My Husband Stole My Voice for His Pop-Star Mistress

Chapter 2

Lyra slammed her bleeding fist against the reinforced glass of the studio door again, the heavy thud barely registering in the perfectly soundproofed room.

"Julian!" she screamed, her voice tearing at the edges. "Let me out! You bastard, let me out!"

Silence answered her. Beyond the thick glass, the hallway was empty, bathed in harsh fluorescent light. The red letters on the keypad—*Access Denied: Ghostwriter Mode Activated*—mocked her from the other side.

Panic, sharp and suffocating, clawed at her throat. She spun around, her calculating mind automatically assessing the room. The studio was a vault. Julian had designed it that way to prevent corporate espionage, spending millions on biometric locks, reinforced steel framing, and a dedicated, closed-loop ventilation system.

It was meant to keep the world out. Now, it was keeping her in.

She sprinted to the landline phone on the mixing desk. She snatched the receiver and jammed her finger onto the '9' key to get an outside line.

*Beep-beep-beep.*

"We're sorry, this extension does not have outbound calling privileges," a pre-recorded automated voice chimed.

"Damn it!" Lyra slammed the phone down. Julian had already restricted the network. She threw herself into her rolling chair and frantically pulled up the studio's intranet terminal. Her fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, attempting to bypass the firewall and access the building's security mainframe.

*Password Required.*

She typed Julian's master password.

*Error: Credentials Revoked.*

She typed in the backdoor developer code she had secretly programmed a year ago.

*Error: System Override by Executive Command.*

He had planned this. Every detail. The annulment, the merger, the locks. He had meticulously stripped away her power while she had been blindly composing love songs for his mistress.

Suddenly, a sharp, piercing sound cut through the heavy silence of the room.

Lyra jumped. It was her cell phone, vibrating violently against a stack of sheet music on the corner of the desk. She lunged for it.

The caller ID made her heart stop. *St. Jude’s Medical Center.*

"Hello?" Lyra gasped, swiping the screen to answer. "Hello, this is Lyra."

"Ms. Vance, this is Dr. Aris," a tense, urgent voice said over the line. "I'm calling about your sister, Clara."

Lyra gripped the edge of the console, her knuckles turning white. Clara. Her sweet, fragile twenty-year-old sister who had been battling a degenerative heart condition for three years. Clara was the only reason Lyra pushed herself so hard, the only reason she had accepted Julian's extreme secrecy—to pay for the world-class medical care Clara required.

"What's wrong?" Lyra demanded, her own crisis instantly eclipsed by terror. "I saw her yesterday. She was stable."

"Her condition deteriorated rapidly in the last hour," Dr. Aris said, the background noise of the hospital chaotic and loud behind him. "She's experiencing acute myocardial failure. We're prepping her for emergency surgery, but her vitals are crashing. She's asking for you, Lyra. You need to get here now."

"I'm coming," Lyra said instantly, tears springing to her eyes. "Tell her I'm coming. Put her on the phone, please."

There was a shuffle, and then a weak, trembling voice came through the speaker. "Ly... Lyra?"

"Clara! Baby, I'm here," Lyra choked out, pressing the phone hard against her ear.

"I'm scared," Clara whispered, her voice innocent and terrifyingly thin. "The machines keep beeping. It hurts, Lyra. It hurts to breathe."

"I know, sweetie, I know. Just hold on," Lyra pleaded, her eyes darting around the locked studio like a trapped animal. "I'll be right there. I promise. Just keep your eyes open for me, okay?"

"Hurry," Clara breathed.

The phone crackled, and Dr. Aris came back on the line. "We're moving her to the OR now. How fast can you get here?"

Lyra pulled the phone away from her face for a fraction of a second. The battery icon in the top right corner flashed a menacing red. *4%.*

"Ten minutes," Lyra lied, her voice shaking. "I'm on my way."

She dropped the phone onto the desk and sprinted to the wall-mounted intercom beside the locked door. It was a hardwired line directly to the executive suites on the top floor. She slammed her palm against the call button, holding it down.

