...Rylla POV...

The house was full of movement.

Stylists, assistants, a camera girl from her social team, buzzing like bees around her as if she were something about to wilt.

Rylla sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, chewing the edge of a plastic straw while someone decided whether her nails needed to be “cool pink” or “barely blushed.”

“You’re flying at nine. We need a look that lands, not lingers,” said Cass, her agent-slash-image-wrangler.

“I need sleep,” Rylla muttered.

No one heard her.

Or maybe they did. Maybe they just didn’t care.

---

She’d said yes to this award show six months ago. Back when things still felt exciting.

Now?

Her latest album tour had ended barely four weeks ago. Twenty cities. Sixty-seven shows. Three encores she didn’t plan. Two public tears she didn’t mean to shed.

Her voice still worked, technically.

But inside, she felt scraped out.

She missed her piano. The quiet kind of writing. The version of herself that existed in empty hotel rooms with a black notebook and raw lyrics and no lashes glued to her face.

---

A makeup brush flicked her jaw.

“Can you look up for me, babe?”

Rylla obeyed.

Automatically.

She always did—on cue, in photos, in life.

Her head tilted. Chin angled. Dream girl activated.

It was muscle memory now.

She hadn’t been singing first. Not originally.

She’d been a teenage face in sunlit photos. Golden hair. Glass skin. A mouth shaped like innocence.

She remembered the first magazine headline that stuck: “The New Angel in American Pop.”

Her manager never let that version die.

Not even now.

---

The real Rylla Smith?

Stubborn. Sharp. Swore too much. Didn’t cry easily. Had opinions about everything from production budgets to chord structures to the politics of Instagram captions.

But none of that fit the brand.

So she learned to soften her edges in public. Dress like a watercolor. Speak like a sigh.

It was easier that way.

Safer.

---

Cass knelt beside her, holding up a dress in pale gray silk. Strapless. Fitted. The kind of thing that made her look like she might shatter if someone touched her too hard.

“This one,” Cass said. “For the jet. And maybe we keep it on for the hotel lobby shots, just in case someone gets a sneak peek?”

Rylla blinked.

Then shrugged.

“Sure.”

Because why not?

She was flying out tomorrow morning on a rented jet she didn’t book, to perform a song she’d written in her worst month, in front of people who didn’t really care—just as long as she didn’t mess up the aesthetic.

And God forbid she sweat.

---

Her phone buzzed in her lap.

A text from her mom: You’ll do great, baby. Everyone’s watching.

That was the problem.

Everyone always was.

—

The house emptied out by ten.

Cass gone. The glam team gone. The social girl whispering about algorithms gone.

Rylla stood in the hallway barefoot, her skin scrubbed clean, hair damp from a shower. The silence felt foreign. Like it didn’t belong here anymore.

She padded into her bedroom and shut the door behind her—not that anyone would walk in.

Her feet found the piano bench without thinking.

She didn’t turn on the overheads. Just the little lamp in the corner. Warm light on the white keys. Like dusk, held in a bottle.

---

She played something soft.

New. Unfinished.

She didn’t have lyrics yet, just a melody in slow, rising phrases. It felt like longing. Or sunlight. Or the kind of ache that lives in your ribs when you're alone too long.

Her eyes drifted to the window.

Dark outside. Pine trees. Winter sky.

---

She wondered what it would feel like to sunbathe on an empty beach. Not for a photoshoot. Not for a campaign. Just… because it was warm and her body still worked.

Or maybe to wake up in a little apartment above a café. Somewhere with old floors and bad plumbing and no press. Somewhere where no one expected her to be Rylla Smith.

She played the tune again, slower.

Maybe she’d find the lyrics tomorrow.

---

She smiled to herself.

Italy.

That sounded right.

Old buildings. Warm bread. Sea breeze.

And maybe—

Just maybe—

There’d be a man.

Not the clean-cut, manicured type they cast in her videos. No. Someone dangerous. Rough around the edges.

Someone who didn’t give a damn about the charts, who wouldn’t flinch if she swore like a sailor or told him to fuck off just to test him.

