Lahat ng Kabanata ng Encore with the Devil: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

He doesn’t give me long to enjoy my tiny victory.The clip keeps climbing all afternoon. Mia keeps pretending she’s not refreshing every ninety seconds. I keep pretending I’m not listening for his footsteps.By evening, the comments are a blur of guesses and theories.– * This is luna v, I’d bet my rent* – *if this is about who I think it is… yikes* – *devil? mafia? 👀* The villa feels tighter with every notification.I’m in the small sitting room off the hallway, curled in an armchair with my notebook, trying to pretend I care more about a bridge than the digital wildfire outside.I don’t hear him come in.I feel him.The air changes, electric and heavy. The hairs on my arms rise before I even look up.Dante stands in the doorway, still in his white shirt from earlier, sleeves rolled to his forearms. No tie. No jacket. Just a loosened collar and eyes like a storm.He’s holding my phone again.I close the notebook slowly.“Something wrong, Mr. Moretti?” I ask, aiming for light a

By midafternoon, the house feels like it’s vibrating with someone else’s story.Mia finally pries the laptop out of my hands and goes to chase coffee. I shut myself in the studio, trying to bury the fan edits under chords and half-finished lyrics.It doesn’t work.Every time I close my eyes, I see pastel text over Rafael’s face:*she deserves better than the devil.*I’m in the vocal booth, headphones on, mumbling through a melody when the door to the control room opens.I know his footsteps now.I stiffen.Giovanni’s voice, low and deferential: “Signore, there’s something you should—”A few clicks, the faint echo of a video starting.I can’t hear it clearly through the glass and padding, but I recognize the tinny first notes of my leaked demo.My pulse spikes.“Where did you get this?” Dante’s voice, flat.“It’s everywhere now,” Giovanni answers. “Not just the clip. Fans cut it with old footage, sir. With…with her former producer.”Silence.Then Dante: “Show me.”I pull the headphones

I don’t get punished the way I expect.No locked doors. No raised voice. No cold shoulder.The morning after I leave with Rafael, the villa runs on the same quiet, expensive efficiency as always. Staff glides in and out. Security murmurs in the halls. Somewhere, Dante moves through his empire like nothing cracked.He doesn’t call me.He doesn’t come to my room.He doesn’t mention the fact that I walked out of a roomful of his people on another man’s arm.The silence is its own kind of punishment.By late afternoon, I’m pacing my room, half waiting for a fight, half dreading it. My phone buzzes every few minutes—Mia, sending me more clips of fan theories and not‑so‑subtle “are you alive?” check‑ins—but there’s nothing from him.At six, there’s a knock at my door.I open it to find a garment bag, a shoe box, and a jewelry case in the hands of one of the house staff.“For tonight, Signora,” she says gently, hanging the bag inside without crossing the threshold further.“Tonight?” I echo.

I spend the next half hour pretending I’m not falling apart.It’s not hard.Years in the industry trained me for this—step into a room, slide on a mask, let the lights bounce off something hard and shiny while the real parts of you hide where no camera can reach.So I smile when someone compliments my last album, laugh when an old radio DJ misquotes my own lyrics back at me, nod graciously when a banker’s wife says, “You look so much…healthier than those tabloid photos from a few years ago.”I even managed to sing a line or two when the director corners me near the stage, insisting on a “little something for the donors.” Just a verse, unamplified, the quartet picking up behind me like they’ve been waiting all night.I do it all with my heart sitting like broken glass in my chest.I don’t look for Dante.I don’t need to.I feel him.A constant gravitational pull somewhere in the room—behind a column, mid‑conversation with a mayor, at the edge of my vision when I talk to anyone tall eno

“Luna.”His voice hits my spine before the door finishes opening.I freeze, half‑crouched by his desk, the bottom drawer not quite closed, the key still in the lock, my old demo case cold in my hand.I look over my shoulder.Dante stands in the doorway, shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, tie gone, top buttons undone. His hair is slightly mussed, like he’s run his hand through it one too many times.His eyes go straight to the drawer.Everything in him goes very, very still.For one stretched‑thin second, no one moves.Then he steps inside and quietly closes the door behind him.The click sounds louder than it should.“What are you doing here?” he asks.His voice is low, controlled, but there’s a rough edge under it that wasn’t there at the gala.I straighten slowly, the jewel case still in my fingers.“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.His gaze flicks to the CD, then back to my face.“That’s not an answer,” he says. He nods toward the drawer. “This is my private office.”“So is our bedroom,”