All Chapters of Encore with the Devil: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Police cars look the same everywhere.Blue lights.White doors.The implication that something is wrong.By afternoon, they’re parked outside every Moretti property the press can name—his downtown office, the club, the villa driveway just far enough from the gate to respect private property and close enough to make their point.Helicopters drift back like vultures that smelled fresh meat.Reporters park themselves on sidewalks, talking breathlessly about “ongoing investigations” and “links to last night’s incident."”Inside the villa, the real storm wears suits.Lawyers.Three of them.One I’ve seen before in passing, two I haven’t. All sharp suits and sharper eyes, briefcases like weapons.They take over the dining room.Papers spread.Phones plugged in.Dante sits at the head of the table, flanked by Luca on one side, Vittorio, on the other. I’m at the far end, Mia between us like a buffer.One lawyer flips through a file.“The police want statements from you,” he says to Dante. “Pr

For a long beat, no one speaks.The folder sits there, heavy with old versions of me.Sweat.Pills.Bad nights.Worse choices.Angelo thinks he’s holding a bomb.Maybe he is.I’m suddenly very, very tired of bombs I didn’t build.I reach for the folder.Every lawyer in the room inhales.“Luna—” one starts.I don’t opened it yet.Just rest my fingers on the cardboard.“You kept everything,” I say to Angelo. “Tapes. Emails. Videos. All my worst days.”He smirks.“I was thorough,” he says. “Good managers are.”“You think this scares me,” I say. “You think if you dump this online, I’ll fall apart. That people will see me slurring in some hotel hallway and think, *ah, so she deserved it.*”“That’s usually how it goes,” he says.I look at Dante.At Mia in the doorway, eyes blazing.Back at Angelo.“What if,” I say slowly, “I show them first.”He blinks.“What?” he asks.“What if I use this,” I tap the folder, “on my terms. Not yours. Not as blackmail, but as evidence.”“Evidence of what?” h

Power never falls all at once.It frays.Thread by thread.The day after the special drops, those threads start snapping around Marco’s throat.It isn’t just the public.It’s the people who cared about money long before they cared about me.Bankers.Politicians.Old families whose names never make it into papers but whose signatures live on the deeds of half the city.They were willing to tolerate a devil in the shadows.They are much less willing to tolerate a devil in HD, linked to a scandal the whole world just watched with popcorn.“When the crowd turns, the patrons turn,” Dante says quietly, flipping through a stack of reports on his desk. “No one likes a spectacle that reminds them where their money comes from.”We’re in his office again, but it feels different.Less like a cage.It's more like a war room in the last act.My docu plays muted on one of the screens, looping a still of me on the stool, guitar in hand, mouth open mid‑confession.On another, an anchor reports on loom

We can revisit that conversation,” he says. “When we’re not dismantling a criminal enterprise and fending off subpoenas.”My chest warms in a way that has nothing to do with legal victories.We talk about safety.Not as “I’ll lock you up” and “I’ll run away.”As choices.If I go on tour again, we agree on protocols.Not as orders.As agreements.“You tell me if you feel watched,” he says. “You don’t have to handle it alone anymore. That’s what you have me for.”“I tell you,” I say. “But I also tell you when your solution makes me feel like a prisoner. That’s what you have me for.”He nods.“Deal,” he says.We talk about the future.Career.His and mine.He talks about sitting on more boards.Ones that require suits and polite applause instead of guns.I talk about producing for other artists.Ones who might not get eaten alive if the noise we’ve made actually scares a few wolves off.It’s not a fairy tale.It’s a blueprint.And for the first time, I feel like I’m not just a line item

If someone had told me a year ago that my life would involve Pinterest boards, menu tastings, and heated debates about peony versus ranunculus, I would’ve laughed until I choked.Yet here we are.The villa has been invaded by fabric swatches and cake samples.Mia is in her natural habitat.“Okay,” she says, flinging herself across my bed with a fistful of printed mood boards. “Option A: rustic fairy tale. Option B: mafia chic. Option C: we fake our deaths and elope in Vegas.”Luca, leaning in the doorway with his casted arm crossed over his chest, raises a brow.“We are not doing ‘mafia chic,’” he says. “Or faking our deaths. We just survived an actual war.”“Exactly,” she says. “We earned a little drama.”“You have enough drama for seven lifetimes,” I say, plucking one board out of her hands. “What’s this one?”It’s a photo of long wooden tables under olive trees, strings of lights twinkling overhead, and simple white flowers in mismatched glass bottles.“That’s my favorite,” I say b