The silence after I hung up the phone was a physical weight. Leo’s threat wasn’t a desperate bluff; it was a corporate execution strategy, polished and cold. *Mentally incompetent.* The words were designed to burrow under the skin, to make me question my own reality. For a terrifying second, they almost worked. The years of gaslighting, of being told my contributions were just emotional support, of being the ghost in my own life—it was all kindling for the fire they were about to light.
But rage is a powerful clarifying agent. It burned away the doubt, leaving behind a diamond-hard certainty. They hadn't just stolen my music; they had stolen my name, and now they were coming for my mind.
I didn't call Victor in a panic. I sent him and his lawyer, a woman named Evelyn Reed, a single, encr
