Burned By Him, Reborn A Star

The first thing Evelyn registered was the smell. Acrid, chemical, choking. It was the scent of her own life burning down.

She gasped, her lungs seizing against the intrusion of oxygen. A plastic mask was pressed tight against her face, the rubber seal digging into her cheekbones. Her eyes flew open, but the world was a blur of flashing red lights and the sterile, metallic ceiling of an ambulance.

"Ma'am? Can you hear me?"

The voice was loud, too close. A face swam into view-an EMT, young, with sweat beading on his forehead. He was checking Evelyn's pupils with a penlight that felt like a needle stabbing into her brain.

"Ma'am, try to stay calm. You've inhaled a lot of smoke. We're taking you to Mount Sinai."

Evelyn tried to speak, to ask the question that was screaming in her chest, but her throat was raw, stripped of its lining. All that came out was a dry, hacking cough that tasted like ash.

"Name?" the EMT asked, his pen hovering over a clipboard. "We need a name and an emergency contact."

Evelyn lifted a trembling hand. Her skin looked gray under the harsh lights, smeared with soot. She pointed to the side table where her phone lay. Ideally, it should have been melted, destroyed like everything else in the penthouse. But there it was, the screen spiderwebbed with cracks, yet still glowing with a faint, mocking light.

The EMT picked it up. "Is this your husband? Julian?"

Evelyn nodded once. The movement sent a spike of pain down her neck.

He hit the call button. Evelyn watched his face. She counted the seconds in the rhythm of her own erratic heartbeat. One. Two. Three.

The EMT pulled the phone away from his ear, frowning. "Voicemail."

He tried again. "This is Emergency Services calling for Evelyn Vance," he said into the recorder, his voice urgent. "Please call back immediately."

Evelyn closed her eyes. She knew he wouldn't answer unknown numbers, and he rarely checked voicemails unless they were flagged by his assistant.

"Look at the TV," the driver shouted from the front.

Evelyn turned her head. Mounted on the wall of the ambulance was a small monitor, tuned to the local news. The banner at the bottom was bright red: BREAKING NEWS: FIRE AT VANCE TOWER PENTHOUSE.

The camera panned over the smoke billowing from the top of the building-her home, her prison-before cutting to a live feed from Hollywood Boulevard.

Evelyn's heart stopped. The monitor beeped erratically, a high-pitched warning that made the EMT look at her with concern.

On the screen, thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, was Julian.

He wasn't frantic. He wasn't checking his phone. He was shielding a woman from the paparazzi, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders, his face twisted in a snarl at a cameraman who got too close.

Serena Holloway.

She looked fragile, her eyes wide and teary, clutching the lapels of Julian's jacket. The headline changed: Julian Vance Comforts Serena Holloway After Panic Attack at Premiere.

Evelyn stared at his hand. That large, capable hand that she had held during their wedding vows, the hand that had signed their prenup with a flourish, was now stroking Serena's hair, tucking her face into his chest to hide her from the flashbulbs.

He was protecting her from lights.

While Evelyn was burning in his house.

A tear leaked from the corner of her eye, cutting a clean track through the soot on her cheek. It was hot, acidic.

"We need to sedate her," the EMT said urgently. "Heart rate is one-eighty. She's going into shock."

Evelyn felt the prick of a needle in her unburned arm. The cold rush of the sedative moved up her veins, freezing the fire in her lungs. As the darkness crept in from the edges of her vision, the image of Julian holding Serena burned itself onto the back of her eyelids.

Three years, she thought, the words floating in the black void. I gave you three years of silence. Three years of being the perfect, invisible wife. And you let me burn.

When Evelyn woke up, the silence was louder than the sirens.

She was in a private room. The walls were a pale, offensive beige. Outside the window, the New York skyline was bleeding into a gray dawn. She was alone.

No flowers. No husband pacing the floor. Just the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of the IV bag.

A nurse bustled in, checking a chart. She paused when she saw Evelyn's eyes were open. There was a flicker of pity in her gaze-that specific, condescending pity reserved for women whose husbands are publicly humiliating them.

"Mrs. Vance," she said softly. "You're awake. We treated the burns on your neck, arm, and leg. They're second-degree, but they should heal with minimal scarring if you're careful."

"My husband?" Evelyn's voice was a whisper, sounding like dragging sandpaper over concrete.

The nurse hesitated. She looked at the TV mounted on the wall, which was currently off, then back at Evelyn. "We... we haven't been able to reach him directly yet. It seems he's still dealing with the press in Los Angeles. The news said..." She trailed off, not wanting to say it.

The news said he's with her.

Evelyn looked at her reflection in the darkened window. Her hair was matted with soot. There was a bandage on her neck. She looked like a ghost. Or maybe a corpse that had forgotten to die.

"I see," Evelyn said.

The nurse adjusted Evelyn's blanket. "You need rest. The doctor said you should stay for observation for at least twenty-four hours."

Evelyn looked at the IV in her hand. It was a tether. A leash. Just like the ring on her finger.

"No," Evelyn said.

She reached over and ripped the tape off her hand.

"Mrs. Vance! What are you doing?" The nurse rushed forward, her hands fluttering.

Evelyn pulled the needle out. A droplet of bright red blood welled up, sliding down her skin. She didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything physical anymore. The fire had cauterized the nerve endings of her heart.

"I'm checking out," Evelyn said. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her hospital gown was thin, and the floor was freezing against her bare feet.

"You can't," the nurse protested. "You have smoke inhalation. You need-"

"I need a lot of things," Evelyn interrupted, standing up. The room spun for a second, then steadied. "But none of them are in this hospital."

She walked to the small closet where they had stored her belongings-the few things that had survived on her person. Her ruined clothes, her cracked phone.

Evelyn dressed in the smoky, stiff jeans and the t-shirt that had a hole burned near the collar. She didn't care.

She picked up her phone. A notification flashed across the screen.

Daily Mail: "My Guardian Angel," says Serena Holloway of Julian Vance. "He's the only one who can calm my storms."

Evelyn laughed. It was a dry, broken sound.

She opened a secure app on her phone, one hidden deep within a folder labeled 'Recipes.' It required a fingerprint and a twenty-character password.

The screen loaded. Bank of the Cayman Islands.

Account Holder: The Architect.

Balance: $24,500,000.00.

Evelyn stared at the number. For three years, she had let the Vance family treat her like a pauper, a gold-digger who should be grateful for the crumbs from their table. She had let Julian pay for her clothes, her food, holding it over her head like a debt she could never repay.

But Evelyn was The Architect. Hollywood's most sought-after ghostwriter. The woman who had penned three Oscar-winning screenplays under a pseudonym because the Vance family didn't allow their wives to "work."

She locked the phone.

"Mrs. Vance, please, let me call your driver," the nurse pleaded, following her into the hallway. "Or Mr. Vance's assistant?"

Evelyn stopped at the elevator. She turned to her, her eyes dry and hard.

"Don't call anyone," she said. "Evelyn Vance died in that fire."

She walked out of the hospital doors into the biting cold of the morning. She didn't look for the black town car that usually ferried her around like a prisoner transport.

She raised her hand and hailed a yellow cab.

The driver, a heavyset man with a kind face, looked at Evelyn in the rearview mirror. She must have looked like a maniac-soot-stained, smelling of smoke, bleeding slightly from the hand.

"Where to, lady?"

Evelyn looked down at the diamond ring on her left hand. Five carats. Flawless clarity. Cold as ice. She double-tapped the side button of her phone to bring up her wallet. It still worked.

"Midtown," Evelyn said, her voice gaining strength. "Sterling & Hale Law Firm."