Lahat ng Kabanata ng Love Me When I'm Nothing: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 16

Ashford.She knew the name. Of course she knew the name. You couldn't work in music, even at the level she worked, scraping the bottom of it with your fingernails, without knowing Ashford. Ashford Global owned three major labels. Two entertainment networks. A streaming platform she used every day because it was the cheapest one.The building where she'd auditioned for her first open mic three years ago had an Ashford subsidiary plaque in the lobby.She'd walked past it seventeen times without connecting it to the man standing in Jasmine's apartment.Jasmine was already on her phone. Elena could hear the quality of the silence changing as results loaded. The specific silence of someone finding more than they expected."Daniel Ashford." Jasmine said it slowly. Testing the weight of each syllable. "Heir to Ashford Global Industries." She looked up. Back down. "Last public appearance approximately three years ago at a charity gala." She scrolled. "Before that, regular appearances at indus

Daniel looked at the text for a long time.Then he put Elena's phone face-down on the table. Slow and deliberate, the way you set something down when you need your hands free for what comes next."I'm going to tell you everything," he said. "All of it. And I need you to let me finish before you decide what to do with it."She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup. "Talk."So he did.William Ashford was the oldest son and the wrong one for the job and everyone in the family knew it except Richard Ashford, who had spent thirty years confusing his eldest's ruthlessness for strength. Daniel had understood the difference by the time he was twelve. William didn't build things. William acquired them. There was a gap between those two instincts wide enough to collapse a company if you weren't watching.Three years ago, Daniel had been watching.Discrepancies in the accounts. Small ones first, the kind that looked like rounding errors to anyone not paying close attention. Then larger ones.

His apartment was on the third floor of a building that smelled like someone's grandmother's cooking and old radiator heat.No doorman. No lobby to speak of. A row of mailboxes, one of them held shut with a rubber band, and stairs that announced every step you took up them. Elena counted four flights before he stopped at a door with the number 3F written in marker on a piece of tape because the brass plate had fallen off and nobody had replaced it.She said nothing about any of it.He unlocked the door and let her in first.One room. Kitchen along the left wall, a window above the sink that looked at the building next door's brick face. A couch that had seen better years. A bed behind a half-wall that wasn't really a half-wall, just a bookcase turned sideways, loaded with more books than she'd expected. A desk with a laptop and headphones and a secondhand mixing board she recognized as the same model as The Hollow's, except this one was in better shape because he actually took care of