The living room smelled like cold coffee and lavender candles. It was two in the morning. I sat curled on the sofa, scrolling through my phone while the city of Los Angeles hummed outside our apartment window.

Dante wasn’t home. He was out celebrating his new single topping the charts. *Our* single, really. But nobody knew that part. To the public, Dante Chapman was a lyrical prodigy. To the world, I was just the quiet girl living in the shadow of a rising star.

My thumb stopped over a glossy headline from an entertainment magazine: *Dante Chapman Reveals the Heartbreaking Muse Behind ‘Ghost in the Garden’.*

My breath caught. I tapped the screen.

*Ghost in the Garden* was my Nana’s song.

Nana had raised me after my mother walked out. When she died two years ago, I fell apart. I spent three weeks sitting on the floor by my keyboard, sobbing until my throat burned, pouring every ounce of grief into those verses. The line about the dry hydrangea bushes. The line about her woolen shawl. I gave the notebook to Dante with trembling hands, whispering, *“Take it. Just sing it for her.”*

Now, my eyes scanned the interview text.

*“People think it’s about an old love,” Chapman says with a soft, brooding smile. “But honestly? The emotional core came from Dallas. During my darkest days, she handed me a little silver charm bracelet. She told me to keep going. She brought me back to life. Every lyric grew out of that bond.”*

There was a photo below the quote. Dallas Payne, leaning back in a leather jacket, laughing beside him with a whiskey glass in her hand. Dallas. His "girl bro." The tomboy best friend who called him "bro" and punched him on the shoulder, but somehow ended up on his lap at every after-party.

I read the paragraph again. Then a third time.

Each word hit like a slap. Nana’s death wasn’t a silver charm bracelet. Her passing was a hole torn in my chest.

*Maybe the reporter twisted his words,* I thought quickly, clutching the phone to my chest. *Yes. The media loves a romantic angle. Dante probably talked about my Nana, and they cut it out. Dallas probably just showed up to the interview and cracked a joke. I’m being crazy. I’m overreacting.*

I repeated the excuses like a prayer. But when I closed my eyes, sleep didn’t come. The dark apartment felt hollow, like an empty stage set. Something inside my chest had cracked, cold and sharp.

***

Two days later, I drove to the Los Angeles Music Festival. Dante was headlining the main stage.

I needed to see him. I needed to look into his eyes, hear his laugh, and feel foolish for ever doubting him.

In my purse rested a small black velvet box. Inside was a brass guitar pick. I had spent two days hunched over my desk with an engraving tool, carving a tiny sprig of lavender into the metal—Nana’s favorite flower—and our anniversary date on the back. It was quiet and small. The kind of gift I had always made for him.

I flashed the backstage pass Dante had tossed onto our kitchen counter months ago. The bass from the soundcheck rattled my ribs as I walked past production tents and catering carts. The air smelled of burnt stage smoke, damp dirt, and spilled beer.

I turned down a narrow alley behind the green rooms, stepping carefully around a wall of black road cases.

Then I stopped.

A few yards ahead, half-hidden by a heavy velvet curtain, stood Dante.

He wasn’t alone. Dallas was pressed against his chest, her hands resting casually on his leather vest. Her head was tilted back, grinning up at him. Dante’s arm was wrapped low around her waist. His thumb was tracing slow, lazy circles on her bare hip above the waistband of her denim shorts.

He was looking down at her with a soft, lingering gaze. It was a look I hadn’t seen on his face in over a year.

My feet stayed glued to the gravel. The air vanished from my lungs.

“You’re terrible,” Dallas murmured, swatting his shoulder lightly. “Your publicist is gonna kill you if you keep hyping me up in the press.”

Dante chuckled. It was a low, intimate sound. “Let them. It sells the record, doesn't it? The fans eat it up.”

“What about Sylvia?” Dallas tilted her head, her voice dropping into a fake, breezy innocence. “Won't she get mad? You basically erased her whole sad story.”

Dante let out an amused breath, rolling his eyes toward the sky.

“Sylvia?” He shook his head. “Come on. She won't say a word. She’s too busy crying over her dramatic little diary entries. She thinks every time she gets sad, it’s high art.”

Dallas burst into a soft giggle, burying her face in his neck. “Honestly, bro, you deserve someone who doesn't make everything so heavy.”

“Tell me about it,” Dante smiled, leaning down to press his forehead against hers.

I stood behind the metal road cases.

*Her dramatic little diary entries.*

My Nana. My best friend’s suicide. My father’s cancer.

The blood, the tears, the nights spent staring at the ceiling wishing I was dead—all reduced to a joke between him and his girl bro.

I looked down at my hand. My fingers were locked around the velvet box in my coat pocket. I squeezed the brass pick so hard its sharp edges sliced into my skin.

A sharp sting. Then the warm, wet slide of blood against my palm.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t push past the curtain. The tears burning behind my eyes suddenly dried into ash.

I turned around.

My sneakers made no sound on the dirt as I walked past the road cases, past the bustling crew members, and straight out toward the parking lot.

