Chapter 6: A New Melody in an Empty Room The silence was the first thing Julian noticed. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of a sleeping house; it was a deep, hollow void that seemed to swallow sound. He returned to the mansion well past midnight, the acrid taste of cheap champagne from a pointless networking …
Romance
The silence was a physical thing. It crashed down upon the studio, a deafening vacuum where the thunderous applause had been only seconds before. For Elara, standing in the white-hot center of a million gazes, the world dissolved into a sickening, slow-motion blur. The monstrous headline on the screen behind the judges was an accusation …
For seven years, Elara had followed him, her devotion born from a single act of gratitude. Marrying him felt like the culmination of a long-held dream. But when his mistress, Seraphina, announced she had cancer with only six months to live, he presented her with divorce papers. “It’s just for appearances,” he had said. “We’ll …