Introduction

The roar of the crowd was a physical force, pressing in on me from all sides, a wave of sound that vibrated up into my bones.

I moved my mouth, swayed my body, mimicked the gestures – but it wasn' t my voice pouring from the speakers. It was Scarlett' s, a perfect, studio-polished product of technology and longing. My fiancé, the celebrated producer Liam Stone, had turned me into his ex-pop star.

This wasn' t a dazzling comeback, though. Not for me. It was a lie on a colossal scale, a holographic projection of Scarlett overlaid on my body, my voice digitally reshaped into hers. For six months, he' d been systematically erasing me, Ava Green, the indie musician known for raw lyrics and a voice that sometimes broke with emotion.

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

My own pain and defiance surged, a desperate desire to reclaim my sound. When I pushed past the modulation, letting a raw note escape, the hologram flickered violently, and Scarlett' s synthesized voice cracked into static. The crowd gasped.

Liam' s face twisted into a snarl. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Ava? Stick to the plan."

His anger, cold and calculated, filled me with a sudden, overwhelming nausea – a feeling I' d been ignoring for weeks. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow: I was pregnant.

Trapped, silenced, and carrying the child of the man actively erasing my identity, I knew one thing: I would not be erased.