Chapter 3: Smoldering Ashes

Dante Voss had long since stopped counting the people he burned.

There was no point. Numbers didn’t matter. Not when the world was already rotting from the inside out.

Tonight was no different.

The alley behind the Governor’s estate reeked of cigar smoke and greed. The man who lay sprawled on the pavement had once held power, the kind that let him decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore—so long as his pockets stayed lined.

Now, his body was nothing but charred remnants, the last of his flesh still smoldering from Dante’s fire.

Dante exhaled, watching as the embers flickered in the night air before dying out.

Judge Ericson. A man who let murderers walk free because they could pay the right price. A man who signed the fate of innocents with the stroke of a pen, never caring what happened to the people left in the wake of his decisions.

Dante had decided for him.

A fitting punishment.

He rolled his shoulders, ignoring the rush of heat still coursing through his veins. The night was young, and there were still others on his list.

Tonight, he would cleanse the filth.

And then he’d disappear like smoke in the wind.

The second man went quickly—a senator, corrupt to the core. Dante found him in his private suite, away from the cameras and the political theater.

The smell of alcohol and expensive perfume clung to the air, the stench of excess and entitlement.

He didn’t even have time to scream.

By the time the bodyguards rushed in, Dante was already gone, nothing left behind but the blackened ruin of their employer.

The third target was different.

Dante had been tracking Richard Cale for weeks.

A man with connections to heroes and criminals alike, playing both sides while pretending to be untouchable.

He found him in a high-rise office, sipping whiskey with his back to the window.

“I was wondering when you’d finally come,” Cale mused, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “You’ve been making quite the mess, Phantom Flame.”

Dante didn’t bother responding. He stepped forward, letting his presence fill the room with an unnatural heat.

Cale chuckled. “You think you’re different from the rest of them, don’t you? That you’re some kind of—”

Dante snapped his fingers.

Fire erupted from the inside out, consuming Cale before he could finish his sentence. The whiskey glass shattered as it hit the floor, its contents evaporating in an instant.

He watched the man burn, the flames licking at the expensive furniture, the walls, the polished marble floors. Then, with a thought, he smothered the fire, leaving behind only ash and silence.

Dante turned and disappeared into the smoke.

Hours later, after the city had been fed its dose of fear and justice, Dante found himself lingering near the quiet end of town—where the streetlights flickered and the shadows stretched long against the pavement.

He had no reason to be here.

No mission. No target.

And yet, his gaze locked onto a familiar figure.

Eva.

She was alone, slipping into a small bar, her movements careful, almost deliberate. Not the hesitant kind of careful—no, it was the kind that told him she didn’t want to be seen.

Dante narrowed his eyes, stepping back into the shadows as the door swung shut behind her.

Interesting.

He had never seen Eva move like that before. Her life, from what he knew, was predictable. A small apartment, a bookstore she liked, a routine that never strayed too far from the safe, quiet existence she had built for herself.

But now she was meeting someone in the dead of night.

And for some reason, that bothered him.

Dante crossed the street, moving like a ghost, the last embers of his previous work still fading from his skin. He reached the side of the building, pressing against the cold brick as he listened.

Muffled voices.

One of them was Eva’s—quiet, steady, but edged with something he couldn’t quite place.

The other voice wasn’t familiar, instead, it came from a bartender.

Dante frowned. He hadn’t expected this. If Eva had wanted to meet her friend, why all the secrecy?

He edged closer, his smoke curling along the ground, reaching for the smallest cracks in the building. Just enough to listen.

“Are you sure about this?” The bartender’s voice carried, low and cautious. “Because if you’re doing this just to prove a point—”

“I’m not,” Eva cut in. “I just… I need to understand.”

“Understand what?”

Eva hesitated. “Why he does it.”

Dante went still.

The woman let out a sharp breath. “You mean Phantom Flame.”

Silence.

Dante waited.

Then, Eva’s voice, softer now. “I don’t think he’s what everyone says he is.”

Dante should have left. Should have turned away and let the conversation end where it was.

But he didn’t.

Because for the first time in a long, long while…

Someone wasn’t just watching him burn.

They were trying to see him.

Dante felt the weight of their words like an unexpected blow to the chest. For a moment, he wondered if Eva could actually see through the mask he had carefully constructed, the smoke and flames that shielded him from the world.

She didn’t know the real Dante. She couldn’t.

But the way she spoke… It was as if she wanted to.

