All Chapters of Encore with the Devil: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

For a second, they just look at each other.Mom’s hand stills in Mireya’s hair.Dad’s fingers flex once against his knee, then go still, too.I wonder if they’re talking in their heads the way they do sometimes—one of those married‑people silent conversations I absolutely pretend not to notice.Finally, Mom exhales.“I wish the world around us had been different,” she says.Her voice is soft, but it doesn’t wobble.“I wish nineteen‑year‑old me had felt safe enough to slam the door in his face,” she continues. “I wish no one had ever written a contract that made me think my voice wasn’t mine. I wish his mother had lived. I wish bedtime songs had never been interrupted by gunshots.”Mireya goes very still against her.Dad’s eyes drop to the floor.“I wish a lot of things had been different,” Mom says. “But I don’t…regret being the person who walked through all that and came out here. In this house. With you two. With him.”Dad looks up at that.Whatever he sees in her face makes his sho

We got the pizza. We went to the arcade. Mireya won a frankly concerning amount of tickets playing Whac-A-Mole, and Sofie live-streamed a review of the city’s best garlic knots. Walking away from the hotel yesterday felt like a victory. It was a clean, cinematic exit. We chose the light over the dark, the present over the past.But that night, lying in a different hotel across town, staring at a ceiling that didn’t hold my ghosts, I realized something.Walking away is powerful. But leaving the ghost the deed to the building? That’s just avoidance.I don’t want to avoid it anymore. The next morning, while Mireya is busy negotiating with room service for a second plate of pancakes, I find Kael on the balcony. “I want to go back,” I say.He turns, and coffee mugs halfway to his mouth. He doesn’t ask why. He just studies my face, looking for the tremor, the hesitation. He doesn’t find it.“To the room?” he asks quietly.“No,” I say. “Just the hallway. I want to stand in it. In the

We could leave it there.We could walk out into the night with pizza grease on our fingers and the ghost of the song still vibrating in the walls, and it would already be enough.But that girl—Lia—doesn’t head for the door.She hovers near the stage, talking in animated whispers to her friends.Every few seconds, she glances over at me like she’s checking I’m still real.I know that looks too well to ignore it.“Give me a second,” I say to Kael.He nods, steps back, hands in his pockets, the way he does when he wants me to know he’s here but not hovering.I walk back toward the low stage, the room now half‑empty, the bartender wiping down glasses in the background.“Hey, Lia?” I say gently.She startles, then straightens, hoodie sleeves twisted in her fingers.“Yeah?” she says, voice doing that awkward squeak teenagers hate, and I secretly find adorable.Her friends fall instantly silent.They’re trying to look casual and failing.I smile.“Did you ever hear the story behind that song

The ballroom hums like a beehive.Chandeliers glitter overhead, casting a warm, soft light over round tables dressed in white linens and scattered with tiny centerpieces: small glass cylinders etched with the Lullaby House logo—a wolf curled around a microphone, stars overhead.Onstage, the backdrop is simple.No pyrotechnics.No LED walls.Just a velvet curtain and a banner that reads:**LULLABY HOUSE FOUNDATION – VOICES UNCHAINED**I stand behind it for a moment, peeking out through the narrow gap, taking it all in.Artists in thrift‑store finery and borrowed blazers.Lawyers in suits with scuffed shoes.Industry people in expensive clothes, sitting a little too stiffly, trying to look relaxed while clearly calculating how this might change their bottom lines.Luna sits at a table near the front, hand linked with Dante’s under the linen.She catches my eye and lifts her glass.I breathe.“Ready?” Miriam asks at my shoulder.“No,” I say. “Do it anyway.”She grins.“Good answer.”—Th

By day two, the numbers have stopped being abstract.Sofie’s song isn’t just “doing well.”It has colonized the internet.Her face, her hands on the guitar, the line about “we’re not saying this was right, we’re saying we spent years making it right”—clipped, stitched, duetted, captioned in a dozen languages.My phone rings so much that I eventually throw it into a drawer.They call her phone instead.Labels I recognize.Managers I left in the dust.New sharks with shiny teeth and better PR.Sofie sits at the kitchen island, on speaker, eyes flat as she listens to the third offer in an hour.“…and we think you’d be a great fit,” a smooth voice is saying. “We can get you in rooms with top writers, get you brand deals, cross‑platform exposure—”“Contract?” she cuts in.“We’d send our standard—”She glances at me.I raise an eyebrow.Her mouth curves.“Mom’s label only,” she says clearly. “Fair contract or nothing.”There’s a pause on the other end.“I’m sorry?” the voice says.“You hear