The drive back was completely silent. I didn’t turn on the radio. I didn’t look at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

Blood had dried sticky between my fingers, gluing the velvet box to my palm.

When I got to the apartment, I went straight to the bathroom. I washed my hands with cold water. The red swirl went down the white drain in pale pink circles. I pulled open the medicine cabinet and wrapped a strip of clean gauze around the cut on my palm.

Then I walked over to my desk. I pulled open the bottom drawer, past the stacks of old chord sheets and blank notebooks. I dropped the velvet box inside. The wood shut with a dull, heavy thump.

Dante came home at three in the morning.

The front door banged open. He kicked off his boots in the foyer, humming the chorus to *Ghost in the Garden*. His hair was a sweaty mess. His jacket carried the sharp smell of stage smoke, spilled beer, and sweet citrus perfume. Dallas’s scent.

"Sylv?" he called out, stepping into the bedroom.

I was sitting on the edge of the mattress in the dark.

"Hey," he said, flicking on the small bedside lamp. He squinted at me and grinned. "Man, the crowd went insane tonight. Sixty thousand people, Sylv. All of them screaming the chorus."

*My chorus,* I thought.

He leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the crown of my head. It was brief and careless, like checking a chore off a list.

"You look beat," he said, tossing his jacket onto a chair. "Go to sleep. Don't stay up brooding over whatever sad lyrics you're working on."

I didn't answer. I didn't scream. My chest felt cold and flat.

I just watched his back as he pulled off his shirt and slid under the duvet. Within two minutes, his breathing slowed into a steady snore. I lay beside him, staring up at the plaster ceiling until the morning light turned the room gray. I didn't have the words yet. But I knew I would need them soon.

***

Four days later, the Golden Melody pre-gala aired live.

It was a Tuesday evening. Dante was out in West Hollywood with his team. I sat on the living room rug, watching the red-carpet broadcast on our television.

The screen flashed with bright, blinding bursts from dozens of cameras. The host, a blonde woman in an emerald dress, held up her microphone with a huge smile.

"And here he is, folks! Dante Chapman, the lyrical voice of a generation, arriving for tonight's gala!"

Dante stepped onto the carpet. He looked flawless. He wore a tailored black suit with an open collar and a thin silver chain. Right at his side was Dallas.

She wore a dark suit jacket over a plain white tee, paired with worn sneakers. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail. She carried a lowball glass of bourbon, looking completely at ease in front of the press.

"Dante, congratulations on the nominations!" the host cheered. "Everyone is talking about *Ghost in the Garden*. The critics are calling it the rawest, most heartbreaking song of the year. Where did that kind of pain come from?"

Dante smiled. It was that slow, brooding look he always practiced in front of our bathroom mirror.

He turned toward Dallas. He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her tight against his side. The photographers yelled, their flashes firing faster. Dallas lowered her eyes, biting her lip with a practiced, modest blush.

"Honestly?" Dante said softly into the mic. "I hit rock bottom when I wrote that. I was ready to give up on music completely."

He looked down at Dallas. His eyes were wide and tender under the stage lights.

"Then this girl showed up. She gave me a reason to get out of bed every morning. She’s the one person who pulled me through the dark." He tapped Dallas’s shoulder gently with his knuckles. "She's my muse. My anchor. Without her, none of these words would exist."

Dallas let out a soft laugh, resting her forehead against his lapel for a brief second. "You did the work, bro," she whispered, loud enough for the microphone to catch.

The host sighed. "What an incredible bond. Creative soulmates!"

Dante flashed a dazzling smile at the lens and guided Dallas down the carpet, his hand resting firmly on her lower back.

He didn't mention a girlfriend.

He didn't mention Sylvia Owens.

He erased me. He took the memories of my Nana’s dying breaths and handed them to a girl who drank whiskey and called him bro.

I picked up the remote. I pressed the power button.

The television went black.

The living room fell into dead silence. The low hum of the refrigerator sounded like a roar.

I didn't cry. My eyes stayed completely dry. The hurt had burned out, leaving behind a cold, sharp stillness.

I reached for my laptop on the coffee table.

My fingers moved over the keyboard. I opened an incognito window and typed: *Top entertainment copyright attorneys Los Angeles.*

Dozens of links popped up. Huge firms with glass offices and long lists of celebrity clients. Then my gaze caught on a smaller firm based downtown.

*Mitchell Law Group. Kian Mitchell, Lead Counsel. Specializing in intellectual property theft, uncredited ghostwriting, and creator rights.*

Under his photo, a short quote was printed in small type: *The creator's voice does not belong to whoever shouts it loudest.*

I stared at the screen. He had a lean, sharp face and quiet, serious eyes. No fake Hollywood grin.

There was a paper coffee napkin sitting next to my mug. I grabbed a pen from the rug.

With a steady hand, I wrote two words across the paper:

*Kian Mitchell.*

I looked at the black ink. I folded the napkin once, creasing the edge between my thumb and forefinger, and slipped it deep into my jacket pocket.

I wasn't ready to call him yet.