The idea of someone—especially someone like Eva—understanding him, of seeing him as more than the monster he had become, twisted something deep inside him. A kind of longing he had long buried under layers of ash and rage.

And then there was the thought that bothered him most of all: She was trying to understand him.

He had been watching her for weeks now, silently, from the shadows, like a ghost. And Eva, with her sharp, clever eyes, had always been quick to notice when something didn’t feel right.

That’s what made her so different from the others in her world—she wasn’t just another hero caught up in the smoke and mirrors of that twisted system.

But this? This was something else entirely. Eva was drawn to something that should’ve terrified her.

Dante took a deep breath, forcing the tightening in his chest to loosen. Focus, he reminded himself.

You didn’t come here to listen to this.

The two women inside the bar were still talking, the words muffled behind the door, but Dante couldn’t tear himself away. His feet were rooted to the ground, the instinct to know what Eva was thinking outweighing everything else.

He couldn’t understand it. He had been following his mission—his revenge—for so long that anything else seemed like a distraction. And yet, here he was, holding his breath outside a bar while a woman who had no business even knowing about him was talking about him like…

Like he mattered.

“I don’t know, Cam,” Eva was saying now, her voice tinged with something darker, something vulnerable. “There’s just something about him. I don’t think he’s just a monster. Maybe…” There was a pause. “Maybe he’s trying to fix what was broken. Maybe he thinks if he burns everything down, there’ll be something worth saving in the ashes.”

Dante’s heart skipped a beat.

She had no idea how close to the truth she was.

And that thought twisted something deep within him again, an ache that had nothing to do with the scars he carried on the outside. Eva didn’t understand the weight of his pain, the burden of his choices. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

But still, her words rattled him.

Maybe he’s trying to fix what was broken.

Was that how she saw him?

The silence in the alley grew heavy as he let her words settle in his mind. He wanted to laugh—bitterly, sarcastically—but the thought of Eva, of her soft belief that he could somehow be redeemed, gnawed at him like a wound that refused to heal.

In all his years of destruction, in all the blood and fire, had he really been trying to fix something?

Or had he just been trying to destroy a world that had destroyed him first?

But Eva—Eva thought there was something beneath it all. She thought that maybe, just maybe, he was more than the twisted shell of fire and smoke he had become.

And that, more than anything, made him want to walk into that bar and pull her away from her foolish ideas. He didn’t deserve her belief. He didn’t deserve anyone who saw him as anything but the villain he was.

But instead, Dante remained in the shadows, his eyes locked on the sliver of light coming from beneath the bar door.

He had learned the hard way that trust was a currency he couldn’t afford. And Eva—no matter how much she made him question everything he had ever known about himself—was not someone he could afford to get too close to.

Still, he couldn’t leave.

His fingers flexed, the faintest trail of smoke curling around his fingertips, a reaction to the burn of his frustration.

But then, the door creaked open.

Eva stepped outside, a frown etched on her face as she glanced around, seemingly sensing something was off. Her icy blue eyes scanned the street for a split second, as though expecting someone to be watching. And in that moment, her gaze—her sharp gaze—almost met his.

Dante froze, his breath catching in his throat.

He knew she couldn’t see him, not with the way he was hiding in the dark, but there was something in the way she looked—something that sent a strange twinge of fear through him. Fear not of being caught, but of being seen.

He had spent years becoming invisible—slipping through cracks, vanishing into the night, hiding from a world that would tear him apart if they knew what he had become. And now, Eva… she was the one person who might make him feel like maybe he could stop hiding.

But he didn’t have that luxury.

He couldn’t let her in.

Not now.

As Eva walked away, heading toward the nearby street, Dante stayed hidden, his heart pounding in his chest. He couldn’t help but watch her go.

The alley was quiet again, the night stretching on in its usual haunting stillness.

The feeling that had gripped him was still there, but now, it was more urgent—like a fire starting to burn beneath his skin. Something was changing.

And for the first time in a long time, Dante wasn’t sure he was in control of it anymore.

But one thing was certain.

Eva Langley was a wild card. And wild cards had a way of changing the game.

Dante watched her disappear into the distance, the shadows swallowing her whole, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just watched something important slip away.

But it didn’t matter.

He had a job to do. And it didn’t involve saving anyone. Least of all Eva.

He turned and disappeared into the night, the weight of his choices sinking deeper with every step he took.

But even as he walked away, he couldn’t help but wonder…

What would happen if he let the smoke clear?

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