Rising From Ruin: The Billionaire's Lethal Roommate

Her eyes snapped open.

The blurry ceiling tiles slowly sharpened into focus. They were stained yellow with water damage. The harsh, chemical stench of industrial bleach and cheap rubbing alcohol burned the inside of her nose.

Aspen Blair tried to lift her right arm. Her bicep trembled. The muscle felt like wet sand, heavy and useless. Atrophy. She had not used this body in a very long time.

A wall-mounted television buzzed with static in the corner of the cramped hospital room. She forced her stiff neck to turn. The joints popped loudly in the quiet room.

On the screen, a late-night Hollywood entertainment broadcast was playing. Freddy Stanley, an A-list actor with a perfectly sculpted jaw, sat on a talk show couch. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing out a single, pathetic tear.

"I can't take it anymore," Freddy said to the camera, his voice shaking. "For two years, Aspen has stalked me. She ruined my sets. She ruined my life. I am exhausted."

A sharp, tearing pain ripped through Aspen's temples.

Memories slammed into her brain. They were not her choices, but she had seen them all. For twenty-four months, she had been trapped behind her own eyes, a prisoner in her own skull. She remembered the Pacific Coast Highway. The screech of tires. The crushing impact of the car crash. That was the moment the darkness had swallowed her, pushing her soul into the passenger seat while an invasive, foreign presence took the wheel, using her face to chase a mediocre actor. The sheer violation of it made her stomach churn.

She clenched her fists. Her fingernails dug into her palms. The pain was real. The heavy, grounding sensation of her soul finally locking back into her own flesh sent a shiver down her spine.

She was back.

Aspen looked down at her left hand. A thick IV needle was taped violently into the blue vein on the back of her hand. The plastic tube fed clear liquid into her bloodstream.

She reached over with her right hand. She pinched the plastic base of the needle.

She did not hesitate. With a sharp, upward jerk of her wrist, she ripped the needle out of her flesh.

Blood welled up instantly. Three thick, dark red drops splattered onto the pristine white hospital sheets. She did not even blink at the sting.

She leaned over and grabbed the newest iPhone sitting on the cheap plastic nightstand. The screen lit up. The Face ID scanned her features and unlocked immediately.

The Twitter app was open. A barrage of notification sounds pinged like rapid gunfire. Her direct messages were flooded with death threats. She tapped the trending tab. The hashtag AspenBlairGoToHell sat at the number one spot.

She swiped out of the app. She did not care about the opinions of strangers. She tapped the Bank of America icon.

The screen loaded. She stared at the bold black numbers in the center of the screen.

Available Balance: $0.00.

Her jaw tightened. That parasitic fan had drained her entire liquid fortune to buy movie roles and luxury gifts for a man who was currently crying on national television.

Aspen quickly opened the Safari browser. She navigated to the California public real estate registry. She typed in her social security number.

Her primary residence, a sprawling estate in the heart of Beverly Hills, had a new status tag updated three days ago.

SOLD.

She opened a new tab, typing in the property address. A trashy real estate blog popped up instantly as the top result. The headline glared back at her in bold font: "Mysterious Billionaire Kasey Dominguez Takes Possession of Disgraced Actress Aspen Blair's Foreclosed Mansion Tonight."

A cold, dangerous smile curved the corners of her lips. She had nothing left. No money. No reputation. No home. But she knew exactly where to find the man sleeping in her bed.

Heavy, aggressive footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. The rubber soles squeaked against the linoleum floor, moving fast and stopping right outside her door.

Aspen immediately dropped the phone onto the mattress. She closed her eyes, let her head loll to the side, and slowed her breathing. She forced her muscles to go completely limp, mimicking a deep coma.

She waited in the dark.

The wooden door kicked open with a violent bang. The handle smashed into the drywall, leaving a dent.

A nurse in dark blue scrubs marched into the room. Her name tag read Brenda. She breathed heavily through her nose, glaring at the bed.

"You psychotic bitch," Brenda muttered. "You ruined Freddy's perfect night. You make me sick."

Brenda grabbed the edge of Aspen's blanket and yanked it down. Her eyes fell on the fresh blood smeared across the back of Aspen's hand.

Another nurse, younger and out of breath, ran into the doorway. Her name tag read Eleanor.

"Brenda, stop!" Eleanor grabbed Brenda's forearm. "You can't do this. She's a patient. It's against protocol."

Brenda violently shoved Eleanor backward. Eleanor stumbled, her back hitting the doorframe.

"She's a stalker!" Brenda yelled. She raised her right hand high into the air, her palm flat, aiming directly for Aspen's pale cheek.

The slap descended.

Aspen's eyes snapped open.

Despite the agonizing lethargy in her dormant muscles, her left arm shot up like a striking snake. A sharp, tearing pain ripped through her bicep, but she gritted her teeth, ignoring the violent tremor in her limb. Her fingers clamped around Brenda's descending wrist, stopping it dead in mid-air. She couldn't rely on raw strength, so she shifted her weight, using perfect skeletal alignment to absorb the impact.

Brenda gasped. Her eyes widened in shock. She tried to yank her arm back, but Aspen's grip was like a steel vice.

Aspen twisted her wrist outward. She used the precise angle of leverage, pushing Brenda's joint past its natural limit, letting physics do the work her atrophied muscles currently couldn't.

A sickening, wet pop echoed in the small room.

Brenda let out a blood-curdling scream. Her knees buckled instantly, and she crashed to the floor beside the bed.

Aspen engaged her core. She ignored the white-hot, burning weakness in her abdominal muscles and sat up straight, sweat beading on her forehead from the sheer effort of the simple movement.

