Nathaniel was involved in this too.
“Do they know it’s me?” Eliana asked, another question layered under the first.
She hadn’t spelled it out, but she meant: did Vivian know “N.” was actually Eliana Hart?
She trusted Jonathan to catch her meaning.
“No idea,” Jonathan said immediately.
“I’m certain of that much, at least.”
Eliana went quiet.
Traffic drifted past outside the car window, clouds sliding slowly overhead.
Then she made up her mind.
She called the doctor’s office first and pushed her appointment to the afternoon.
Then she called Jonathan back and told him she was on her way.
“Good.
Get here as fast as you can.”
She hung up, turned the car around, made a quick stop, then drove straight to Foster Entertainment.
She parked, pulled on a hat, sunglasses, and a mask, and walked in.
Ding.
The elevator opened.
She stepped into the office in her sleek pointed-toe heels.
“N., you’re here.” Jonathan spotted her first.
His eyebrow ticked up slightly at her new look, though his face stayed carefully neutral.
He guided her to a seat across the long conference table.
On the other side of that table sat Nathaniel Cole and Vivian Blake.
Vivian rose the moment Eliana walked in.
“Hi, N.
I’m Vivian Blake, not sure if you’ve heard of me.” She offered a soft, fragile smile.
“I really want to buy your song.
I’m hoping you’ll consider selling it to me.”
Eliana didn’t answer right away.
She glanced at Nathaniel instead.
He didn’t spare her a single look.
Every ounce of his attention was on Vivian.
Jonathan, seated beside Eliana, cut in before Vivian could push further.
“Ms.
Blake, N.
has no interest in selling this track.
I already made that clear.”
Vivian ignored him completely, eyes fixed on Eliana, glistening.
“But N., I really do love this song.” She paused, wincing as if a wave of pain had just hit her.
Beside her, Nathaniel’s brow furrowed with obvious concern.
Vivian shook her head, waving it off with visible effort, and kept her gaze locked on Eliana.
“N., I only have six months left.
I’m hoping you’ll grant this to me one last wish, before I go.”
Eliana let out a soft, humorless laugh.
Another dying wish.
When Nathaniel first proposed the divorce, it was because Vivian’s dying wish was supposedly to hold a marriage certificate with him for a while.
Now there was a second wish, apparently.
She believed in respecting other people’s pain, in taking life and death seriously but somehow it was always Eliana who ended up footing the bill for that respect.
She had zero interest in extending courtesy to the woman who’d wrecked her marriage.
Was this really just leverage using a fake terminal diagnosis to squeeze whatever she wanted out of people?
“And if I say no?” Eliana said, voice low and even.
Vivian’s throat caught.
“I’ve heard all about your situation, Ms.
Blake.” Eliana kept her tone quiet.
“Your countdown’s been trending online for days now.
But whether I sell this song is entirely my business.
I owe you nothing toward your ‘last wish,’ and frankly, I don’t even understand what you’d want with it.”
She paused for exactly three seconds.
“What’s the plan, stream it across your platforms, or save it for the funeral?”
“You!” Vivian’s face went red with fury, and she broke into a fit of coughing.
Nathaniel rushed to pat her back, shooting Eliana a look of open displeasure.
It was the first time he’d actually looked at her since she’d walked in.
“N., don’t you think that was a bit much?” His voice came out cold, his frown deep.
His mouth pressed into that familiar hard line, dark eyes sharp with disapproval.
Eliana studied him.
Different outfit than yesterday’s.
She recognized it immediately, one of the sets she’d picked out and hung in the villa’s closet herself.
So he’d already gone back to the house they’d shared.
Which meant he already knew she’d moved out.
And clearly, it hadn’t mattered to him at all.
Fine.
That was fine.
She steadied herself, gaze dropping behind the shield of her sunglasses, avoiding his eyes entirely.
“I’d say forcing someone to sell against their will is worse than anything I just said,” she replied.
“If you’re going to pull a stunt like this, you should be ready for the backlash that comes with it.”
