Song: “If I Burn” by Emilie Autumn

She watched his chest rise and fall with each grating snore and remembered a time when she’d been prepared to give anything to rest her head on that chest. That hadn’t actually changed, she thought with a pang.

But he would give nothing, and now he must give everything.

His wife was the only barrier, he’d said. Cutting her car’s brake lines would solve that, he’d said. But the police always looked at the husband, so he couldn’t do it himself, he’d said.

Mia felt the cold night air on her back as the velvet curtains billowed around her. She placed the matchbook on the windowsill beside her and reached backwards to carefully, quietly, close the window all the way.

They could be together, finally, he’d said. He’d promote her outside his department, he’d said.

The company frowned upon CEOs becoming involved with their secretaries.

“Jonathan,” she said, loud enough that she might wake him. She said it twice more before he shot up in bed.

“How—”

“I won’t go to prison for you,” she said flatly. “I know what you told the police.”

She was obsessed with him, he’d told them. She must’ve killed his wife to be with him, he’d told them.

Well, that last bit wasn’t exactly a lie.

Mia struck a match and flicked it onto the gasoline-soaked carpet before he could stand.

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