Not until I found out just how much they had stolen.

The house in the Hollywood Hills was empty. Outside, the night sky was dark and heavy.

Dante was at another industry party down on Sunset. He had texted me at six: *Don't wait up. Huge networking dinner with label heads.*

I waited until midnight.

I stood in the hallway and turned the brass knob to his private studio. The room was soundproofed and freezing. The red standby lights on his mixing console glowed like tiny, watchful eyes.

Dante hated when I came in here. *“This is my sacred creative space, Sylv,”* he had told me once, gently pushing me out the door. *“I need pure isolation to channel the muse.”*

Now, the room just smelled like his cologne and expensive sound foam.

I walked over to the mahogany desk. His heavy silver laptop sat closed in the center. I opened the lid. The screen came alive, casting a blue glow over my face.

A password prompt popped up instantly.

For two years, Dante kept a folder on his desktop labeled *VAULT*. It was locked with heavy encryption. Every time I asked about it, he laughed and said it was rough drafts and terrible voice memos he was too embarrassed to share.

I looked at the cursor blinking against the white bar.

I thought about his arm around Dallas's waist. I thought about the easy way they leaned into each other behind the stage curtains.

Dallas’s birthday was October twenty-fourth. Ten-twenty-four. I knew because Dante had bought her a vintage leather jacket last fall and asked me to wrap it.

My fingers moved over the keys.

*1-0-2-4.*

I pressed Enter.

The lock icon vanished. The folder popped open with a soft chime.

My chest went tight.

I didn't find rough drafts. I didn't find voice memos.

I found a neat list of spreadsheets, scan folders, and PDF files. The main document at the top was titled: *Campaign Narrative & Emotional Core — Q3/Q4 Rollout.*

I double-clicked it.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

The document was an eight-page marketing plan. Every single paragraph was a knife to the throat.

It wasn't just *Ghost in the Garden*. It was everything.

There was a detailed timeline divided into neat rows.

Row one: *Nana’s Passing.* The note next to it was highlighted in yellow: *“Rebrand as Dallas pulling Dante out of isolation after family tragedy. Frame the lyric about hydrangeas around the charm bracelet she gave him. Target: Rolling Stone profile, Sept.”*

Row two: *High School Suicide (Leo).*

I stopped breathing.

Leo was my best friend. He took his life when we were seventeen. I had never spoken his name out loud to anyone except Dante, sobbing into his chest until dawn while he rubbed my back.

On the screen, someone had written notes right across the page: *“Emotional peak for Grammy/Golden Melody push. Pitch as Dallas stopping Dante from his own self-destructive spiral during sophomore year. Dallas suggests saying she sat on his porch all night so he wouldn't do something stupid. Extremely relatable. High tear-jerker value.”*

Attached to the file were scanned pages of my old journals. But Dallas had marked them up in blue ink.

Her handwriting was neat and loopy. She had written in the margins: *Cut the line about the hospital smell, too depressing. Make it punchier. Dante—use the word 'anchor' during the Zane Lowe interview. Fans will lose their minds.*

Below that, Dallas had drawn a little smiley face.

Row three: *Father’s Cancer.*

They had mapped out the next two years. Every tear I ever cried. Every funeral I ever stood at. Every nightmare that woke me up shaking.

They hadn't just stolen my songs. They had mined my dead loved ones for press clips.

My hands began to tremble. A cold, bitter nausea rose in my throat, choking me. I held onto the edge of the heavy desk to keep from falling.

*They built their whole life on my bones.*

I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted copper. The pain pulled me back.

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a black USB flash drive. My fingers were shaking so violently that I fumbled the port twice. The metal clicked into place.

I dragged the entire *VAULT* folder into the drive.

A progress bar appeared on the screen.

*Copying 1.4 GB... 45 seconds remaining.*

"Come on," I whispered. My throat was raw. "Come on."

*Thirty seconds.*

A sharp click echoed from the foyer.

The heavy front door swung open.

My blood turned to ice.

A woman's tipsy giggle floated down the hall, loud and bright. Dallas.

"I'm telling you, bro," she slurred happily, her heels clicking across the hardwood floor. "The label guy was totally buying the soulmate thing. He said the award is basically yours."

"Keep it down," Dante's voice followed, low and thick with bourbon. "Sylvia's probably asleep."

*Twenty seconds.*

Footsteps came down the corridor. Fast.

"I just need my vape from the desk," Dallas whined softly. "Then you can tuck your little ghostwriter into bed."

*Ten seconds.*

The studio door swung wide open.

Dante walked in first, his blazer slung over one shoulder. Dallas was right behind him, her arm looped casually through his elbow.

They both stopped dead.

The room went completely, terrifyingly still.

The blue glow of the laptop illuminated my face. On the giant screen behind me, the folder *VAULT* was wide open, glowing bright white. The progress bar showed ninety-eight percent.

The tiny red light on the flash drive blinked in the dark.

*One. Two. Three.*

Dante stared at me. Dallas froze, the drunken smirk vanishing from her face.

Nobody breathed.