All Chapters of Encore with the Devil: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

The plan starts with a lie.Not to each other.For once.To everyone else.Jace calls it “narrative positioning.”I call it “poking a bear on purpose.”He drags us into the hub and throws a mock‑up of a social post onto the main screen.Black background.Simple white text.> **one last secret set before I disappear to finish the album. small room. no cameras. no suits. you in?**Below it, a date.A city.A vague hint at a neighborhood.“Absolutely not,” I say as soon as I read it.“Absolutely yes,” Jace says. “It’s bait. For one specific man and his Very Serious Feelings about your song.”“He already shot at me,” I snap. “You want to invite him to do it again?”“We’re inviting him to *try*,” Kael says from behind me.My shoulders go tight.“Mateo thinks in stories,” Jace says. “Right now, the story in his head is: ‘The girl couldn’t stay offstage, and my nephew couldn’t protect her.’ We give him a sequel he thinks he can write the ending to.”“Then we flip the script,” Luka adds from

From the outside, the venue looks like a place where you’d order burnt coffee and listen to mediocre open‑mic poets misquote Sylvia Plath.Inside tonight, it’s a loaded trap.The room is small—intimate, the blogs would say.Low ceiling.Exposed beams.A scattering of tiny round tables, candles in mismatched jars, and a chalkboard menu listing drinks that are mostly for show.The house lights are low.The stage is barely raised—a modest platform at one end with a mic stand, a stool, and an upright piano tucked to the side.On paper, this is exactly the kind of room a reckless artist would choose for her “one last honest set.”Minimal sound system.No obvious security.A masked crowd.Literally.Half the guests are in hats or neutral masquerade masks because Jace decided that if Mateo wanted anonymity, we’d give *everyone* a version of it.“Spin it as a theme,” he’d said. “‘We’re all the same in the dark.’ The fans will eat it up.”They did.Now, looking out from the back curtain, it fe

The first shot cracks from the back of the room.Too close.Too loud.I drop without thinking.Not because of fear.Because that’s what we drilled.“Down,” I hiss to myself as my knees slam into splintered wood.A second later, someone else shouts it over the comms, and a body slams into me from the side—Tomas, I think—shielding me with his weight as a spray of glass rains from a shattered sconce above the bar.Screams rip through the dark.Chairs scrape.A table goes over with a crash.“Lights stay down!” Jace barks in my ear. “Emergency only, no full wash—don’t give them a clean shot.”The room pulses with muzzle flashes.Strobes of white‑orange tearing the black.I can’t see faces—just shapes lurching, ducking, shoving.Somewhere to my left, there’s a dull thud and a sharp cry.“Man down! Stage left!” someone yells. “He’s hit—shoulder, I think!”“Door!” Luka’s voice snaps over comms. “Raven at the door—weapon drawn. Roof, you see him?”“Target acquired,” a calm voice replies. “Clea

Time loses its sharp edges in the days after the shooting.There’s no single, cinematic moment where someone announces *“It’s over.”*It’s a hundred small ones.Ava is banning Kael from anything more strenuous than walking to the bathroom for a week.Rosa falls asleep upright in the chair outside the infirmary, Sofie sprawled across her legs, wolf dangling.The steady flattening of Kael’s vital signs on the monitors from “roller coaster” to “boring.”Somewhere beyond our walls, bigger shifts happen.Quiet.Efficient.Ugly.Jace starts coming to the infirmary with updates instead of just coffee.“Mateo’s operation is in pieces,” he says one afternoon, perched on the windowsill while Kael dozes, and I pretend I’m not eavesdropping. “The guys we grabbed at the venue started talking as soon as they realized your uncle isn’t the only man on earth with a gun.”“Loyalty’s expensive,” Rosa mutters from the corner. “Cowardice is free.”Jace grins.“Exactly,” he says. “We’ve pulled apart three

Living in the same house and sleeping in different beds is a special kind of purgatory.Days fall into a strange, careful rhythm.Breakfast together.Bedtime apart.In the mornings, Sofie clambers onto the kitchen island stool and demands pancakes.“Two,” she negotiates one day, holding up three fingers.“Nice try,” Rosa says. “One and a half.”Kael sits at the head of the table in soft clothes and bare feet, a concession to Ava’s ongoing tyranny over his recovery.I sit on the side, coffee in hand, pretending I don’t notice how my body registers his presence like a new gravity.We talk.About cartoons.About whether pizza counts as a vegetable (Rosa: no. Sofie: Yes).About foundation logistics.We do not talk about the guest room.Or the way I peeled my clothes off in a space that didn’t smell like him for the first time in weeks.Or the way his eyes flick, sometimes, down the hallway when I take Sofie there at night.Co‑parenting in a limbo we never defined.Sofie, of course, notice