Chapter 1

The roar of the crowd was a physical force, pressing in on me from all sides, a wave of sound that vibrated through the stage floor and up into my bones. Lights, blinding and hot, bleached all color from my vision, leaving only a sea of indistinct faces and the ghostly blue glow of the hologram shimmering in front of me. The hologram was of Scarlett. Her signature platinum blonde hair, her impossibly sharp cheekbones, the pout that had sold millions of records. And it was her voice, not mine, that was pouring from the speakers, a perfect, studio-polished product of technology and longing.

My mouth moved, my body swayed, my hands mimicked the gestures she was famous for, but I was just a puppet. A high-tech marionette. Liam stood in the wings, just out of the spotlight's glare, his face an unreadable mask. His eyes, though, they were fixed on me, on the illusion, and they held an intensity that wasn't for me, Ava Green. It was for her. For the ghost he was chasing.

"Keep going," his voice, a cold, sharp command, crackled through my in-ear monitor. "Don't break character. The modulation is perfect."

I was a rising indie musician, known for raw lyrics sung in a voice that sometimes broke with emotion. My fans loved my authenticity. They had no idea that for the past six months, my fiancé, the celebrated producer Liam Stone, had been systematically erasing me. He was turning me into a stand-in for his estranged ex, the pop star Scarlett. This performance, a surprise "comeback" for Scarlett, was the pinnacle of his creation. A holographic projection overlaid on my body, my movements synced, my voice digitally reshaped into hers. It was a lie on a colossal scale.

A sudden wave of rebellion, hot and desperate, surged through me. My throat tightened. For just one note, one single, defiant sound, I tried to reclaim my own voice. I pushed past the modulation, letting a raw, husky note escape, my own sound, my own pain.

The system glitched. The hologram flickered violently, Scarlett's face distorting for a split second. The perfectly synthesized voice cracked into a burst of static. The crowd gasped, a collective murmur of confusion.

In the wings, Liam' s face twisted into a snarl. His message in my ear was no longer a command, it was a threat.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Ava? Stick to the plan."

The tech team scrambled, and in a moment, the illusion was restored. Scarlett' s voice was back, smooth and flawless, washing over the arena. I fell back into the routine, a hollowed-out shell going through the motions. The rest of the show passed in a blur of shame and self-loathing.

As soon as the final note faded and the lights went down, Liam grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my skin. He dragged me off the stage, past his crew who refused to meet my eyes, and into the stark, white dressing room.

"Are you trying to ruin everything?" he hissed, his face inches from mine. His charming public persona was gone, replaced by a cold-blooded fury. "Everything I've built? Everything we've built?"

"This isn't us, Liam," I whispered, my voice trembling. "This is you and her. I'm just... I'm just a body you're using."

He laughed, a short, ugly sound. "Don't be so dramatic. Your artistic sensitivity is getting the best of you. This is our big break. It's genius."

A wave of nausea, sharp and overwhelming, rolled through me. It wasn't just the stress or the shame. It was a familiar feeling from the past few weeks, a feeling I had been trying to ignore. I stumbled back from him, one hand flying to my mouth, the other instinctively clutching my stomach.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. It was a certainty that cut through the confusion and despair.

I was pregnant.

Pregnant with the child of the man who was actively erasing my identity, turning me into the ghost of his past love. The grotesque irony of it was suffocating. I was carrying a new life, our new life, while performing as a dead echo of his old one.

Later that night, back in the sterile, minimalist penthouse that felt more like his museum than our home, the events of the evening replayed in my mind. I stared at my reflection in the dark glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows. I saw my own tired face, the dark circles under my eyes, but superimposed over it was the phantom of Scarlett' s perfect, smiling mask. It was real. It had all been real. The cheering crowds, the crackle of static when I tried to be myself, the cold fury in Liam' s eyes, the deep, bone-weary sickness in my gut. And the secret, tiny life inside me, a secret I now had to protect from the man I was supposed to trust with my life.