The silence in the ruined dressing room was a living thing. It pressed in on me, heavier than the roar of any orchestra, more profound than the absence of sound I was drifting towards. Vincent’s ultimatum hung in the air between us, a shimmering, venomous web. Every strand was a perfect calculation: Julian’s ruin, the death of my career, the final, irreversible theft of the music in my head.
He watched me, his dark eyes missing nothing. He was waiting for me to break. To scream, to plead, to fight. He was waiting for the Sophia he knew, the one who met every cage with the fury of a trapped wild thing. But that Sophia had died in a fire. The woman standing before him was a ghost, and ghosts do not rage. They haunt.
I thought of Julian, his face pale with a pain he wouldn't admit, being dr