"Julian! Answer me!" she screamed into the speaker mesh. "Julian!"

She waited. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. She hit the button again, hammering it with her bruised fist.

"Answer the damn intercom!"

A crisp burst of static crackled from the speaker, followed by Julian's cold, annoyed sigh. "Are you done throwing your tantrum, Lyra? I have a board meeting in five minutes."

"Julian, it's Clara," Lyra gasped, tears spilling over her cheeks. "She's crashing. St. Jude's just called. She's going into emergency surgery and her heart is failing. You have to let me out."

There was a long pause on the other end.

"Nice try, Lyra," Julian said, his tone dripping with arrogant skepticism. "But you're going to have to do better than a fabricated medical emergency to get me to open that door."

"It's not a lie!" Lyra shrieked, pressing her forehead against the cold steel of the doorframe. "Call Dr. Aris! Call the hospital! I swear to God, Julian, she is dying! Please. Please let me out."

"Let's say I believe you," Julian mused, the chilling calculation returning to his voice. "If I let you out now, you're highly emotional. You're irrational. You just threatened to call a press conference and destroy my company. Why would I open the door and let a live grenade walk out of the building?"

"I won't say anything!" Lyra begged, dropping her pride, dropping her anger, dropping everything for her sister. "I'll sign whatever you want. I'll sign a lifetime NDA. I'll give up my shares. Just let me see my sister before she goes into surgery."

"Sienna's album drops in three weeks, Lyra. The Horizon Media merger relies on a flawless PR narrative," Julian stated, his voice a flat, emotionless drone of corporate logic. "I can't have my ghostwriter running around a public hospital having a hysterical meltdown. The paparazzi practically live at St. Jude's looking for celebrity charity cases. If they see you, they'll ask questions. If they ask questions, the merger is at risk."

"I don't care about the merger!" Lyra screamed, her voice echoing violently off the acoustic panels. "She's my sister! She's twenty years old! She is entirely innocent in all of this, Julian! Please!"

"I've given you everything, Lyra," Julian countered, his narcissistic wound flaring. "I gave you a state-of-the-art studio. I gave you a canvas for your genius. I pay for that hospital room. And the moment things don't go your way, you threaten to burn my empire down. You brought this on yourself."

Lyra’s breath hitched. She realized she couldn't appeal to his humanity; he didn't have any. She had to appeal to his greed.

"Julian, listen to me," she said, her voice dropping to a rapid, desperate whisper. "You want hits? I will write you a hundred hits. I will give you three albums, fully tracked, fully mixed, vocal-mapped to Sienna flawlessly. I will make her the biggest star in the history of the world. I will make you a trillionaire. I will be your ghost forever. Just press the button and let me go to the hospital."

"You'll do that anyway," Julian replied coldly. "Because you have nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do."

"Julian!" Lyra sobbed, sliding down the door until her knees hit the floor. "I am begging you. If I don't go now, I might never see her alive again. Don't do this. I'll never forgive you. I will never, ever forgive you."

"I'm not looking for your forgiveness, Lyra. I'm looking for the master tracks by Friday."

"She is dying!" Lyra roared, slamming her fists against the floor.

"The album is more important than collateral damage," Julian stated smoothly. "Get back to work."

*Click.*

The intercom feed cut out, leaving a hollow, dead silence in its wake.

Lyra scrambled back up to her feet, running toward the mixing desk where her cell phone lay. She had to call the police. She had to call an ambulance to come to the studio. She had to do something.

She snatched the phone up. The screen lit up for a fraction of a second, displaying the hospital's number in her recent call log.

Then, the battery icon flashed empty. A spinning gray circle appeared in the center of the glass.

"No, no, no, no," Lyra chanted, frantically pressing the power button. "Not now. Please, not now."

The screen went pitch black. Her phone battery had died.

Lyra stood in the center of the golden cage she had built with her own two hands, utterly cut off from the world, as the silence of the underground studio swallowed her alive.