SAVING ANGEL

Gilda's POV

"Ahhhh, Ethan. Ughhh, ugh, ugh... Take me to hell with you, you're so good at this... ruin me. Ughnnn."

My hand froze on Ethan's doorknob. The words and intimate whimpers filled the hallway and split something inside me. I told myself I was imagining it. That they couldn't be real. But as the moans kept coming, it became impossible to deny.

My fingers slipped. I'd been ready to face him, to look him in the eye and demand answers, because Ethan would be the last person to do this to me.

We'd been together for years; our third anniversary was just a few weeks away. We'd planned a future together, stitched it up with quiet promises and late-night plans. There was no place in that future for betrayal.

I bent to pick up the bottle of water I'd dropped when I first heard the sound and pushed the door open. The sight that met me sent the bottle clattering from my hand again, with water scattering across the floor in a dripping arc.

"Ethan?" My voice came out thin. Tears stung hot at the corners of my eyes before I could stop them. I'd prepared myself to stand firm, but the figure beside him stole my breath and knotted it in my throat.

"Vera?" The name tore out of me like a threat and a plea all at once. My voice cracked.

My stepsister. We'd grown up under the same roof until life pulled us in different directions, and while she stayed, I left for New York.

I'd come back to Los Angeles after our father died, and because of Ethan. I came back for a life I could manage without long-distance heartbreak. I came back hoping my acting career might finally find a foothold in this city where she already shone.

Vera was famous now. She had everything I'd worked for but never received: attention, money, doors that opened at a whisper.

I'd never asked her for favors, not because I didn't need them, but because I knew the price of asking and how easily she could refuse.

Anger flared hot under my skin. I thought, for a wild second, of throwing myself at her.

On set, she'd refused me a drink when I was exhausted, despite my running up and down as a minor character; she'd laughed when I stumbled through a line. All the little humiliations that had seemed like chance now looked like rehearsal for this moment.

I stood there, soaked water at my feet, my pulse thrumming in my ears, trying to make sense of the betrayal. Ethan, who had promised me mornings and mundane things and forever, and Vera, who was family.

I was supposed to be the female lead. After years of investing in acting lessons, auditioning endlessly and fighting for scraps of recognition, I had finally been given my shot. My first real chance.

I had prepared for months, memorizing lines, rehearsing and building the character in my head and