From Jilted Assistant To Zillionaire Queen

The flickering blue light from the old television cut through the suffocating darkness of the cheap East Los Angeles apartment. On the screen, a live entertainment broadcast showed a grand engagement party in Beverly Hills. Guillermo stood under a cascade of crystal chandeliers. He wore a tailored tuxedo that seemed to shine with an impossible wealth, a stark, sickening contrast to the peeling paint and suffocating poverty of her own four walls. He smiled. It was that same gentle, deep smile he used to give her when they shared instant noodles on a mattress on the floor. Now, he was directing that smile at Jasmine Stout, the heiress to the Stout fortune. He took Jasmine's hand and slid a massive diamond ring onto her finger. The crowd on the television erupted into applause. On the torn sofa, Kayla pulled her knees to her chest. Her eyes were bloodshot, burning so badly she couldn't blink. Her phone buzzed on the scratched coffee table. The screen lit up with a notification from her bank. Her account balance was less than ten dollars. Her fingers trembled violently as she swiped the screen open. The social media app refreshed. Thousands of comments flooded the screen, blessing Guillermo and his new billionaire fiancée. Kayla opened her contacts. She pressed the number she had memorized for ten years. She held the phone to her ear. Her hand was shaking so hard the plastic casing rattled against her cheekbone. A cold, automated voice told her the number was disconnected. Her stomach dropped. A wave of nausea hit her so hard she gagged. She threw the phone at the peeling wallpaper. It hit the wall with a sharp crack, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of dead pixels. Next to the impact mark, a cheap paper calendar hung on a nail. Today's date was circled in thick red ink. It was their ten-year anniversary. Kayla tried to stand up. Her legs gave out. She crashed into the coffee table. An empty glass liquor bottle rolled off the edge and hit the floor with a heavy, dull thud. She dragged herself up, leaning heavily against the wall, and stumbled into the cramped bathroom. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. She looked at the mirror. Her face was hollow. Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. She pulled open the drawer under the sink. Her fingers closed around a plastic pill bottle with no label. She popped the cap off and poured a handful of small white pills into her palm. She didn't turn on the faucet. She shoved the entire handful into her mouth. She threw her head back and swallowed dry. The pills scraped against her throat, tearing at the dry tissue. She closed her eyes. Her knees buckled. She slid down the wall until she hit the cold, grimy tiles. Her breathing grew heavy. The edges of her vision turned black. Images of the last ten years flashed behind her eyelids. The scripts she wrote for him in the middle of the night. The auditions she drove him to when they couldn't afford gas. From the living room, the cheers from the television echoed like a vicious curse. Her chest tightened. Her heart slowed down. Then, in the dead silence of the bathroom, it stopped beating entirely. The apartment remained silent for only a few hours. Before the sun could rise, a team of shadows slipped through the broken window. They injected a stabilizing serum into her failing veins, lifting her limp body from the grimy tiles. In her place, they left a hyper-realistic silicone decoy, dousing the bathroom in a synthetic chemical compound designed to mimic advanced putrefaction. A screech of tires broke the quiet outside the building. A sleek black town car idled by the curb. Eleanor Sims pushed the car door open. She stepped onto the cracked pavement in her designer heels, her face twisting in disgust. She walked up the dark, urine-smelling stairwell and stopped at the apartment door. She pulled a spare key from her designer bag and forced it into the rusty lock. The door swung open. A thick, sweet smell of decay hit her face. Eleanor gagged. She took a step back, waving her manicured hand in front of her nose. She muttered a string of curses about bottom-feeders under her breath. She stepped inside, her eyes scanning the trash and the shattered phone. She noticed the bathroom door sitting ajar. She walked over and pushed it open. Eleanor let out a sharp gasp. The decoy of Kayla lay slumped in the shadows of the tiles. There was no sadness in Eleanor's eyes. There was only extreme, cold annoyance. She backed out of the bathroom immediately. She pulled out her phone and dialed the number for Guillermo's crisis management team. "Send a cleanup crew to the East LA address," Eleanor ordered, her voice like ice. "The delusional assistant finally did it." She hung up the phone. She pulled a pair of oversized sunglasses from her bag and slid them over her eyes. She walked to the kitchen counter, pulled a tissue from her purse, and wiped the doorknob she had touched. Within twenty minutes, four men in black suits arrived. They moved with mechanical efficiency. They zipped the silicone decoy into a heavy body bag, stuffed Kayla's clothes, her notebooks, and her life into thick black garbage bags, ignoring the overwhelming chemical stench that masked the truth. Eleanor turned around and walked out of the apartment. Her heels clicked sharply against the stairs. She didn't look back once.