Someone who might kiss her hard just for the hell of it. Someone who could look at her and know, she wasn’t anyone’s angel.

---

She laughed, low in her throat.

“You’re tired,” she whispered to herself. “Go to sleep before you fall in love with a fantasy.”

She closed the piano. Shut off the lamp. Slid into bed.

And as her eyes closed, the melody still hummed in her head.

Somewhere.

Somewhere warm.

Somewhere real.

...Rylla POV...

The stage was a hollow box of scaffolding and LED light.

Rylla stood at the mic, blinking through haze and camera flashes, waiting for the tech to finish calibration.

The band was barely audible in her in-ear monitors. Her assistant’s voice wasn’t.

“You’ve got a 7 a.m. call time at WCB Studios for that morning show segment. Hair and makeup at five.”

Rylla nodded without hearing.

She was watching her own face on the giant rehearsal screen. The close-up cam caught every breath, every blink.

“Then wheels up back to Maine by noon. Your fan club interview is still locked at three p.m. And Cass wants at least one quote about your ‘reconnecting with your roots.’”

Still nodding.

Still not listening.

Her face on screen smiled. Her real face didn’t.

---

“Rylla, babe, look here.”

The social girl held up her phone. Framing. Filming. Capturing “off-stage realness” for her Story.

Rylla tilted her head. Smiled like muscle memory. Flashed two fingers in a peace sign.

Internally: fuck off.

Externally: perfect.

The girl nodded and walked off, already typing captions. Probably something like “angel energy before the stage.”

Rylla exhaled slowly.

She tasted foundation in the back of her throat.

---

Someone offered her water. She shook her head.

Someone else checked the bodice of her stage dress. Too tight. On purpose.

The spotlight came up for final light testing. It hit her shoulder like heat. Like pressure.

Her voice coach gave her a thumbs-up from the wings.

Rylla gave one back.

But her fingers shook.

---

She thought about the melody she wrote last night. About sunshine and the beach and a dangerous man with rough hands who’d never once ask for a quote or a playlist.

She didn’t want a stage.

She wanted a damn exit sign.

Not forever.

Just long enough to remember how to breathe.

---

She looked down at her palms.

They were sweating.

She smiled again anyway. Just in case someone had their phone out.

Two hours to go.

And no one was coming to save her.

---

...Francesco POV...

Just down the street, the screen glowed against gold wallpaper.

Francesco Virelli leaned back on the hotel bed, legs crossed at the ankle, a tumbler of whiskey in one hand. He looked like he belonged on a magazine cover. Angelic face, jawline too clean for his sins, a gold chain catching light against his collarbone.

Jacket open. Shirt unbuttoned just enough. He didn’t try.

He didn’t have to.

On the television, Rylla Smith was singing—live from backstage, one of those polished behind-the-scenes edits that were barely real.

She looked like a fantasy someone else had painted.

And yet, he kept watching.

---

One of his men sat in the corner, scrolling through his phone, glancing up now and then.

“She’s famous,” he said. “You touch a girl like that, half the country goes hunting for your teeth.”

Francesco sipped his whiskey.

“Who said anything about touching?”

Another guy, Leon, half-laughed. “You didn’t have to.”

Santo leaned on the wall near the minibar.

“You really think she’d fix Lucca?”

Francesco didn’t answer.

Not right away.

---

On the screen, Rylla smiled.

Perfectly. Automatically.

And in the space between one camera cut and the next, something flickered.

Like she was a second away from cussing the world out.

Francesco tilted his head.

“I think she’s tired.”

He took another sip.

“I think she wants someone to grab her by the wrist and say, ‘not this time.’”

---

The men went quiet.

No arguing.

No joking.

Just letting the idea settle like smoke in the room.

---

“It wouldn’t be a kidnapping,” Francesco added lazily. “It’d be a rescue.”

Someone snorted. Another muttered about a lap dance.

Francesco smiled, easy and bright.

“Tell the jet crew to clear a route.”

He finished his drink.

“We’re going to give the Don a gift.”