My Boyfriend Muted My Mic For His Ex, So I Joined His Fiercest Rival To Destroy Him

The iron gates of Jude Mercer’s property groaned as they swung shut behind us.

From the outside, the place looked abandoned. The three-story brick villa sat tucked behind overgrown pines on the northern ridge, its slate roof weathered and edges frayed. Weeds pushed through the cracks in the stone driveway, and half the shutters on the top floor were bolted shut against the damp night air.

Inside was an entirely different universe.

The moment Jude kicked the front door open, the scent of cedar, warm vacuum tubes, and stale black coffee hit me.

There was almost no furniture in the great room. No couches, no rugs, no television. Instead, acoustic diffusers lined the exposed brick walls, and heavy rubber snake cables snaked across the hardwood floor like dormant pythons. At the center of the room sat a vintage forty-channel Neve console, flanked by two towering custom monitors that cost more than my entire four-year college tuition.

I set my battered black guitar case down against the wall.

It was the only thing I owned that Tyler hadn't bought, branded, or signed his name across.

"Guest room is upstairs, third door on the left," Jude said, tossing his leather vest onto an empty flight case. "Bathroom works. Hot water takes two minutes. Don't touch the rack gear in the hall."

He didn't wait for a thank-you. He walked straight to the console, slid into the rolling leather chair, and flipped a bank of power switches.

The studio hummed to life. Amber lights glowed across the preamps, and the dual monitors flickered on, displaying a complex multitrack waveform. Jude pulled a pair of heavy studio headphones down around his neck, cracked his knuckles, and reached for the faders.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

I pulled it out, expecting a call from the network or our tour manager.

It was a text from Tyler.

*Willa, stop acting like a child. You made a scene in front of four million people, but I managed to smooth things over with the executive producer. I told them you had a severe anxiety relapse and that we’re supporting you through it.*

A second message landed immediately after.

*We need the raw stem files for the next round. All five tracks. Upload the vocal stems, the sub-mixes, and especially your harmony guides to the shared drive by midnight. Lacey needs to practice the modulation on song three before morning rehearsal.*

I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the glass.

A third text popped up.

*Do this right now, and I’ll convince the label to keep you on payroll as our road assistant. You’ll still get your tour per diem, and you won’t destroy your reputation in this town. Don't be stupid, Willa. You need this band.*

A low, dry sound escaped my throat—not a laugh, just the final, brittle snap of whatever pity I had left for him.

A road assistant.

He wanted me to carry Lacey’s garment bags, tune his guitars, and hand him water bottles while she sang my arrangements to the backing tracks I had engineered note by note in our basement.

I walked over to the wooden work table near the console and pulled my laptop from the front pouch of my guitar case. I flipped the lid open and connected to the high-speed studio network.

Across the room, Jude was deep in the zone. His fingers danced across the EQ knobs, cutting a high-frequency whistle from a snare track, his head nodding to a brutal, syncopated rhythm playing through his monitors. He was building something raw, dirty, and heavy—the exact opposite of the sterile, quantized pop Tyler choked on.

I logged into the cloud server.

There it was. The master folder labeled *GLASS ECHO – SHOWCASE ROUND 2*.

Inside sat five subfolders. Every single instrument track, every MIDI map, every vocal guide, and every three-part harmony layer I had recorded at two in the morning while Tyler slept on the studio couch.

Without those tracks, Tyler had a rhythm guitar that barely stayed in tune and a singer who couldn't find middle C without a pitch-corrected backing track feeding into her in-ear monitor.

I clicked the master folder.

I selected all five projects.

Then I dragged them directly into the trash bin.

I didn't stop there. I clicked into the trash directory, highlighted the entire contents, and moved the cursor to the red button in the upper right corner.

*Permanently delete 48.2 gigabytes of data? This action cannot be undone.*

A shadow fell over my screen.

I looked up. Jude had wheeled his chair around from the console. He was leaning back, arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes locked on the dialogue box glowing blue against my face.

"You know what that is?" I asked, my voice completely steady.

"The next round's arrangements," Jude said, his tone flat and observant. "The ones he told the press he spent six months writing in Nashville."

"I spent six months writing them," I said. "In an apartment where the radiator clanked all night."

I clicked *Confirm*.

The progress bar flashed for three seconds. Then the window emptied.

*Zero files.*

"You just wiped out his entire setlist," Jude said.

One of his dark eyebrows drifted upward, a slow, razor-sharp smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

I shut the laptop with a solid, echoing click.

"He wants to sing for her," I said coldly. "He can write for her."

For two seconds, the studio was quiet except for the low whir of the cooling fans inside the amplifiers.

Then Jude let out a short, rough bark of laughter. He pushed off the desk, rolling back toward his board. "Remind me never to leave my hard drives near your bag."

"You don't steal other people's songs," I said, leaning against the table. "You don't have anything to worry about."

"Fair point," he murmured, his hands already back on the faders.

Before the echo of his voice faded, my phone shrieked.

The screen didn't just light up; it practically vibrated off the wooden table.

*Tyler Calling.*

I picked it up and tapped the speaker button, setting it face-up between us.

"Willa!"

Tyler’s voice tore through the phone, ragged and breathless with panic. The slick, television-ready polish was completely gone, replaced by the shrill hysteria of a cornered animal.

"What did you do to the drive?!" he roared. "The folders are gone! The server says the files were purged from your IP address! Where are the stems?!"

I let the silence hang for a beat, letting him listen to the steady hum of my breathing.

"They're gone, Tyler."

"Are you insane?!" The sound of something crashing on his end leaked through the speaker—probably a music stand kicked across the green room floor. "The tech check is at eight in the morning! Lacey can't sing 'Vapor' without the guide track! She doesn't have the bridge memorized, and the band doesn't have the click-track cues! Restore the backup right now!"

"There is no backup," I said evenly. "Those tracks belonged to me. You fired me on national television. Remember?"

"Willa, listen to me," Tyler pleaded, his tone shifting frantically, trying to slip back into that manipulative softness he had used on me for two years. "You're angry. I get it. I handled the stage handoff badly. But we built this together. You can't just burn down everything we worked for because your feelings are hurt. Restore the files, and we’ll renegotiate your split. Forty percent of the publishing. I swear to God, Willa, forty percent—"

"You gave my song to Lacey," I said. "You gave her my jacket. Give her the stems."

"Willa, please—"

I pressed the red circle on the screen.

Tyler's voice cut off mid-sentence.

I didn't pause. I opened his contact card, scrolled straight past his name, his email, and his tour schedule, and tapped the red text at the very bottom.

*Block this Caller.*

*Block Contact.*

Done.

I set the phone face-down on the table. The screen went dark, reflecting nothing but the dim yellow ceiling light above.

Across the room, Jude didn't look up from the console, but his fingers paused on a master fader.

"He's going to drown out there tomorrow," Jude said quietly.

"I know," I answered, picking up my guitar case and turning toward the stairs. "I hope the cameras are rolling."