The Fire Truth

Marlo

My knees hit the cold floor matting before my brain could even tell my legs to hold me up.

I didn't hit the ground. Jarrah’s massive arms caught me before I collapsed, his rough, scarred hands pulling me flush against his bare chest. The heat coming off his skin was suffocating. I pressed my forehead against his collarbone, choking on a sob that had been trapped in my throat for ten long years.

The locker room around us faded into nothing. The smell of bleach and damp equipment vanished, replaced entirely by the phantom stench of thick, black smoke, melting wallpaper, and burning pine.

A bedroom in Melbourne.

I remembered the heat. I remembered screaming until my throat bled as the wooden ceiling beams caved in around my small bed. I remembered a shadowed figure smashing through the bedroom window, his dark clothes caught on fire, his hands bleeding as he yanked me out of the inferno and carried me into the freezing night air.

I had spent a decade believing that shadowed figure was a ghost. An angel. A trick played by a traumatized seven year old mind.

It wasn't an angel. It was the boy currently holding me on the floor of an empty ice rink locker room.

"You" I choked out, my fingers digging into the hard muscle of his arms. "It was you."

Jarrah didn't answer right away. He sat back on his heels, pulling me into his lap. His broad chest rose and fell in heavy, ragged hitches against my cheek. His calloused fingers cupped the back of my head, holding me so tight I could barely breathe.

"I told you," Jarrah rasped into my hair, his voice vibrating right through my skull. "I'm not your hero, Marlo. I never was."

I forced myself to pull back, wiping my eyes with the back of my sleeve. I looked at his face. The cold, arrogant mask he wore every single day was completely gone. His amber eyes were raw, bleeding with a dark, heavy pain that made my own chest ache.

I reached out with a trembling hand. My fingertips hovered over his bare chest, right where the smooth, tan skin gave way to the thick, puckered ridge of silver scar tissue.

"You burned for me," I whispered, my voice shaking uncontrollably. "You were just a boy."

"I was fifteen," Jarrah said softly. He didn't flinch as my fingers gently brushed against the raised scars on his ribs. A deep shudder ran through his entire frame at my touch. "My father ran the Vance network back then. Siobhan came to him with a briefcase full of cash and a wire transfer script. She didn't just want your parents dead, Marlo. She wanted the entire Cleary family erased in a single night."

My stomach churned violently. "Why? Why my family?"

"Because of the Cleary trust," Jarrah growled, his jaw clenching so hard the muscle twitched. "Your grandfather built a real estate empire worth over fifty million dollars. When your parents died, the entire fortune was placed into a locked trust fund. Siobhan was named your legal guardian, but she couldn't touch a single cent of that money unless two conditions were met."

He held up two thick, scarred fingers.

"First, you had to survive until your twenty first birthday to claim it," Jarrah explained, his voice dropping into a low, deadly register. "Second, if you died before turning twenty-one without an heir, the entire trust reverted directly to your legal guardian. To Siobhan."

The pieces fell into place with a sickening, violent clarity.

All those years growing up in that cold, cramped apartment. Siobhan pretending to sacrifice everything to raise her dead sister's daughter. The cheap clothes, the missed meals, the constant reminders of how much I owed her. It was all a lie. She was just keeping me alive like a farm animal, waiting for the right moment to slaughter me.

"The fire was supposed to look like an electrical accident," Jarrah continued, his amber eyes locking onto mine with terrifying intensity. "My father sent me to the house that night to watch from the treeline. To make sure nobody got out. I was supposed to be blooded into the family business. But when I saw Siobhan lock the front door from the outside and pour gasoline on the porch, I ran to the back of the house."

He swallowed hard, his throat working as he relived the memory.

"I heard you screaming from the second floor window," Jarrah whispered, his hand gently lifting my jaw so I had to look at him. "I didn't care about my father. I didn't care about the money. I kicked through the back glass, ran up the burning stairs, and pulled you out. I took those burn scars so you could take your next breath."

A tear slipped down my cheek, dropping onto his scarred chest.

The conflict inside me was tearing my soul in half. This was the man who had stalked my every move for ten years. He had terrified me. He had bought my job, trapped me in rooms, and controlled my life. But he had also bled for me. He had carried the permanent marks of my survival on his skin while I grew up hating him.

"Why didn't you tell the police?" I begged, gripping his broad shoulder. "Why did you let me live with her for ten years?"

"Because Siobhan owned the police chief in Melbourne," Jarrah said bitterly. "If I had taken you to the cops, they would have handed you right back to her, and she would have finished the job. The only way to keep you alive was to let her think you were harmless. I stayed in the shadows. I watched every house you lived in. Every school you went to. I made sure every hitman she tried to hire over the last ten years mysteriously vanished before they ever reached your front door."

I gasped, realization hitting me like a physical blow. "That's why you stalked me."

"I didn't stalk you, little bird," Jarrah whispered, his thumb softly tracing my lower lip. "I guarded you. You belong to my blood now. You have since the night I dragged you out of the fire."

The air between us charged with a dark, heavy tension. The line between my fear of him and my desperate, overwhelming need for him vanished completely. We were bound together by blood, smoke, and ten years of shared trauma.

Suddenly, the low, sharp buzz of a cell phone shattered the heavy silence of the locker room.

Jarrah froze. He reached down into the pocket of his discarded track pants and pulled out his encrypted phone. The screen cast a bright, blue light across his scarred face.

He tapped the screen. A single text message appeared, sent from an unknown number. Attached was a live, high-definition photo.

Jarrah’s body went completely rigid. The air in his lungs left him in a harsh, dangerous hiss.

"What is it?" I asked, panic instant returning to my blood. "Jarrah, what's on the phone?"

Without saying a word, Jarrah turned the screen toward me.

My heart stopped beating entirely.

The photo showed the interior of my small university dorm room. Lying tied up on my unmade bed was Aunt Siobhan, her mouth taped shut, her eyes wide with pure terror. Standing over her with a loaded pistol pressed against her temple was Cal O'Shea.

Beneath the image was a short message written in plain text:

Your twenty first birthday is tomorrow at midnight, Marlo. Jarrah has until midnight to hand over the Cleary trust keys, or I blow your aunt's head off and tell the police Jarrah Vance did it.