Adrian's POV

My phone jolted me awake. I answered, fumbling.

"Adrian." My boss sounded grave. "It's awful. Awful. The piece's already come out. Blogs, socials, forums—it's everywhere. They're accusing you of being a fake. That you've been lying to everyone."

My heart clutched, the steering wheel slick in my palms. "Please tell me we can fix this."

Silence. Then, a sigh. “I’ll try. But right now… you’re toxic.”

The call cut off.

I sat frozen, the word toxic reverberating in my skull until it drowned out everything else. My pulse roared in my ears. My breaths came shallow. Everything I’d built, everything I’d bled for—gone, shattered like glass on pavement.

With shaking hands, I tried to call Ethan. He'd know something. He'd know what to do, which string to pull, whom to call.

But before I could shift the car into gear, a burst of headlights swerved across my windshield. Tires screamed. A black van cut and pinned me in.

Before I could get out from under it, doors slammed open. Figures came pouring out, running toward me.

"What the—

The first hit was through the open driver's side door, yanking my head to the side. Pain flashed across my head. I tried to scream, but hands tugged me out of the seat, into the rain. Rain mixed with the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

Fists and boots rained on me, one after another, until I couldn't distinguish where the pain began or ended.

"Teach him a lesson," someone growled.

My vision blurred, edges shadowing in black. I let my body fall onto the pavement. Somewhere out of the fog, I saw the retreat of a pair of boots, heard the roar of a motor.

And the abhorrent crunch of rubber screaming across flesh. My flesh.

The world went black.

I thought I was drowning at first.

Dark enveloped me, heavy and bottomless, until a blinding white burst through it. My chest convulsed, lungs burning. A raw gasp strangled up my throat—except it wasn't a gasp at all. It was silence. A silence so bitter and foreign that fear tore through me.

My eyes flew open.

The world was a haze of antiseptic whites and blaring machines. The pungent sting of antiseptic burned my nose, along with the agony firing through each bone in my body. I tried to talk, to yell, but what emerged was a broken rasp. No voice. No sound.

Horror broke out. I stretched up and reached for my throat, wires digging at my skin, tubes catching at my arms. Bandages caught at my fingertips—thick and rough and constricting. I was startled to discover that something was wrong. Something is seriously, seriously wrong. From the other side of the room, a nurse whispered, "Adrian," but her eyes quickly averted as though she couldn't keep staring into mine. She pressed a button and spoke softly to summon a doctor. I tried to sit up, but the pain was sharp and constant. My body felt heavy and alien. Looking at the steel mirror that was affixed to the wall made me feel nauseous. The face of a stranger holding a mirror greeted me. The whole of my face is made up of jagged stitches, swelling, and bruises. One eye close to being swollen shut, my jaw crooked by the violence of the crash. My lips trembling, but nothing. No words. No voice. No song.

I tried to scream. To tear the silence apart. But all I could manage was a raw wheeze that rattled in my chest.

The doctor arrived, voice low, reined in, as if addressing someone already broken.

"Your throat was traumatized… it was bad. The vocal cords were irreparable." He stopped, pity playing in his eyes. "Sorry, Adrian. You're not going to be able to sing anymore."

The words drained me.

I pushed back against the pillow, looking up at ceiling tiles until they were a blur, tears streaming hot and unbidden. My voice—gone. The very thing that had been mine, stolen from me in a few hours.

But fate wasn't finished with me yet.

When the cloud of grief had cleared, I saw something else. The biting sting of metal against my wrist. I glanced around, my heart pounding, and saw the handcuffs. One was securely wrapped around my arm, the other fastened to the hospital bed.

Confusion intertwined with fear. I tried to gesture, to demand a reply, but the nurse only glanced at the door. Two minutes passed, and then two uniformed officers entered.

"Adrian Cole," one of them stated bluntly, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, "you are under arrest for possession and sale of narcotics."

The words didn't register. They couldn't. My head jerked back and forth, pain splitting my skull. I attempted to mouth the words no, not me, but my throat again betrayed me, coming up with nothing but silence.

"You were found with enough in your car to supply a small empire," the officer continued, his face expressionless. "Cocaine. Ecstasy. Pills. All neatly packaged. Ready to be sold to your clients, and I guess from the look of things… the business transaction did not end well for you hence you landed on this hospital bed.”

I wanted to yell, to protest, but in the back of my mind I already knew—I'd been set up.

“This is a lie! I’ve been set up, someone is after me.” But I was sure the words only made sense to me, as all that came out was hushed grunts and rushed words that sounded like gibberish.

“Are you calling Ethan Cross a liar? Because he tipped us about your dirty dealing!” The cop replied with a hint of mockery in his voice.

The tubes in my arm trembled with the ferocity of my shaking. Anger and grief fought within me, both as sharp as the other. My voice lost. My face ruined. My freedom stolen from me. And the one man who should have been standing beside me had been the one who set me up.

I lay there, restrained to the bed, the sound of his betrayal ringing clearer than any tune I ever composed.

My world hadn't fallen apart. It had been burned to ashes.

“Why Ethan? Why?”