If anyone needed to be notified, the obvious choice was her husband Nathaniel Cole.
Naomi set that thought aside for now.
“Medication’s a good call,” she said.
“But we’ll keep up the regular sessions alongside it.”
Eliana nodded.
She already knew that much.
“Let’s do a hypnotherapy session today,” Naomi continued.
Hypnosis.
Eliana thought it over, then nodded again.
She followed Naomi to the treatment couch and slowly let her eyes fall shut.
In the darkness, fragments scattered in every direction.
Then, gradually, a gray, overcast sky came into focus.
She knew immediately where she was.
The cold fluorescent lights.
The unnatural quiet of the room.
Her father’s body lay in front of her, wrapped in a white sheet.
Years ago now the day she’d come to identify his body.
Her mother sobbed beside her, inconsolable, while Eliana could only stare, frozen, at her father’s pale, broken face.
He’d jumped from the roof of a high-rise that year, leaving her and her mother alone, and the Hart family collapsed entirely in the wreckage of it.
The scene shifted.
Eliana found herself standing outside Hart Corporation’s headquarters.
Blood and worse splattered across the pavement red against gray concrete.
She stood there, unable to move.
Staring into her father’s unseeing eyes.
Around her, voices rose in argument, her mother’s screams tangled with the ugly, grasping faces of people circling the Hart family’s ruins.
Vultures, all of them, fighting for one last piece of what remained.
She couldn’t fight them off.
Someone shoved her down, and she fell into her father’s blood.
Wolves closing in on every side.
Then a pair of shoes stepped into her line of sight.
“Eliana.
The Cole family has this handled.” A voice, young but already carrying weight, cut through the chaos.
She looked up and saw Nathaniel barely more than a boy, but already radiating the kind of quiet authority most grown men never earned.
Crisp school uniform.
Calm, dark eyes.
Something in that calm settled her, almost against her will.
“If you have questions, come to me.
Nathaniel Cole.”
One glance from him, and the people behind him snapped into motion organizing, clearing, handling everything with practiced efficiency.
He put himself between her and the wolves.
Then he crouched down, pulled out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the blood and tears from her face.
“Come with me.” He held out his hand.
She took it.
His palm was warm and dry.
…
A single tear slid down the corner of twenty-five-year-old Eliana’s eye.
She slowly opened them.
So much had happened after that day.
Nathaniel had pulled her and her mother out of that chaos entirely, using the full weight of the Cole name to smooth over every complication.
The Hart family never recovered; she was no longer anyone’s golden heiress, no longer surrounded by privilege but she and her mother made it out safely, and for that, at least, she’d been grateful.
So how could she not have loved him?
But letting go, once you actually decided to, could happen in a single breath.
Eliana closed her eyes again, brow tightening, the ache traveling from her chest all the way to her fingertips in slow, throbbing waves.
Naomi watched it all play out.
She sighed softly.
“It seems like you haven’t fully let go of him yet.”
Eliana didn’t answer right away.
She sat up slowly.
She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
“I have let go.”
When she opened her eyes fully, they were steady again.
Calm.
That was then.
This was now.
The Hart family’s unresolved mess was hers to untangle on her own terms, going forward.
Nathaniel loved Vivian now, and he’d broken something in Eliana in the process.
There was no reason left to hold on.
Same as her mother, who’d eventually remarried and sent Eliana off to live with a stepfather; everyone walked their own path eventually.
She’d made her decision.
She was letting him go.
Naomi nodded thoughtfully.
Naomi’s practice wasn’t based out of Ashford General, it operated out of a private clinic with its own specialized licensing, catering exclusively to high-net-worth clients.
The kind of clientele that demanded absolute discretion and comfort.
Records were kept sealed, entirely separate from any public hospital system, archived only within the clinic itself.
That privacy was exactly why Eliana had chosen this place to begin with.
She hadn’t wanted anyone finding out she was struggling.
Not even Chloe, her closest friend in the world, knew any of this.
After a bit more discussion, Naomi finalized the prescription and sent Eliana on her way.
Eliana left the clinic and returned to her car, medication in hand.
The dosage was printed clearly on the box.
A water bottle sat in the cup holder ready, if she wanted to take the first dose now.
She hesitated.
Her hand drifted to her stomach.
Better to wait until after the procedure.
A few more days wouldn’t change anything.
She tucked the medication away.
The second she did, her phone buzzed.
A wall of notifications lit up the screen.
All about Voice of Heaven.
She tapped in, expecting show updates instead, it was almost entirely about Vivian.
Trending tags always followed whatever had gone viral hardest.
#VivianBlakeOfficiallyJoinsVoiceOfHeaven#
#VivianBlakesHeavenlySound#
#VivianBlakeThePureWhiteJasmineOfSongwriting#
The top post featured Vivian’s latest clip from her personal video account.
She looked visibly frail in it, but wore a brave, determined smile through the whole thing.
Fragile.
Beautiful.
Heartbreaking, by design.
“…Yes, Voice of Heaven reached out to me.
I looked over the format and the concept, and honestly, it moved me, so I said yes.”
“I’ll be joining as a special guest judge.
The first live episode airs in just a few days please tune in.”
“And since it’s a music competition after all, I’ve put together an original title track of my own.”
She delivered all of this with a soft smile, eyes glistening just slightly paired with her porcelain skin, the effect landed exactly as intended.
“Once I understood how little time I had left, I found myself looking back on everything: the love, the heartbreak, the despair, and eventually, the peace.
That’s where this song came from.”
“It drops on streaming the same day as the live broadcast.
I hope it gives people some strength.”
The clip was filmed inside Vivian’s flower studio, framed by an elaborate arrangement of blooms.
She bowed gently to the camera as it ended.
Underneath the original clip, an entertainment gossip account had layered in its own commentary.
“Sources close to the production say this track written, composed, and performed entirely by Vivian herself is genuinely stunning.
Multiple people reportedly cried during the studio session.”
“Didn’t expect her talent to extend past floral design into songwriting too, honestly.”
Followed by an avalanche of praise.
A short clip claiming to be a preview of “Vivian’s original song” had already leaked online too.
Just twenty-five seconds of instrumental.
That alone was enough to set off a wildfire.
Countless creators immediately started using that twenty-five-second clip as background music captions, outfit videos, even pet content and every single one of them blew up overnight.
The comments under Vivian’s post kept stacking up.
“Wow, I had no idea Vivian could write music like this!
Been replaying that 25-second clip on loop, can’t wait for the full song!”
“So unfair.
She’s beautiful, runs a gorgeous studio, AND writes music this good?
Breaks my heart knowing she only has six months left.”
“Eliana’s whole life’s work doesn’t even compare to Vivian’s twenty-five seconds.”