sat silently beside him, no nervous chatter, no excited questions.
Beyond those haunting final words, she hadn’t once asked about his “surprise.” She’d been like a marionette with cut strings–compliant, empty, resigned.
And now that he thought about it–he’d been gone nearly twenty minutes, the fire had been raging for almost as long–and she hadn’t called or texted even once?
The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water. Luigi frantically pulled out his phone.
He refreshed the screen over and over, desperation growing with each swipe. No calls. No texts. No hysterical
voicemails from Ariana.
His heart hammered against his ribs as cold dread spread through his limbs.
He looked up at the burning building, truly seeing the enormity of the flames for the first time. Orange and red tongues licked three stories high, the heat intense enough to feel on his face from hundred feet away.
08:40
Addio To The Stand–In Past, This Time I Chose To Reclaim My Own Life
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Chapter 8
“Ariana…” he whispered, as fragments of her presence in his life flashed through his mind–her laughter echoing in their apartment, the way she’d leave little notes in his textbooks, how she’d waited hours in the rain once when his car broke down.
Without consciously deciding to move, he bolted toward the inferno.
“What the fuck, Luigi! Where are you going?” Derek shouted, as the group moved to block him.
Just as Luigi opened his mouth to respond, a deafening explosion ripped through the night, the concussive force knocking them backward.
BOOM!
A massive fireball erupted from the roof of the mansion, sending a mushroom cloud of flame and debris spiraling into the black sky. The heat wave hit them like a physical wall.
The group’s expressions transformed from drunken celebration to genuine horror in an instant.
“Holy shit–that wasn’t supposed to happen!” Blake yelled, suddenly sober.
As they stood frozen in shock, a series of secondary explosions followed, one after another. The sound was like artillery fire, each blast more violent than the last.
Thick black smoke billowed outward as glass shattered. Burning chunks of wood and concrete rained down around them, forcing them to cover their heads.
“ARIANA!” Luigi screamed, his mind consumed by a single thought: she was still inside that hellish inferno.
He lunged forward with frantic desperation, only to be tackled by his friends.
“You’ll fucking die if you go in there!” Tyler shouted, pinning him to the ground.
“We called 911! Fire rescue is coming!” Blake yelled, his face ashen with fear.
“She–she’s gotta be okay,” Josh stammered, no trace of his earlier cruelty. “They’ll get her out!”
Luigi’s eyes were wild, fixed on the towering inferno. In his mind, he could hear her calling for him–could imagine her trapped, choking, terrified. Every memory of her kindness, her devotion that he’d taken for granted, crashed over him in a tidal wave of regret.
“GET OFF ME!” he roared, throwing his friends aside with strength born of pure adrenaline, launching himself toward the flames.
“LUIGI, STOP!”
BOOM!
Another massive explosion rocked the foundation of the building, sending a shower of burning debris in all directions. The roar of the fire grew deafening, drowning out everything but the hammering of his own heart.
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Chapter 8
Rain pounded against the smoldering ruins hours later, sending up ghostly plumes of steam from the blackened skeleton of what had been a mansion.
Search and rescue teams with cadaver dogs methodically combed through the wreckage, looking not for a survivor,
but for Ariana’s remains.
The fire chief had been clear–after multiple explosions of that magnitude and a fire that intense, survival was impossible.
At the perimeter, Luigi stood motionless in the downpour, clothes soaked with blood and rainwater, refusing medical attention despite his burns and cuts. His eyes never left the ruins as he waited for the inevitable.
“Over here!” a rescuer suddenly called out, waving urgently to his team.
Luigi’s vacant expression snapped to attention. He lurched forward on stiffened legs, shoving past the police barrier with the last of his strength.
The rescue team was carefully extracting something from the rubble–a badly charred body, contorted into a fetal position, blackened beyond recognition.
The force of the explosion and intensity of the fire had left the corpse in a grotesquely twisted form, limbs pulled inward as if in a final, desperate attempt at self–protection.
As they carried the body past on a stretcher, the ruined face seemed to stare directly at him, a final accusation.
Despite the horrific damage, Luigi recognized instantly whose body it was meant to be.
Because just hours earlier, he had personally delivered her into this inferno with his own hands.
The weight of what he’d done crashed down on him all at once. His legs gave way beneath him as he collapsed to his knees in the mud, a broken sound tearing from his throat that barely sounded human.
Too late. His realization had come too late.
Chapter 9
4
