The Firefighter Became a Billionaire... and He’s Had Enough!

Chapter 006

The estate had been beautiful once.

Derek could tell even now with the iron gates buckled by heat, the cypress trees reduced to black spires, the fountain in the courtyard cracked and dry. Someone had built this place with the idea that it would last.

Unfortunately, the fire had other plans. The east wing had already begun to fold in on itself. Flames moved behind the windows, bright and restless, while smoke poured through every opening in thick black waves.

Derek pulled his mask tight and plunged inside.

“Derek.” Rodriguez’s voice crackled through his earpiece, strained despite his effort to remain calm. “Backup is on the way. Are you hurt? If you can’t find him, pull out now.””

Derek glanced toward the stairs, then down the corridor. He knew a man was dying dozens of feet away.

“Just give me three more minutes.”

“Derek—”

He released the transmitter and started up.

The smoke grew denser with every step, not just wood, but synthetics, treated materials, the chemical cocktail, every expensive possession in the house had become part of the same poisonous cloud.

Visibility disappeared halfway up the stairs. Derek kept one hand against the wall and moved by memory. Second floor. West side. Judging by the shelves behind the window, it had to be a study.

At the end of the corridor, an orange glow flickered beneath the final door. 

Derek drove his boot into it. The frame splintered, and the familiar bookshelves emerged through the smoke.

The room had once been a library. Now half the ceiling had collapsed across the floor. A fallen beam had crushed an entire row of shelves and pinned a man beneath the wreckage from the waist down.

It was the same man Derek had seen at the window.

He looked about sixty, with silver hair and the remains of an expensive shirt hanging from his shoulders. His hands clutched a scorched fragment of a photograph, most of the image burned away. He held like it was the only thing in the world worth dying for.

“Leave,” the man rasped as Derek crouched beside him. “Too late for...”

Derek ignored it and pulled off his breathing mask and pressed it over the man’s face. “Breathe.”

He checked the beam. The man’s legs were trapped, but the timber had landed across the wrecked shelving rather than directly on his bones. There was still space beneath it.

If Derek could lift it a few inches, there was still a chance.

Above the doorway, the ceiling gave a sharp crack. They did not have long.

Derek quickly tore loose two sections of broken shelving and forced them beneath the beam as crude supports. Then he threaded rescue webbing beneath the man’s arms and tightened it around his chest.

“Listen to me,” Derek said. “When I lift, you pull with your elbows.”

The man gave a weak shake of his head. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Derek said, forcing confidence into his voice.

He repositioned the Halligan bar, braced one boot against the floor, and drove his shoulder beneath the shaft. Every muscle in his back seized as he pushed.

The beam rose. Barely. 

But the gap was enough.

“Move!”

The man dragged himself forward, then finally slid free of the wreckage.

As Derek pulled him clear, the man suddenly stiffened. His hand snagged the torn front of Derek’s turnout coat, wrenching the shredded fabric aside.

“The... orchid,” the old man breathed, his eyes wide, fixed on Derek’s chest.

“Forget the damn orchid.” He tightened the webbing beneath the man’s arms. “We’re getting out.”

Rich people, he thought. The house was burning down, and the man was worried about a flower.

That was when the doorway behind them finally gave way.

A secondary collapse, a wall of flaming debris dropping across the entrance, cutting off the corridor entirely. 

Rodriguez’s voice exploded through Derek’s radio, but the roar of the collapse swallowed his words.

Derek took in the room at a glance. The doorway was gone. Flames were racing across the ceiling. Black smoke rolled down the walls, swallowing what little air remained.

There was no time to dig through the wreckage.

No second exit. Only the window.

Derek dragged the man across the floor and smashed the remaining glass from the frame. A steep slate roof stretched beneath them, ending at a stone terrace twelve feet below.

Bad. But better than burning alive.

Derek hauled the man upright. “Can you stand?”

The old man tried. His legs folded immediately. Derek hooked one arm beneath the man’s shoulders and hauled him onto the sill.

Then, behind them, the fire suddenly drew inward. The room seemed to take one enormous breath.

Derek immdediatly knew what was coming.

The room flashed over. 

Fire detonated across the ceiling with a deafening, concussive roar, and the sheer force of the blast hurled both men through the window.

They slammed onto the roof.

The old man tore free of his grip and began sliding toward the edge.

Derek lunged, caught the rescue webbing, and was nearly dragged off his feet.

The strap snapped tight. For one second, it held.

Then Derek began sliding too.

His boots scraped uselessly across the slate. He clawed at the roof with his free hand, searching for a gutter, a seam, anything.

Nothing.

The edge rushed toward them.

Derek had no time to think.

He hauled the man against his chest, wrapped both arms around him, and twisted in midair.

It was the same instinct that had thrown him over Erin in the hotel. The same deeply ingrained reflex that had carried him through two hundred and thirty-seven fires. 

They went over the edge. Derek hit the ground back-first.

The world was shatted into a blinding white flash. For several agonizing seconds, there was no sound, no fire, only the devastating shockwave radiating through his bones.

He tried to sit up, but a blade of pure, radiating pain tore through his chest, flattening him against the stones.

Beside him, he heard the distinct, ragged sound of coughing, and the vibrations of heavy boots thundered across the courtyard stones.

Good. Derek closed his eyes. Help had arrived. Rodriguez would take it from here.

The metallic taste of blood spilling warmly across Derek's lips, the chaotic world around him began to blur at the edges.

A cold numbness crept through his arms and legs, quiet and strangely gentle.

For the first time in years, Derek felt completely, utterly free.

Derek stopped fighting.