Chapter 4

Ava' s perfect world started to crack.

Then it shattered.

Julian Vance, charming Julian, was a con man.

And Sophia Bellweather, her "best friend," was his partner.

They' d systematically bled her family' s business dry.

The popular Austin restaurant chain her father built, gone.

The boutiques, shuttered.

Scandal erupted. Headlines screamed fraud.

Her father, overwhelmed by the stress and betrayal, collapsed.

A heart attack. Serious.

Ava sat in the sterile hospital waiting room, her designer bag useless on the floor.

Her phone, once buzzing with likes and invites, was silent or filled with hate.

She was broke, disgraced. Her father fighting for his life.

This was her new reality.

In Nashville, Ethan' s pain found its voice.

Maya Chen worked her magic.

His EP, "Broken Chords, Mended Scars," was born.

One track, "Ava' s Shadow," a raw, aching ballad about betrayal and a love that almost killed him, went viral.

People connected with the honesty, the hurt.

Indie labels started calling.

He played a showcase. The room was packed.

His voice, stronger now, filled the space.

He sang about a girl with sunshine in her hair and ice in her heart.

He didn't name her. He didn't have to.

The song was his truth. His exorcism.

Maya stood by the soundboard, a proud smile on her face.

After the show, a label exec approached him.

"Ethan Miller. We need to talk."

He felt a spark, not of joy, but of grim satisfaction.

His pain was becoming his power.

Ava' s cruelty had forged something new in him.

He thought of her, briefly, not with longing, but with a cold distance.

She was the ghost in his songs, the muse he never asked for.

He wondered if she' d heard "Ava' s Shadow."

He almost hoped she had.

Let her hear what she' d done.

Let her live with it.

He had a new path now. One she couldn' t touch.

His father-in-law's condition worsened. Ava felt helpless.

The hospital bills piled up. The lawyers circled.

Julian and Sophia were ghosts, vanished with the money.

Her reflection in the hospital window was a stranger.

Pale, tired, stripped of all her glitter.