I was an Angel, You made me a Villain

One morning I got a text and it was from an unknown number.

Unknown: Heard you survived. It's a pity.

I stared at my phone screen in the darkness of Grandma's study, then deleted the message without responding.

They wanted a reaction but I wouldn't give them one.

Instead, I opened my laptop and went back to work.

It's been three months of teaching myself everything Damien had relied on me to know. Contracts. Rights. Distribution. The ugly machinery behind the music industry that most artists never bothered to understand.

I'd always been good at this part. The business side and the strategy but now I was going to be exceptional at it.

My phone rang and it was Grandma's care facility.

"Miss Monroe, your grandmother is asking for you."

I was there in twenty minutes.

Grandma looked smaller than last week, her skin paper-thin, but her eyes were still sharp when I walked into her room.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Good morning to you too."

"When's the last time you slept?"

"I sleep."

"Liar." She patted the bed beside her. "Sit and tell me about the plan."

I sat and told her everything I'd been working on. The research, the preparation and the one missing piece.

"I need to find someone," I said. "Someone talented enough to be a real threat. Someone Damien wronged badly enough to want revenge as much as I do."

"You'll find them," Grandma said with certainty. "And when you do, you'll burn his entire world down."

She smiled when she said it.

That's where I got it from, I realized. This capacity for cold, calculated destruction.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"Like I'm dying." She laughed at my expression. "Don't look so tragic. I've made my peace with it. I just want to live long enough to see you destroy those bastards."

"You will."

"Promise me something," Grandma said, gripping my hand with surprising strength. "When you win - and you will win - don't let it consume you completely. There has to be something left of you after the revenge is done."

"I'll try."

"No. Promise me."

"I promise."

She settled back against her pillows, satisfied.

I stayed until she fell asleep, then went back to hunting.

---

The bar was called The Pit, and the name was accurate.

It had sticky floors and broken lighting, it was the kind of place where dreams came to die slow, painful deaths.

I'd been to eleven venues in the past two weeks. Watched forty-three different artists perform. Most were forgettable. Some were decent but none were what I needed.

Then he walked on stage.

He looked like he'd been sleeping rough. Clothes that had seen better days. A guitar held together with electrical tape. Dark hair falling into eyes that had seen too much but when he started playing, the entire room should have stopped.

They didn't, of course. The drunk crowd kept talking, kept ignoring him, kept treating him like background noise.

His voice was raw in a way that couldn't be taught. Pain that couldn't be faked and every note felt like it was being ripped out of somewhere deep and honest.

The song was about betrayal. About being used and discarded. About watching someone steal everything you created and claim it as their own.

I knew that feeling intimately.

When he finished, maybe five people clapped. He packed up his guitar with shoulders hunched in defeat and walked off stage.

I followed him outside.

He was in the alley, sitting on a crate, staring at nothing.

"You're wasting your talent in places like this," I said.

He looked up, instantly wary. "If this is a proposition, I'm not interested."

"It's a business opportunity."

"Same thing, usually."

"I want to make you famous," I said bluntly. "Specifically, I want to make you more successful than Damien Richards."

His entire body went rigid.

"Why?" His voice was flat, dangerous.

"Because I'm going to destroy him, and I need someone with talent and motivation to help me do it." I held his gaze. "You clearly have both. So let's talk."

He studied me for a long moment. "Who are you?"

"Adeline Monroe. And you are?"

"Kai Morrison." He stood up slowly. "And I'm listening."

---

We went to a twenty-four-hour diner that smelled like grease and desperation.

Kai ordered coffee, he didn't touch the menu even though I could tell he was hungry. I don't know whether it was pride or poverty or maybe probably both.

"Tell me about Damien Richards," I said.

"You first," Kai countered. "Why do you want to destroy him?"

"He's my ex-husband. He's also a thief, a liar, and a manipulator who destroyed my life. Your turn."

Kai's jaw clenched. "Three years ago, I wrote a song. It was the best thing I'd ever created. I sent it to a producer who said he could get it heard. That producer worked with Damien."

"Let me guess. Your song ended up on Damien's album."

"Not even my whole song. Just the hook and the melody. The part that made it special." Kai's hands tightened around his coffee cup. "He changed enough that I couldn't prove it was mine. Made millions while I lost everything trying to fight him legally."

"Do you still have the original?"

"Every version. Every demo. Time-stamped and saved."

I pulled out my phone and showed him a photo I'd taken of Damien's hard drive before I'd left. Lists of songs and annotations. Notes about "acquiring" material from various sources.

"I have proof he's stolen from at least seven different artists," I said. "Including you. I was the one who helped him cover it up because I didn't know any better. Now I'm going to be the one who exposes him."

Kai stared at the photo. "You're serious."

"Completely."

"Why me? There are bigger artists. People with actual followings."

"Because you're talented enough to be a real threat, desperate enough to take risks, and angry enough to see this through." I leaned forward. "And because watching you destroy Damien with the exact song he stole from you? That's poetic justice."

Kai was quiet for a long time.

"What's the catch?" he finally asked.

"No catch. It's a fair contract with profit sharing. You do exactly what I say, when I say it, and we both get what we want."

"And what do you want?"

"I want to watch Damien Richards lose everything he stole. His career, his reputation and his perfect life with my sister." I smiled, and I could feel how cold it was. "I want him to know it was me who destroyed him."

Kai looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

"You're terrifying," he said.

"Is that a yes?"

He extended his hand across the table. "It's a yes."

I shook it.

"Welcome to the war, Kai Morrison."