His frown deepened further, displeasure written plainly across his face.
“Nathaniel, let me handle this.” Before he could say more, Vivian cut in sweetly.
The office lighting was warm, but her pale Celine suit only made her look paler still.
“N., I mean it, I really love this song.”
As she spoke, her eyes flicked toward Nathaniel beside her.
“It moved something in me.
Deeply.”
“It’s clearly about falling for someone with the mix of passion, secrecy, and quiet insecurity that comes with loving someone you’re not sure you deserve.”
“All the effort you pour into a relationship.
The joy it gives you.
And then”
Her eyes dimmed.
“The bone-deep despair of realizing your time is running out.”
“A kind of hopelessness that gets into your marrow.”
“N., that despair I live inside it every single day now.
It’s unbearable.”
“But what moved me most was the ending.
The moment the character finally lets go.”
“That’s exactly where I am.
Accepting everything.
Releasing everything.
Trying to spend what’s left of my life in peace.”
Her voice wavered and steadied by turns, carrying the practiced cadence of someone who’d clearly lived through a great deal, the kind of performance that pulled sympathy out of a room without even trying.
Nathaniel, seated beside her, looked utterly convinced.
Eliana watched something flicker across his face as Vivian described that “despair” genuine ache, genuine tenderness.
Something she had never once seen directed at her.
Not in seven years.
Not once, in all that time, had he looked at her the way he was looking at Vivian now, after less than a year.
Watching them together, she might as well have been looking at two lovers who’d weathered real hardship side by side.
Too bad she was the actual wife in this story.
None of it moved her one bit.
If anything, the whole scene felt grotesquely out of place.
“N., this song captures everything I’ve been going through right now.
I understand exactly what you felt when you wrote it.
And I think, deep down, you want it to go to someone who truly understands it.”
Vivian pressed on, clearly convinced that after that speech, Eliana would have no choice but to agree.
After all, if the song was going to sell eventually anyway, better it go to someone who genuinely connected with it or so the logic went.
Except.
Eliana felt a laugh building in her chest, unstoppable.
Because that song wasn’t about some tragic, doomed love affair at all.
It was about falling for the wrong man.
About betrayal disguised as devotion.
It described exactly what it had felt like falling in love with Nathaniel, then marrying him, then discovering his infidelity and finally, the slow, painful work of letting go.
Vivian had just tried to seduce her with a love story built entirely from the wreckage of her own heartbreak.
The irony of it was almost too much.
Eliana couldn’t hold the laugh in any longer.
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed.
“N., the fact that Vivi even saw this song in the first place tells me you were already planning to sell it.”
His voice stayed level, clinical, the same tone he probably used closing business deals worth nine figures.
“If you’re refusing now, it’s either the buyer or the price you have a problem with.”
He held her gaze steadily.
All he got back was the dark reflection of his own face in her sunglasses.
“Established songwriters charge in the low millions.
Successful artists can pull tens of millions annually in royalties alone.”
“Ten million,” he said flatly.
“That should more than satisfy you.”
Eliana just smiled.
Ten million was absurd, honestly for an unknown pseudonym like N., a few hundred thousand would already be a generous offer.
And Nathaniel was offering ten times that, for Vivian.
She laughed so hard tears nearly welled up in her eyes.
Vivian, baffled and increasingly irritated, tried again.
“N., that’s an incredibly generous offer.
There’s a music competition called Voice of Heaven.
I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
I’m planning to feature this song as my signature piece on the show, and I think”
She was still talking when Jonathan finally lost his patience.
He slammed a hand on the table and stood.
“I already said no.
Nathaniel, don’t push this.”
Nathaniel didn’t move from his seat, just fixed Jonathan with a cold look and somehow, even seated, his presence still dominated the room.
Eliana wiped a stray tear of laughter from the corner of her eye and tugged gently at Jonathan’s sleeve.
“I’ll sell it,” she said.
Voice of Heaven, the exact music competition Eliana had already agreed to compete on herself.