The Billionaire Firefighter

Derek Moss had walked into burning buildings two hundred and thirty-seven times.

He had never once hesitated at the door.

Tonight was no different. The Grandview Hotel's east wing was fully engaged, third floor windows belching black smoke, fire licking up the curtains like a living thing. Guests streamed past him in the opposite direction, coughing, clutching each other. Derek pulled his mask down, checked his tank, and went in.

The radio crackled in his ear. Two confirmed victims. Suite 318.

He took the stairs two at a time, one hand on the rail, the other gripping his Halligan bar. The smoke thickened with every floor. By the second landing it was a wall of grey. By the third it was almost black. He dropped low, moving fast on instinct and training, counting doors along the corridor wall with his fingertips.

311. 313. 315.

The heat was immense. The carpet had started to melt.

318.

He drove his boot into the door beside the lock. Once. Twice. The frame splintered and the door swung wide.

The suite was large, a living area, a wet bar, a king bed visible through an archway. The smoke was thinner in here, the fire not yet through the walls. Two figures were huddled by the far window. A man and a woman, both in bathrobes, clinging to each other.

Derek crossed the room in seconds.

"Fire department! I've got you, we're going out through the—"

He stopped.

The woman looked up.

Three years of marriage, and he still knew every line of her face. The sharp cheekbones. The perfectly arched brows. The way her expression cycled through emotions like a woman shuffling cards, finding the one that served her best.

"Erin."

His wife blinked. Then she straightened, and something shifted behind her eyes. Not relief. Not shame. Disgust.

"Derek." Her voice was calm. Almost annoyed. "What are you doing here?"

He stared at her. At the man beside her, young, handsome, a silk robe monogrammed with initials Derek didn't recognize. At the way the man's hand rested on the big boobs of Erin's chest like it belonged there.

"I'm rescuing you," Derek said slowly. "We need to move. Now."

"Wait." Erin raised a hand. "Give Dick your mask."

Derek heard the words. They simply didn't arrange themselves into meaning for a moment.

"What?"

"Your gas mask." She gestured impatiently at the apparatus on his face. "Give it to Dick. He's not trained for this. He needs it more than you do."

The man, Dick had the grace to look uncomfortable. "Erin, that's not-"

"Dick just secured the Apex Group partnership for my foundation," Erin said, her tone the same one she used in board meetings, in interviews, on stages. Reasonable. Authoritative. Unarguable. "Do you understand what that means? Dick is very important right now." She looked at Derek with something close to patience. "You've walked through fires a hundred times. You're used to this."

Derek held her gaze for several seconds. In the end, he yielded, just as he always had—setting aside his own feelings, bending to her wishes, and giving her what she wanted.

Then he caught both of them by the arms and pulled them away.

"Let's just leaving. Now."

He pulled them toward the corridor, dropping into the smoke, one hand on each of them. Dick stumbled but kept pace. Erin moved stiffly, radiating indignation.

They had barely reached the middle of the second-floor stairwell when a deafening roar erupted without warning. A violent pressure wave tore through the stairwell, knocking the air from Derek’s lungs.

The ceiling was coming down!

Derek reacted on instinct. His body moved before his mind did, spinning, throwing himself over Erin, curling tight as the beam came down.

It caught him across the left leg.

The pain was white and total. He heard himself grunt, the sound of a man absorbing something enormous and choosing not to be stopped by it. He braced his palms against the floor, shoved the beam sideways with everything he had, and pulled his leg free.

Erin was unharmed beneath him. She looked up at him with dust in her hair.

Their eyes met.

For a brief moment, Derek thought he saw something soften in her eyes. Regret, or love, even. 

Then her gaze shifted to Dick.

She wriggled out from beneath him and hurried away without saying a single word.

He couldn't have said exactly how he finally got them out, the next few minutes existed in fragments.

Smoke and heat and the weight on his leg that made every step a renegotiation with his own body and felt exceedingly heavy. The lobby. The doors. Cold night air.

Pain throbbed through Derek’s leg in relentless waves as the paramedics worked over the injury. He thanked them politely, but his attention kept drifting past their shoulders, searching the chaos around him.

Where was Erin? After everything he had done to get her out, had she really just disappeared with Dick?

He scanned the crowd again, but there was no sign of her. All he could see were flames consuming the building and blackened sections of it collapsing into the smoke.

It looked painfully familiar. Just like their marriage, it had burned for far too long before finally falling apart.

Eventually, he stood. The leg held, barely. He declined a hospital ride and called a cab instead, watching the medic's expression cycle through disbelief and professional resignation.

The ride home took eleven minutes. He spent them staring out the window at nothing.

Their house was lit up from the inside when the cab pulled up. He could hear something, music, maybe, or voices. Something loose and easy, the sound of people with nowhere to be.

Derek stood at the front door for a moment, his hand resting on the knob.

Behind it, unmistakably, was the sound of laughter and he heard teasing words.

His wife's laughter and her voice, he could make it the sound of "Baby" amongst what he heard.

He had finally made the decision.

He opened the door.