Chapter 7
chapter seven
WILLOW
Phoenix fucking Marrow.
Every time I see his name trending, a part of me wants to drive a knife straight into my phone.
The internet calls him a healer. A visionary. A walking miracle with six-pack abs and a smile perfected in Turkey to make women weak in the knees. Me? I call him what he is: a parasite dressed in white linen, leeching off the desperate until there’s nothing left but hollow worship.
I know I shouldn’t click. I know it. I tell myself every damn time that I’ll scroll past, that I won’t give him the view.
But I do. I always do. And there he is—standing barefoot in the desert at golden hour like some biblical painting come to life, a microphone clipped to his pristine collarless shirt, hair styled just so, like God Herself tousled it for him before the shoot.
“If you’re watching this, you were meant to hear what I have to say,” he begins, his eyes and lips soft, inviting, like a fucking saint. “Maybe you’ve been told there’s nothing left to try. Maybe you’ve heard words like chronic, terminal, incurable. And maybe you’ve started to believe them.”
He leans in closer to the camera, his voice lowering, his tone turning almost conspiratorial.
“But your body isn’t your enemy. It’s your ally.
” He rubs his hands together like he really believes that what he has to say—it’s getting good.
“It’s been trying to protect you your whole life. You just stopped listening.”
My grip on my phone tightens. My jaw clenches harder.
“The truth is, your body already knows how to heal. Science forgot it, denied it, but nature didn’t. When we remove interference—the poisons, the doubt, the noise—the body remembers itself. Every cell knows what to do. It just needs permission.”
The view cuts to a woman lying on a mat on the floor.
She’s breathing deeply, tears streaking down her face.
Phoenix hovers his hands over her abdomen, his eyes closed serenely.
His words continue in a voice-over. “What I do isn’t magic.
It’s alignment. I help people quiet the story of sickness long enough for their bodies to start writing something new. ”
He’s back on camera again, his tone fucking hypnotic. “If you’ve been told you’ll never be whole again, come see me at the Phoenix Marrow Wellness Institute. Your body wants to live. You just have to let it. If you’re ready to heal, really heal… I’ll show you how.”
Eighty thousand views. Four hours.
The comments are a shrine at his altar.
I finally feel alive again, thank you!
Doctors gave up on me, but you didn’t. I’m healing because of you.
Every word you say hits different. My body feels better after every session. You helped me remember I’m not broken.
Been following you for months. Nothing has ever felt this real.
I almost choke on my own spit.
The part that I truly hate? He’s not entirely wrong.
His stupid juice cleanses, his fasting, his wild diet restrictions, his mind-over-matter thinking—they do work.
At first. For some people. Sometimes. People feel better.
Their bodies reset, their symptoms ease.
He sprinkles just enough truth into his poison to make it believable.
That’s what makes him dangerous. He’s not a flat-out scam.
He’s a half-truth with a perfect jawline, profiting off people’s pain and sickness.
But what it always comes down to is the fact that he thinks in the end, he is the cure.
My fingers twitch with the need to type out the truth, to claw through the delusion and scream in their faces: He’s a predator. A fraud. He isn’t saving you—he’s preying on you.
But I’ve already had three cease-and-desist letters shoved in my mailbox.
His lawyers are like vultures, circling, just waiting for me to slip.
Slander, they call it. Defamation. Funny how a man who claims he has the answers to the universe still runs crying to his attorneys when one woman on the internet comments with the truth.
I scroll further, masochist that I am. Women with shaky voices tell their stories, tears streaming down their cheeks as they thank him for his life-changing methods.
My best friend thought her life was changed, too.
Jules. Loud, bright Jules, who once dared me to skinny dip in the Bellagio fountains. Jules, who dragged me out dancing when I didn’t want to, who always ordered extra fries but never was able to eat them. Jules, who should still be here.
Instead, she’s dust in a jar on her mother’s mantle because she believed him. She believed him until it was too late.
I remember the first time I met Phoenix. And I’ll admit: he had a presence. He carried himself like the sun bent toward him. But the second his eyes locked on me, every hair on the back of my neck stood up. Something in my gut screamed predator.
And I was right.
The kind of healing he offered her wasn’t just fasting, meditation, and overpriced supplements. It came in the form of late nights, his own special methods, and tears after coercion and pressure.
