He Saw Her, Not His Wife

Harrison POV: The drawing felt like an accusation. The girl's eyes, even in the rough sketch, seemed to stare right through me. But they were the eyes of a stranger. Kassie was the one who saved me. She was the one who pulled me from the smoke. She had the scar to prove it. This drawing was a trick of my broken mind. A phantom created by years of guilt and trauma. "It's no one," I said, my voice harsher than I intended. I snatched the paper from Dr. Albright's hand and crumpled it into a tight ball. "It's just a ghost." "Ghosts are often the memories we are too afraid to face," she said quietly. I stormed out of her office, the crumpled paper burning a hole in my pocket. I needed to see Kassie. I needed to ground myself in the truth. I drove to her penthouse, the one I had bought for her, a glass palace overlooking the city. She opened the door wearing a flowing white dress, looking like an angel. She wrapped her arms around my neck, her scent-something floral and sweet-enveloping me. "Harry, you're here early," she cooed, pressing a kiss to my jaw. "I missed you." Her touch usually calmed the chaos in my head. But today, it did nothing. The image of the girl with the star-shaped scar was burned into my retinas. "Show me," I said, my voice flat. She looked confused. "Show you what, darling?" "Your scar," I said. "The one from the fire. I need to see it." A flicker of something-panic?-crossed her face before she masked it with a look of hurt. "Harrison, why? You know looking at it upsets me. It brings back such awful memories." "Just show me, Kassie." She sighed dramatically, a tear welling in the corner of her eye. "If it will make you feel better," she whispered. She turned her back to me and slowly, delicately, pulled down the zipper of her dress. There it was. A long, faint, silvery line running down her left shoulder blade. The scar. The proof. Relief washed over me, so potent it made me dizzy. Of course. This was the truth. Dr. Albright was wrong. My mind was wrong. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice thick with guilt. I reached out and gently pulled the zipper back up, my fingers brushing against the warm skin of her back. "I'm so sorry I doubted you." She turned back to me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "It's her, isn't it?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "That... woman. The stalker. She's gotten into your head." The crumpled paper in my pocket felt like a stone. "She's jealous," Kassie continued, pressing her hand to my chest. "She's trying to take my past, to take my place in your heart. She probably saw my story in an interview and got that... that tattoo... just to mess with you." She let out a small, pathetic sob. "She wants to replace me." Her words clicked into place, forming a neat, logical explanation. The stalker was manipulative. Unhinged. Of course she would go to such lengths. She had seen Kassie's story of heroism and tried to steal it for herself. The drawing... my mind must have latched onto the fake scar, the tattoo, during the struggle. The guilt I felt for doubting Kassie curdled into a cold, hard rage directed at the woman who had caused all of this. The woman with the terrified eyes. "You're right," I said, pulling Kassie into a tight hug. "She's sick. And I let her get to me." "It's not your fault, Harry," Kassie murmured into my chest. "You've been through so much." I held her, the scent of her perfume filling my senses, and I made a promise. "I will never let anyone hurt you again," I vowed. "And I will make sure that woman pays for what she's done." A profound sense of irritation washed over me. An irritation directed at my ex-wife, Aliyah. This was her fault, too. Her dramatic, public divorce had been the catalyst for all this. It had made me a target for lunatics and parasites. If she had just stayed in her place, quietly, none of this would have happened. I had been too soft. On Aliyah. On the stalker. That was about to change. I pulled out my phone and dialed my head of security. "Mike," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "I need you to find the woman from the studio. The stalker. I don't care where you have to look or what you have to do. Find her." "Sir, we put her on a flight to..." "I don't care," I cut him off. "I want to know where she is. I want to know everything about her. And then I am going to destroy her." I was going to make her pay for trying to replace Kassie. The real hero. The only person who had ever truly saved me.