---- Chapter 10 Chloe' s POV: Curiosity, a cold and detached thing, prompted me to look them up one last time. Paparazzi photos showed Aria, haggard and stripped of her glamour, her baby bump a prominent swell under a cheap coat. The headlines screamed about the revoked art prize and the family' s public denouncement. Another set of photos showed Gabriel standing alone on a windswept pier, staring out at the grey ocean, his face a mask of grief. The world debated whether he was a heartbroken widower ora manipulative monster reaping what he sowed. It felt absurd. His great love was never me. He was just mourning the perfect, convenient life he had lost. While he was busy looking for a ghost in the past, | was moving forward. "What are you looking at, Miss Chloe?" A small voice piped up from beside me. It was Lily, a sweet girl with pigtails and a smudge of blue paint on her nose. | quickly shut my laptop. "Nothing important, sweetie. Just some old news." "Are you sad?" she asked, her big brown eyes full of concern. ---- "No," | said, forcing a smile. "Not anymore." It was mostly true. | wasn' t sad about them. But the news had stirred up the sludge of the past, the memories of betrayal and lies. A young man appeared at the studio door, a bouquet of wildflowers in his hand. It was Jase Pope, Lily' s uncle. He owned the coffee shop next door and had been finding excuses to visit for the past few weeks. "For you," he said, his smile genuine and a little shy. "l can't accept those," | said, my voice polite but firm. His smile faltered. "Oh. Okay. Sorry." He didn't push. He just started coming by with coffee instead, or a pastry for Lily, never asking for anything in return. He' d talk about my paintings, not with the empty flattery | was used to, but with a quiet, genuine appreciation. "It's the way you use light," he said one afternoon, looking at a small landscape |' d just finished. "It's like you can feel the emotion in it." His words struck a chord deep inside me. He saw me. Not the hit-maker, not the trophy wife, but the artist. One day, he brought in a flyer for a local songwriting competition. "You should enter this," he said, his expression earnest. 4 ---- | recoiled instantly. "No. | don' t do that anymore." "But you re brilliant," he insisted gently. "A gift like that... it shouldn' t be hidden away." His belief in me was a foreign, warming sensation. That night, for the first time in a long time, | sat down at the old piano in my apartment. A melody | didn't know | had in me began to pour out. It was a song about the sea, about drowning and being reborn. It was a song for me. | entered it into the competition anonymously. And | won. The quiet life | had so carefully constructed came crashing down a week later. The studio door flew open with such force it slammed against the wall. The children | was teaching gasped. Standing in the doorway, her face twisted into a mask of rage, was Aria. "So this is where you' ve been hiding, you bitch," she snarled, her eyes locking onto mine. "Did you really think you could ruin my life and just disappear?" | instinctively moved to stand in front of the children, shielding them from her venom. My voice was ice. "How did you find me?" She laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "That song. That pathetic little song you won with. It has your signature all over it. Your musical DNA. |' d know it anywhere. After all, ' ve been ---- singing your songs my whole life.". The words were a bitter admission, a confession of the lie she had lived. She took a step closer, her eyes blazing with a desperate, unhinged hatred. "You took everything from me. My career. My family. Gabriel." Her voice broke on his name. "Do you think you' ve won? Do you think he's forgotten you?" Discover our latest featured short drama reel. Watch now and enjoy the story!