Elise’s blood turned cold.
Adrian looked at her once.
“I’m ending this tonight.”
Then he vanished into the dark.
Red emergency lights painted the halls like blood.
Adrian moved through smoke and panic while servants rushed guests toward the exits.
Another shot.
A chandelier shattered.
Glass rained across marble floors.
“You ruined everything!” Celeste’s voice screamed through the speakers.
Adrian reached the grand staircase and grabbed a guard.
“Where is she?”
“Cameras are down,” the guard said. “Motion sensors show movement near the west wing.”
The west wing.
Oliver’s old nursery.
Adrian’s blood chilled.
He ran.
At the end of the hall, he saw her.
Celeste stood with her blond hair soaked and wild, mascara streaked like black tears. In one hand, she held a pistol. In the other, a silver lighter.
Beside her sat overturned cans of gasoline.
“You came,” she said.
“It’s over, Celeste.”
“No,” she whispered. “It’s just beginning.”
She flicked the lighter open.
A small flame trembled.
“You destroyed my future for her.”
“You destroyed it yourself.”
Her face twisted.
“You were supposed to love me!”
Adrian did not flinch.
“I loved my wife.”
The words broke something in her.
For one second she looked like a wounded girl.
Then rage returned.
“She was dead!”
“She is alive.”
Celeste’s breath came fast.
“That little boy,” she whispered. “He never loved me. No matter how hard I tried, he cried for her.”
Adrian took one step forward.
“This ends now.”
Celeste smiled through tears.
“If I lose this family…”
Her hand opened.
“…then nobody gets it.”
The lighter fell.
The gasoline caught.
Flames exploded across the hall.
Heat slammed into Adrian. Fire climbed the curtains, swallowed the paintings, raced along the woodwork.
Celeste fired.
The bullet tore into the wall beside Adrian’s shoulder.
He lunged through the flames and knocked the pistol from her hand.
They crashed to the floor.
She clawed at him.
“I needed you!”
“You need help!”
She reached for broken glass.
Adrian caught her wrist.
Above them, the ceiling groaned.
Crack.
A burning beam began to fall.
Downstairs, Elise heard the explosion.
The mansion shook.
Oliver screamed into her chest.
“Mommy, Daddy’s upstairs!”
Smoke slid under the library doors.
Servants shouted, “The west wing is on fire!”
A maid grabbed Elise’s arm.
“You can’t go up there!”
But Elise was already moving.
Somewhere in that burning mansion, Adrian was alone.
And she was not losing him again.
Smoke swallowed the staircase.
Heat wrapped around Elise’s throat.
Behind her, Oliver cried from the library doorway as two maids held him back.
“Mommy! Daddy!”
She turned once.
“I’m bringing him back,” she promised.
Then she ran into the smoke.
Upstairs, flames devoured the west wing.
Adrian shoved Celeste away as the burning beam crashed between them.
Celeste coughed near the wall, trapped by spreading fire.
For one brief moment, terror replaced madness in her eyes.
“This is real,” her face seemed to say.
The fire.
The death.
All of it.
“I… I didn’t…”
Adrian grabbed her arm.
“We have to move!”
She stared at him.
“You’re trying to save me?”
“I am not letting Oliver watch another person die.”
He dragged her through the smoke.
Halfway down the corridor, she stopped.
“What are you doing?” Adrian shouted.
Her face crumpled.
“I killed her,” she whispered.
Adrian froze.
“That night… the brakes on Elise’s car…”
His blood turned to ice.
“I only wanted to scare her,” Celeste sobbed. “I didn’t think the crash would be that bad.”
For two years Adrian had believed fate stole his wife.
But it had been Celeste.
“You killed her,” he said softly.
“She survived!”
“You left my son without a mother. You stood beside me at her funeral.”
“I loved you!”
“That isn’t love,” he said. “That is obsession.”
Then Elise’s voice cut through the smoke.
“Adrian!”
She stood at the far end of the corridor, eyes wide with horror.
“Get back!” he shouted.
But she ran toward him.
A burning chandelier crashed down.
Adrian lunged and pulled her aside just before it smashed where she had stood.
The impact threw them to the floor.
A piece of flaming debris struck Celeste’s leg, pinning her.
She screamed.
Adrian tried to lift the beam.
It would not move.
Celeste looked at Elise.
At the woman she had tried to erase.
“He never stopped loving you,” she whispered.
Elise said nothing.
“Even when he thought you were dead.”
Flames blocked the hall behind them.
Elise grabbed Adrian.
“We have to go now!”
“I can’t leave her.”
“You’ll die!”
Celeste took Adrian’s sleeve with trembling fingers.
For the first time, she sounded human.
“Take Elise,” she whispered.
Adrian stared at her.
“I hated you,” Celeste told Elise, “because you had everything I wanted.”
Tears filled Elise’s eyes despite herself.
“But Oliver…” Celeste’s voice broke. “That little boy deserved better than me.”
The ceiling cracked overhead.
“Adrian!” Elise screamed.
Celeste released his sleeve.
“Go.”
He hesitated only one heartbeat more.
Then he took Elise’s hand and ran.
Behind them, Celeste remained in the flames.