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In the conference room on the fifteenth floor, chaos reigned. Marcus Webb, his professional tan now a dangerous shade of mottled red, paced behind the table. Jennifer Park was on the phone with the head of the legal department, her voice sharp and clipped, discussing liability and breach of protocol. David Chen, the A&R scout, simply stared at the scattered contract pieces on the polished wood as if they were the entrails of a failed prophecy, the ghost of genuine talent slipping through his fingers.
"She's having some kind of breakdown," Edward said quickly, his voice a strained attempt at concerned steadiness. He was already spinning the narrative, recasting her declaration of war as a symptom of instability. "The pressure of a major signing, it got to her. She's always been very fragile, emotionally. I should have prepared her better." Fragile. It was the word he had always used to disarm her strength, to paint her valid emotions as a weakness only he could manage.
"That did not look like fragility to me," Jennifer countered, snapping her phone shut with a sharp click. Her gaze was analytical, cold. "That looked deliberate. Calculated. What exactly is going on with your client, Mr. Brandy?" The word 'client' was laced with accusation.
"She is not thinking clearly," Edward insisted, his charm fraying at the edges. "If you just give me a few days, I can talk to her, get this all sorted out. She'll sign. I promise you, she'll sign."
Marcus stopped pacing and fixed Edward with a withering glare. "You have forty-eight hours," he said flatly, his voice devoid of any warmth. His pride, more than the deal, had been wounded. "Either she signs that contract, or we are moving on to other prospects. We do not chase artists who do not want us."
Edward and Esther beat a hasty, humiliating retreat. The moment the elevator doors closed, Esther’s carefully cultivated poise evaporated, replaced by a shrill, panicked fury. "What the hell was that?" she hissed, her perfectly manicured nails digging into the sleeve of his expensive jacket. "She destroyed everything! Months of work, Edward! Months of positioning her, of planning!"
"I know what I said!" Edward snapped, his voice cracking like a whip. He slammed his fist against the elevator wall, the sound echoing in the small space. "Something is different. Something has changed in her. The way she looked at me… at all of us. It was like she could see right through everything."
"That's impossible," Esther scoffed, though a flicker of genuine fear crossed her beautiful face. "She's always been clueless. That's why the whole plan worked."
"Then you explain what just happened up there," he shot back. They descended the rest of the way in a tense, suffocating silence. When they reached the parking garage, Esther grabbed his arm again, her voice low and urgent. "We need her, Edward. We need her music. Without her compositions, we have nothing. The showcases we have booked, the songs we've already teased to our industry contacts… it is all her work. If she does not come back, we are completely finished."
Edward’s expression hardened into a cruel mask. "She'll come back," he growled, more to convince himself than her. "She has to. Without me managing her career, she'll never make it in this industry. She's too naive, too weird-looking, too…" Too talented to need you, a small, treacherous voice whispered in his mind, but he crushed it ruthlessly. "She needs us." But even as he said it, he remembered the glacial cold in Ariel's mismatched eyes. That had not been the look of a girl having second thoughts. It had been the look of a woman who had just signed his death warrant.
Across the city, in his penthouse office, Mitchell Adam sat motionless, his eyes fixed on the video feed of the now-empty conference room. The torn contract pieces were a paper crime scene, a testament to a rebellion he hadn't seen coming. He had watched the entire confrontation unfold, captivated.
The melody in his head, the question mark shaped like a sound that had plagued him all day, had crescendoed the exact moment she ripped the paper. It was a symphony of breaking chains and stolen songs, and it resonated with a forgotten injustice deep within him. The notes echoed in his skull, not just a sound but a void where a memory should be. With the music came a stronger flash of memory, a phantom echo of profound, soul-crushing guilt. The weight of his own hands, older and colder, signing documents that authorized the theft of intellectual property from a faceless but brilliant artist.
The thought was insane, a fantasy concept, but it was the only explanation that fit the impossible reality of his own rebirth. He had lived before. He had died. And somehow, he had been given a chance to start again. If it had happened to him, why not to her? It would explain everything: the contempt in her eyes for her fiancé, the cold calculation in her defiance. She was playing a much deeper, more personal game than anyone realized. She had not just walked away from a contract; she had executed a planned escape, a prison break years in the making.
He instructed his assistant to pull all security footage from the conference room. He watched it again and again, his focus absolute. He analyzed the micro-expressions on her face, the almost imperceptible shift in her posture from submissive to dominant the moment the contract hit the table. He saw the flicker of an old, deep pain in her eyes just before she acted. This was not an impulse. This was retribution. The ghost of his past life whispered that last time, their connection, whatever it had been, had ended in tragedy. This time, he was determined to understand why.
His assistant knocked and entered. "Sir, Marcus Webb is on the line. He's asking if you want him to pursue the Jones signing. He says he can probably convince her to come back if he offers better terms."
"No," Mitchell interrupted, his gaze still locked on the frozen image of Ariel's face on his screen. "Let her go. In fact, I want you to flag her name in our system. If she submits anything, anywhere, through any of our subsidiaries, I want to be notified immediately."
"May I ask why, sir?"
"Because," Mitchell said, a strange, unshakeable certainty settling over him, "I do not think we have seen the last of Ariel Jones. I think we have just seen the beginning."