Choosing The Imposter Over His Dying Wife

Ericka POV

I sat on the floor of the dusty attic, surrounded by the ghosts of my past.

Old Polaroids littered the floorboards. My sixteenth birthday. The day Caleb became a Made Man. The day Fitzgerald graduated.

In every photo, I was smiling. Back then, I was the glue holding this family together.

Now? I was the toxic solvent they were desperate to dispose of.

I struck a match.

The flame flickered to life, orange and blue against the shadows.

I held it to the corner of a photo of Caleb and me. The fire curled the paper, devouring his face, then mine.

It felt good.

"Dramatic," a voice purred.

I looked up.

Hailie stood at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a white cashmere coat—pristine, expensive, and utterly untouchable.

"What are you doing here?" I coughed, the acrid smoke already beginning to sting my lungs.

"Checking on the prisoner," she said. She walked over, her heels clicking on the wood, and looked at the burning pile in the small metal brazier I had found. "Burning bridges?"

"I'm burning lies," I said.

She smiled. It was a shark's smile—all teeth and dead eyes.

"You know," she said idly, "Caleb hates fire. Reminds him of the warehouse explosion that killed his father."

Without warning, she lifted her booted foot and kicked the brazier.

It tipped over with a metallic clang.

Burning embers scattered across the dry, dusty floorboards. An old rug, brittle with age, caught instantly.

"Oops," she said.

The flames jumped, hungry and fast, licking up the curtains.

"Are you crazy?" I scrambled back, trying to stomp out the fire with my bare feet, ignoring the heat blistering my skin. "Help me!"

She didn't move. She just pulled out her phone and dialed.

"Caleb!" she screamed into the receiver, her voice instantly transforming into a performance of terrified panic. "Help! She's trying to burn the house down! She's trying to kill me!"

She hung up and looked at me. Her eyes were dead calm.

"Run, Princess."

The guards burst in seconds later. They dragged us out just as the smoke turned the hallway into a gray chokehold.

Caleb arrived ten minutes later.

His car screeched to a halt on the gravel drive.

Hailie ran to him, sobbing, her face perfectly smudged with a little soot she had applied herself.

"She's insane, Caleb! She lit the rug! She said if she couldn't have the house, no one could!"

Caleb looked at the smoke billowing from the attic window, his jaw tight.

Then he looked at me.

I was coughing violently, black phlegm spotting the white gravel. My feet were burned and raw.

"I was burning photos," I wheezed, desperate for air. "She kicked it over."

Caleb walked up to me. He didn't hit me.

That would have been too kind.

"You like heat?" he asked softly.

Before I could answer, he grabbed me by the back of my neck.

He marched me past the main house to the detached sauna near the pool.

"Caleb, please," I begged, my fingers clawing at his wrist. "My lungs..."

He shoved me inside.

"Crank it," he ordered the guard.

He locked the glass door.

The heat rose.

180 degrees. 200 degrees.

The air became thick, an unbreathable soup that scorched my throat with every gasp.

I pounded on the glass.

Caleb stood outside, watching. His face was stone. He was the executioner, and I was the witch.

My chest felt like it was imploding. The tumors in my lungs reacted to the extreme heat, constricting my airways until I was breathing through a straw.

I slid down the glass, gasping for air that wasn't there.

I was dying. Again.

Through the haze, I saw Hailie walk up to the door.

She held a bucket of ice water intended for the post-sauna plunge.

She unlocked the door.

I fell out, landing on the cedar deck, my body convulsing as I tried to pull in oxygen.

I thought she was saving me.

"Cool off," she sneered.

She dumped the ice water over me.

The shock was instant and brutal. My body seized. The temperature differential sent my nerves into overdrive, pain exploding behind my eyes.

I lay there, shivering violently on the wood, gasping for breath, while the man who promised to protect me watched his mistress torture me and called it justice.