Thankfully, one time was all it took for her to see the truth. After that night, she cracked. She told me everything.
And then, three months later, she was gone.
My nails dig crescents into my palms, leaving deep impressions. The rage burns hotter than fire.
Phoenix Marrow needs to die.
I should stop doom searching his name. I should slam my phone face down on my nightstand and go to sleep early. Maybe a little extra sleep would be healing for me.
But then a discussion board story catches me: RecoveringFromPhoenix.
My thumb betrays me. I tap.
A year ago, I was diagnosed with endometriosis.
Doctors said it was bad. Surgery, hormones, maybe infertility.
I was scared, desperate. Then I found Phoenix.
His voice, his confidence—it made me believe healing was possible.
He said my body could fix itself if I just listened to it.
I started his cleanse, his meditations, his supplements.
The pain got better. I thought he was saving me.
I press my tongue to the back of my teeth so hard it hurts. This is how it starts. Always with hope. Always with his “miracle stories.”
Then he invited me to a private retreat. He said I’d reached a threshold. That the next step required total trust. That my pain was my body “holding trauma.” He said that healing meant surrender. He said I needed to let go.
I told him this didn’t seem right. He kept pushing. You need to let go.
My skin crawls. I already know what’s coming, but I keep reading anyway.
He said his energy could realign mine—that physical connection was part of the process.
I said no. He said I was resisting. He said my words were blocks, my thoughts were sickness.
I wanted it to work. So, I did what he said.
My throat closes.
It’s all there. The script. The manipulation. The god complex.
The same exact pattern used to ruin Jules.
After, he told me I should be proud—that I’d finally “released.” But the pain came back worse.
I felt poisoned. And when I tried to tell people?
They had the fucking nerve to say maybe I wasn’t ready to heal.
Everyone said Phoenix would never do something like that.
They said to look at how many women he’s helped.
Fuck Phoenix Marrow.
I’m moving before I even mentally make the decision. I grab the keys to my truck off my dresser and stalk through the house, straight to the front door. Both my sisters are gone at the moment, so there’s no one to reason with me. Which is good. I don’t want reason tonight.
The glow of Phoenix Marrow Wellness Institute looks more like a damn temple than a medical facility.
A towering building in a ridiculously expensive part of the city, it’s all white stone and glass, lit with soft golden LEDs like it’s a beacon of salvation.
The sign out front glows his name in clean, minimal font, as if Helvetica can mask the rot inside.
I kill the headlights and slide lower in my seat. My eyes lock on the front doors. It’s late, almost eight o’clock. But a man like Phoenix never keeps typical business hours. They don’t close for five more minutes.
People trickle out, each one glowing like they’ve just had their sins washed away.
Women, and even a few men come out clutching canvas tote bags stamped with his stupid logo.
They all look so happy. Or tired. It reminds me of the way Jules started looking tired.
Gaunt. Worn. If you’re actually looking, you can start to see the signs that it’s getting too late.
That the delusion—that he himself is the cure—has gone too deep.
It makes me want to vomit.
And then he appears.
Phoenix Marrow himself.
He’s rich, wildly so now, but he dresses like he’s going for sexy Jesus cosplay.
Flowing linen, hair tied back, sandals on his feet.
He has this polished, cinematic smile he plasters across TikTok and magazine covers.
His aura screams confidence, purity, wisdom.
To his followers, he’s God in five hundred dollar flip-flops.
To me? He’s a walking con artist with blood on his hands.
I watch him descend the stairs, phone in hand, bodyguard flanking him like a shadow. Big guy, neck the size of my thigh, scanning the parking lot like he knows predators are real but hasn’t considered one of them might be five-foot-six in a thrift store skirt and perfect eyeliner.
Phoenix slips into the backseat of a black Mercedes with tinted windows, the kind of car reserved for mob bosses and heads of state. The driver shuts the door with reverence, like he’s sealing a holy relic in a vault.
“Fucking snake,” I whisper under my breath.
This is why I haven’t gotten him yet. He’s never alone. Always cocooned in security, luxury, worship. He doesn’t walk into grocery stores by himself or stand in Starbucks lines. Phoenix Marrow doesn’t even touch his own damn car door.