My Husband Left Me in the Fire, So I Took His Fortune

"Smile, Violet. You look like you're at a funeral."

Alex Reyes didn't turn his head when he said it. He just lifted his champagne flute toward a hedge-fund manager across the room and kept his own smile perfect.

"I am smiling," I said.

"With your mouth. Not your eyes."

The Foundry gallery glittered around us. Crystal chandeliers, white orchids, half of lower Manhattan in black tie, all writing checks for a children's hospital. My Hermès gown was black silk, cut low in the back. Alex had picked it out himself.

Under the table of canapés, I pressed two fingers against my stomach.

*Five months, Ms. Monroe. Maybe less.* Dr. Lindsey had folded her hands on her desk when she said it. *The blade that cut you six years ago was coated with a slow-acting toxin. It's in your bone marrow now.*

Six years ago. The knife meant for Alex.

"Where's Bella?" I asked.

His jaw shifted. "Back hall. Taking a call."

"You always know where she is."

"Don't start."

I didn't. I sipped my sparkling water and counted the orchids instead.

Then the floor jumped.

A roar ripped through the kitchen doors. Glass burst. The chandeliers swung once, flickered, and died. In the dark, someone screamed, then everyone did.

"Gas leak!" a waiter yelled. "Get out, get out!"

Smoke rolled across the ceiling like black water. Bodies slammed into me. Somebody's elbow caught my ribs, and I stumbled backward, away from Alex, through a side door I couldn't see.

"Alex!"

No answer. Only heat.

I crashed into a storage room full of crated sculptures. A beam groaned overhead and came down across the doorway in a shower of sparks. The steel door swung shut behind it.

"Is someone there?" a thin voice whimpered from the corner.

Isabella Ashford. Pale blue gown, phone still clutched in her fist, face white as paper.

"Bella. Are you hurt?"

"I don't know. I don't *know*." She pressed herself against the wall. "Jason went to find help, he fell, his leg—oh God, Violet, we're going to die in here."

I grabbed the door handle and yanked my hand back. The metal was blistering hot. I screamed at it anyway.

"Help! We're in here! *Alex!*"

Smoke clawed down my throat. My eyes streamed. I pounded the door with the side of my fist until my skin split.

Then something hit it from the other side. Once. Twice.

The door flew open.

Alex stood in the gap, fire behind him painting half his face gold and the other half black. His jacket was gone. His sleeve was scorched.

"Alex," I sobbed. "Alex, here—"

His eyes passed over me.

They didn't stop. Not for one second.

He crossed the room in three strides and scooped Isabella into his arms. She buried her face in his neck.

"Alex?" My voice cracked in half.

He paused at the door, just long enough to say it.

"Bella's the Ashford heir. Nothing can happen to her."

Then he was gone into the fire.

I stared at the empty doorway. Something in my chest went very quiet.

Above me, the chandelier chain snapped. I threw up my arm. Burning glass and metal smashed beside me, and a line of fire licked across my forearm. I sucked in air through my teeth. My knees folded. Flames crept toward the hem of my silk gown.

*Twice,* I thought, as the smoke pulled me down. *That's twice he's chosen someone else.*

---

When I opened my eyes, snow was falling past the window of Memorial Sloan Kettering. It glinted under the streetlights, cold and pretty and far away.

Alex sat beside the bed. His tux shirt was gray with ash. Dark shadows hung under his eyes. He had my hand in both of his.

"You're awake." He leaned in. "Violet. I'm sorry."

I didn't say anything.

"Jason hurt his leg. She was alone in there. She would've been terrified."

"I was in there too."

"I know." His thumb rubbed my knuckles. "I came back. The firefighters got to you first, but I came back."

My throat felt like sandpaper. My voice came out rough and low.

"If she wasn't an Ashford," I said, "would you still have picked her?"

He went still.

The silence stretched. Down the hall, the clock above the nurses' station seemed to freeze between ticks. A monitor beeped somewhere. Alex looked at the snow, then at the blanket, then at nothing.

"She would've been scared," he finally said.

That was it. That was his whole answer.

And I laughed.

It burst out of me, cracked and wet. Tears ran sideways from the corners of my eyes and soaked into my hair.

"Right," I said. "She's scared of fire. Scared of the dark. Scared of pain. And me? I'm not scared of anything." I laughed again, softer. "Because I'm already dying anyway."

His brows snapped together. "What the hell are you talking about?"

I didn't answer.

"Violet. Look at me. What does that mean?"

I looked at my arm instead. White gauze wrapped from wrist to elbow. I pressed on it, gently, then harder. It barely stung.

"Huh," I whispered. "Even pain is going dull now."

"You're on morphine. You're not making sense." He reached for my face.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

He glanced at the screen, and I watched his whole body change. Shoulders up. Jaw tight. He was already standing before he answered.

"Bella? Hey. Hey, breathe. It was a nightmare, okay? I'm coming."

He hung up. Picked up his ruined jacket.

"She's having panic attacks," he said. "She's alone at the penthouse. I'll be back in the morning."

"Sure."

He stopped at the door, like maybe he wanted to say something else.

He didn't.

The door clicked shut, and the room got bigger.

I lay there listening to the snow tap the glass. I thought about being five years old, standing beside my mother's coffin in a dress two sizes too big, while the other kids whispered that my dad was a criminal. Somebody's son shoved me into the mud behind the church.

And a twelve-year-old boy with a split lip hauled me up by the back of my collar, wiped my face with his sleeve, and pulled me against his chest.

*Nobody gets to touch Violet,* he'd told them. *Nobody.*

I believed him. For nineteen years, I believed him.

I turned my head toward the nightstand. Beside the water pitcher sat a folded sheet of paper, my discharge instructions. I hadn't looked at it yet.

But clipped to the back was a second page. Dr. Lindsey's letterhead.

And someone had already unfolded it.