Encore with the Devil

If regret had a font, it would be the one wrapped around my wrist. *Sing for the world, little star. Forget me.* The thin black letters curve over my pulse like a dare. Stage makeup can cover dark circles, acne, and even hickeys. It can’t cover ink. It can’t cover the fact that I tattooed my first heartbreak onto my skin and then built a career screaming about it. “Mic check, Luna. Thirty seconds,” a voice buzzes in my ear. I drop my arm, hide the tattoo under the cuff of my glittering jacket, and step into the light. Sicily erupts. “LUNA! LUNA! LUNA!” Fifty thousand people chant my name as the opening notes of "Bleed for Me" thunder through the stadium. The LED wall behind me explodes with fire and smoke effects. I stalk to center stage in thigh‑high boots and a bodysuit made of more sequins than fabric, hair loose, eyeliner sharp enough to pierce skin. On stage, I’m God. I lift the mic and let the noise wash over me, a tidal wave of need. “You still with me, Sicily?” I shout. They answer with a roar that rattles my ribs. They don’t know the song they’re about to scream back at me started as a voicemail Dante never heard. They don’t know the “faceless ex” in every magazine headline has a name I still can’t say without tasting blood. I drag in a breath that tastes like sweat and pyrotechnics and make my voice go low, raw, the way they like it. “This one’s for anyone who ever loved a ghost,” I tell them. “You know who you are.” The first verse slides out of me on muscle memory. Cameras flash. Hands reach. The crowd sings half the lyrics for me, a wall of sound begging to be broken and remade. I hit the chorus, pour too much of myself into it like I always do. When the bridge comes—my favorite - the quiet drop before the last explosion—my throat tightens on the line that doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. *D—* I blur the consonant behind a vocal effect and bury his name in distortion. If you don’t know what you’re listening for, it’s just another sound. He would recognize it. If he were alive. The song ends on my knees, hair in my face, lights flaring white. The stadium screams like it’s being set on fire. I stand, panting, heart pounding against my ribs, sweat sliding down my spine. I blow a kiss to the front rows, flash a wicked smile into the cameras. “Grazie, Sicily,” I purr. “You’ve been my favorite sin.” The roar is a living thing. I ride it to the edge, then drop the mic from my lips and let the darkness swallow me as the lights cut out. For a blessed moment, there’s nothing but the sound of my own breathing. Then the crew floods the stage, the in‑ear monitor tugs at my hair, and I’m moving again. “How was it?” I rasp as I hand off my mic. “Global‑trend‑in‑ten‑minutes good,” someone shouts back. “We need you for the sponsor photo—” “In a minute,” I say. “I need water. And silence.” They know better than to argue when I use that tone. The roar of the crowd fades as I duck into the backstage corridor. The concrete walls swallow the noise. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. My boots echo on the floor, each step a little heavier than the last. By the time I reach my dressing room door, the adrenaline is wearing thin, leaving the familiar hollow ache in its place. A security guard in a stadium jacket does a quick sweep and nods. “All clear, Ms. Vega.” He swings the door open. I step inside. The door shuts behind me with a soft, final click. The quiet hits like a punch. My dressing room looks like a music video set: big round mirror ringed with bulbs, three racks of high‑end clothes, champagne on ice, roses everywhere. It smells like flowers, sweat, and the expensive perfume my stylist sprays on me before I go on. I catch my reflection in the mirror and almost don’t recognize her. Smoky eyes, sharp cheekbones, lips painted a deep, dangerous red. My hair falls in glossy, dark waves around my shoulders. Onstage, I’m “Luna Vega: Untouchable. Unbreakable.” Offstage, eyeliner can’t hide the tired at the corners of my eyes. I sink onto the little velvet stool in front of the vanity and let my shoulders drop. “Sold out,” I tell the woman in the mirror. “Again. You did it.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. My phone buzzes on the vanity, lighting up with a cascade of notifications. – *Insane show. LA office wants you on a call in an hour.