Her right hand shot out and grabbed the collar of Brenda's scrubs. She jerked the nurse upward, pulling her face inches away. Aspen's left hand released the broken wrist and clamped tightly around Brenda's throat. She pinned the nurse against the metal railing of the bed.

Eleanor slapped both hands over her mouth, frozen in pure terror.

Aspen leaned forward. Her eyes were dead, devoid of any human warmth. She stared into Brenda's panicked, tear-filled eyes.

"The key to your locker," Aspen whispered. Her voice was raspy from disuse, but cold as ice. "Now."

Brenda's face turned a mottled shade of purple. She clawed frantically at the bedsheets, gasping for air that could not pass through her crushed windpipe.

Aspen squeezed her fingers just a fraction tighter. The cartilage in Brenda's throat groaned.

Brenda's eyes rolled back slightly. She weakly pointed a trembling finger toward the right pocket of her scrub pants.

Aspen kept her left hand locked on the throat. She reached down with her right hand, digging into the fabric pocket. Her fingers brushed against cold metal. She pulled out a small brass key.

She looked at the key, then back at Brenda. Aspen opened her left hand and shoved the nurse away like a bag of garbage.

Brenda collapsed onto the linoleum, clutching her throat. She coughed violently, spit and tears running down her chin.

Aspen slowly turned her head. She locked eyes with Eleanor, who was still trembling in the corner.

"If you make a sound before I leave this building," Aspen said, her tone flat, "I will find you."

Eleanor nodded frantically, tears spilling over her cheeks.

Aspen threw the blood-stained blanket aside. She swung her bare feet over the edge of the mattress. Her toes touched the freezing floor.

Her legs shook slightly as she stood up, but she locked her knees. She kept her spine perfectly straight. She walked past the sobbing nurse on the floor, heading directly for the metal lockers in the corner of the room.

Aspen slid the brass key into the lock. It clicked. She pulled the metal door open.

Inside hung a black oversized hoodie and a pair of faded, ripped jeans. She stripped off the thin hospital gown, letting it drop to the floor. She pulled the jeans up over her hips and slid the heavy cotton hoodie over her head. She gathered her long, tangled black hair and tied it into a tight, practical ponytail.

She reached into the bottom of the locker and found a black medical mask and a blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. She put them both on, pulling the brim low over her eyes.

She did not look back at Brenda, who was still dry-heaving on the floor. Aspen walked out the door.

She slipped into the hallway. Fifty feet away, two security guards were laughing by the elevator bank. Aspen turned her back to them and pushed open the heavy fire door leading to the stairwell.

Her muscle memory took over. She moved down the concrete steps without making a single sound. Four flights down.

She exited through the hospital's rear loading dock, slipping past a stack of wooden pallets. She pushed open the chain-link gate and stepped out onto the humid Los Angeles street.

A group of nurses in scrubs walked past her. Aspen merged into their group, matching their pace for two blocks until they reached Sunset Boulevard.

She stepped off the curb and raised her hand. A yellow cab slammed on its brakes, pulling over.

Aspen opened the back door and slid onto the cracked leather seat. She kept her head down. "Beverly Hills. The Estates," she said.

She pulled her phone out. She popped off the plastic case. Folded neatly against the back of the phone was a crisp fifty-dollar bill. She handed it over the plastic divider to the driver. As she stared out the window at the passing city lights, the fragmented pieces of her stolen life finally locked into place. The foreign presence that had taken over her body finally had a name, pulled from the depths of her hijacked consciousness. Lucy Stone. A crazed, obsessive fan. Lucy had orchestrated the crash on the Pacific Coast Highway, a desperate, psychotic bid to merge their lives. And it had worked, temporarily. Lucy had worn Aspen's skin like a cheap suit, destroying everything Aspen had built. But Lucy was gone now, her weak spirit shattered by the sheer willpower of Aspen's return.

Thirty minutes later, the cab idled outside the massive stone walls of the Beverly Hills gated community.

Aspen stepped out. The night air was cool. She walked along the perimeter, staying in the shadows of the thick landscaping bushes until she reached a blind spot between two security cameras.

She looked up. The wrought-iron fence was ten feet tall, topped with sharp, anti-climb spikes.

She took two steps back. She sprinted forward, planting the toe of her sneaker against the brick pillar. She pushed off with explosive force.

She pulled her body weight up. Her shoulders screamed in protest, the underused tendons stretching dangerously close to their breaking point, but she forced her body to obey, swinging her legs over the top in one fluid, silent motion. She dropped down, bending her knees to absorb the impact. She landed on the manicured grass without a sound, though a sharp ache radiated up her shins.

She hugged the shadows, avoiding the sweeping red lines of the infrared motion sensors. She crept around to the back patio of the massive, modern mansion.

She approached the heavy glass kitchen door. She crouched down and lifted a fake decorative rock from a potted plant. Underneath was a digital keypad.

She punched in a six-digit override code she had programmed into the motherboard three years ago. The lock clicked green.

Aspen pushed the door open and stepped into the dark kitchen.

The air felt wrong. It smelled different.

She looked down. Sitting on her custom Italian rug in the hallway was a pair of men's leather dress shoes.

She inhaled slowly. The scent of expensive cedarwood cologne hung in the air. Beneath it, her trained nose picked up the faint, metallic tang of fresh blood.

From the second floor, she heard the muffled sound of a shower running.

The new owner was home. And based on the blood, he was not having a normal night.

Aspen walked silently to the massive marble kitchen island. She stared at the wooden knife block.

She slid out a black ceramic boning knife. The blade was razor-sharp. She flipped the knife, holding it in a reverse grip, hiding the blade flush against her forearm inside the sleeve of her hoodie.

She walked toward the grand staircase, her bare feet making no sound on the marble steps.