The single dropped at midnight on a Friday. By Saturday morning, "Paper Crown" was number one on every streaming platform that mattered. By Sunday afternoon, critics were calling it my most emotionally devastating work yet—raw, unflinching, the kind of song that made people pull their cars over to the side of the road and just sit there.
I read the reviews in my home studio with lukewarm coffee and no particular feeling. I had written it in another life. This time, I knew exactly what it would cost me.
The rooftop party was Dominic's idea. He loved these things—the open bar, the skyline glittering behind floor-to-ceiling glass, journalists with their phones out capturing every angle. King-Mitchell Records celebrating another win. Our win, he would say, his hand warm and proprietary at the small of my back.
He found me near the railing, away from the crowd. The city spread out below us, a thousand lit windows holding a thousand small lives I would never know.
"There she is." His voice carried that easy confidence I used to mistake for strength. He handed me a champagne flute I did not ask for. "The woman of the hour."
I took it. Smiled. Said nothing.
"You should be inside," he said. "Everyone wants to congratulate you."
"I needed air."
He stepped closer, his cologne expensive and familiar. "You've been quiet all night."
"I'm tired."
"You're always tired after a release." He touched my shoulder, thumb brushing the bare skin above my collarbone. "But this one's special, Freya. This one's going to redefine your career."
I looked at him then. Really looked. The sharp line of his jaw. The way his smile never quite reached his eyes when he thought no one was paying attention. Seven years of marriage, and I had memorized every angle of this face. Loved it, once. Trusted it.
In three days, he would sit across a boardroom table and ask me to destroy myself.
"I know," I said quietly.
Something flickered across his expression—confusion, maybe, or the faint unease of a man who realizes he is being seen in a way he does not control. But the moment passed. He lifted his glass.
"To Paper Crown," he said. "And to my brilliant wife."
I touched my glass to his. The sound was thin and bright, like something breaking very far away.
"To us," I said.
He kissed me then, in front of the skyline and the crowd inside and the cameras that were always, always watching. His hand cupped the back of my neck, warm and possessive.
I let him.
I had been here before.
---
Three days later, Saylor Gonzalez held a press conference at a Midtown hotel. I watched the livestream alone in my studio, coffee going cold beside me, my fingers tapping silent scales against the edge of the desk.
She looked younger on camera—twenty-six but styled to seem fragile, breakable. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her voice shook as she held up a stack of printed documents, timestamped demo files, fabricated copyright registrations that must have cost someone a lot of money to produce.
"I trusted her," Saylor said, and a tear slid down her cheek on cue. "I shared my work because I thought she was my mentor. And she stole it. She stole everything."
The room erupted. Reporters shouting questions. Camera flashes like a thunderstorm trapped in glass.
I turned the volume down. Pulled up Twitter. Watched the hashtag climb in real time.
#FreyaMitchellIsAFraud.
Ten thousand tweets in an hour. Fifty thousand by midnight.
I should have felt something. Panic, maybe. Anger. The hot, sick twist of injustice.
But I had already lived this once. I knew how it ended.
This time, I was going to write a different song.
I closed the laptop. Drank the cold coffee. Played a single chord on the piano, low and resonant, and let it fade into silence.
Then I went upstairs, packed a small bag, and waited for the call I knew was coming.
Dominic's name lit up my phone at 11:47 p.m.
"We need to talk," he said. No preamble. No warmth.
"I know," I said.
"Boardroom. Tomorrow. Ten a.m."
"I'll be there."
He hesitated. Just a beat. "Freya—"
I hung up.
Outside my window, the city hummed and glittered, indifferent and eternal. Somewhere out there, Saylor Gonzalez was celebrating. Somewhere out there, my father was making calls, smoothing edges, protecting the legacy he valued more than the daughter who built it.
And somewhere inside me, in the place where love used to live, there was only clarity now.
Cold. Clean. Unbreakable.
I set my phone on the nightstand, screen down, and closed my eyes.
Let them think they had won.
I had all the time in the world.