* – *Sponsor wants a backstage selfie ASAP—strike while the #BleedForMeChallenge is hot.* – *We’re up 18% in streams mid‑show. Push a live Q&A?* I flip it face‑down. “Later,” I tell the dark screen. “I just stopped bleeding. Let me clot for five minutes.” My gaze drops to my inner left forearm. The letters of his note curve around my skin, black and unforgiving. *Sing for the world, little star. Forget me.* He wrote it in a cheap hotel room the night before my first tiny tour, ink bleeding through the paper. I thought he was being dramatic. I didn’t realize he was writing his exit line. He was the last person who ever told me to sing for myself. Everyone after told me to sing for numbers. I touch the words with my fingertip, the way I used to trace his jaw in the dark. “If you could see me now,” I murmur, “you’d probably tell me my high notes are flat.” “I’d tell you you missed a note in the bridge.” The voice behind me is low, amused, and edged in smoke. My heart stops. I meet my own wide eyes in the mirror for half a second. Then, slowly, I lift my gaze to the reflection behind mine. A figure leans just outside the circle of light from the bulbs, more shadow than man. He takes a step forward. Light catches dark hair swept back from his face, a jawline carved sharper than I remember, a mouth that used to curve in lazy smiles and now sits in a straight, unforgiving line. The suit is black, perfectly cut, and the white shirt is open at the throat. No tie. A hint of ink crawls up from under his collar. There’s a dried brown smear on the cuff of his left sleeve. Another dot on the white is just below. Blood. But it’s his eyes that steal the air from my lungs. Same impossible darkness. Same intensity that once made me feel like the only person in a room. Except the warmth is gone. “Hello, little star,” Dante Moretti says. The room tilts. My lungs remember how to work all at once, sucking in air too fast. I stand up so quickly that the stool scrapes back with a harsh squeal. “You’re dead,” I say. It’s not how I imagined our reunion going. In my worst fantasies, I’m prepared, armored in witty comebacks, and hit songs. In this reality, I’m barefoot in a bodysuit, shaking, with smeared lipstick and his words on my arm. He lifts one eyebrow. “Disappointed to find out I’m not?” “They said there was a fire,” I manage. “In Naples. That you—” “People say what’s convenient,” he cuts in. “You of all people should know that.” He takes another step forward. Up close, he’s taller than I remember. Or I was just younger and stupid then, too in love to notice the way he filled a doorway. “You shouldn’t be here,” I say. “Security—” “Works for me tonight,” he replies. “As does your primary sponsor. And the company that owns your jet.” My laugh comes out cracked. “Of course they do.” He glances at my reflection in the mirror, eyes sweeping from my tangled hair, down the sweat‑slicked column of my throat, over the glittering bodysuit that leaves my legs bare His gaze is a touch without touching, hot, and invasive. Once, that look made me feel beautiful. Now, I feel exposed. “You used my name in your lyrics,” he says. My mouth goes dry. “You’re hallucinating, Moretti. *Bleed for Me* isn’t about you.” His jaw flexes. “Don’t lie to me.” “You don’t get to walk in here and—” He moves. In three lazy, predatory strides he’s in front of me, one hand braced on the vanity, the other reaching past my shoulder to pluck my phone off the table. The movement cages me between the hard line of his body and the mirror. “You built an empire screaming about how I left you,” he murmurs. “You really think I wouldn’t recognize myself, even under all that auto‑tune?” “I made you a nobody with a fake name and a borrowed guitar,” I spit. “Whatever empire I have, I built myself.” “Of course you did,” he says quietly. “I just made sure no one stole the foundation out from under you.” Confusion slices through the anger. “What?” He doesn’t answer. His gaze drops to my mouth. “Seven years,” he says. “Seven years, I hear your voice in every city I set foot in. Every club. Every car. Every lobby. I tell myself you forgot me like I told you to. Then you slip my name into your bridge like a knife under a rib.” “That’s not—” He closes the final inch between us. “Don’t lie to me, Luna.” My name in his mouth is a sin and a prayer and a curse. I open my hand to slap him.