The day my father lined up five wealthy women and told me to choose one as my new mother, everyone expected me to pick beauty, money, or status. Instead, I walked past every designer dress in the room and knelt beside the one woman everyone else treated as if she were invisible. That's when the entire mansion fell silent.

I sat up abruptly, rubbing my eyes. The room was dark, but thick, grey clouds of smoke were seeping under the cracks of my bedroom door.

Emily was already awake, standing near the door, her face tight with sudden alarm. She touched the wooden door with the back of her hand and immediately pulled it back.

"It's hot," she whispered, her voice laced with sudden panic.

"Emily... what's happening?" I cried out, terror gripping my chest.

"The house is on fire, Leo," she said clearly, turning to me with complete composure despite the horror unfolding around us. "Stay calm. We're going to be okay."

She grabbed a blanket from my bed, ran into my bathroom, soaked it completely in cold water from the sink, and wrapped it tightly around my shoulders.

She opened the bedroom door.

The hallway was a roaring nightmare of bright orange flames and suffocating black smoke. The grand staircase leading to the ground floor was completely engulfed in fire.

Down in the foyer, the security alarms were blaring hysterically, but the automatic sprinkler system had been completely shut off.

"Thomas! Is anyone there?!" Emily screamed into the smoke, but no answer came.

We later learned that Olivia Prescott had paid our night security guard fifty thousand dollars to disable the fire suppression systems and drop an incendiary device near the electrical room in the basement before locking the main gates from the outside.

"We can't go down the stairs!" Emily yelled over the roar of the fire.

The flames were creeping rapidly down the hallway, closing off the exit to the east wing. The heat was scorching, making it difficult to breathe.

"The balcony!" I sobbed, tears streaming down my ash-covered face. "Emily, I'm scared!"

"Look at me, Leo!" Emily grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me to look straight into her eyes. "Look at me! I will never let anything happen to you! Do you hear me? Never!"

She scooped me up into her arms, wrapping the wet blanket around my head, and sprinted through the blinding smoke toward the master bedroom at the far end of the hall. Flames licked at her ankles, scorching her clothes, but she didn't slow down for a fraction of a second.

She kicked open the master bedroom door, slammed it shut behind us to delay the fire, and bolted onto the outdoor stone balcony.

Down below, the fire department was arriving, their sirens screaming through the rainy night, but the locked front gates were delaying their trucks.

The fire was eating through the wooden bedroom door behind us. The glass balcony doors cracked under the intense heat.

"Over here!" Emily shouted to the firefighters below, waving her arms frantically. "He's up here! Help!"

A firefighter hoisted a massive metal ladder up toward the second-floor stone railing. "Hold on! We're coming!"

The bedroom door gave way with a deafening crash, and a wall of fire burst onto the balcony.

Emily didn't hesitate. She lifted me over the stone railing and held me securely over the edge, placing my feet onto the top rungs of the firefighter's ladder.

"Grab the firefighter, Leo! Go!" she urged frantically.

The firefighter grabbed my waist, securing me to his chest. "I've got the boy! Miss, give me your hand!"

As I was lowered down, I looked up and screamed in horror.

A heavy, burning wooden beam from the roof overhang collapsed above the balcony, crashing down toward Emily. She dodged to the side, but the impact sent her stumbling backward off the edge of the stone railing.