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 east wing of the Grandview Hotel was fully engulfed. Black smoke poured from the third-floor windows while flames crawled behind the glass. Guests fled past him, coughing and clinging to one another.

Derek pulled down his mask, checked his air tank, and went inside.

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 had become a solid gray wall. By the third, it was nearly 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, with a living area, a wet bar, and a king-size bed visible through an archway. The fire had not yet broken through the walls, but smoke was already filling the room.

Two figures huddled beside the far window. A man and a woman in bathrobes, pressed tightly together.

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

He stopped.

The woman looked up.

Three years of marriage, and he 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.

She didn’t recognize him beneath the gas mask.

Derek stared at her, then at the man beside her.

Young, handsome, and bare-chested beneath a monogrammed silk robe. He coughed violently into one fist, yet his other hand remained possessively on Erin’s breast.

Derek forced the words through his tightening throat.

"Let’s move. Now."

"Wait." Erin pointed at Derek’s mask. "Give it to Dick."

"What?"

"Your gas mask." She gestured impatiently at his face. "Give it to him. Do you know who he is? This is the heir of Pineapple Corp. He just secured the Apex Group partnership for my foundation. He is extremely important."

She looked at Derek with something close to patience. "You've walked through fires a hundred times. You're used to this."

Derek looked at her for several seconds. Then, as always, he gave her what she wanted.

He removed the mask.

"Derek?" Erin's eyes widened. The color drained from her face.

The shock lasted only a moment before defensiveness hardened her face.

"Why didn’t you say it was you? Derek, I can explain—"

"Save it."

Derek shoved the mask toward Dick, who took it with shaking hands.

"Derek, come on, don’t turn this into some wounded-pride drama." Erin said sharply.

"Just move, now." Derek grabbed them both and pulled them into the corridor.

Dick stumbled beside him, while Erin followed stiffly, radiating anger as though she were the one being wronged.

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 lay unharmed beneath him, dust tangled 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.

A paramedic cutting away part of his sleeve paused briefly when she saw the birthmark on his shoulder, petal-shaped, dark against his skin before moving on without comment before proceeding with standard questions 

He answered their questions and thanked them politely, but his attention kept drifting over 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?

There was no sign of her or Dick.

Only flames consuming the hotel and blackened sections of the building collapsing into the smoke.

It looked painfully familiar.

Like their marriage, it had burned for far too long before finally beginning to fall apart.

Eventually, Derek 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.

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.

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

Then her voice, soft and teasing in a way Derek had not heard directed at him in years.

"Baby…"

Derek stood with his hand on the doorknob.

Something inside him finally settled.

He opened the door.