Chapter 2

The Sinclair estate sat on two hundred acres of Tennessee hills — a monument to four generations of music money. The main house had thirty-eight rooms. The barn had been converted into a recording studio where legends had cut albums before I was born.

I hadn't seen it in six years.

The car rolled through the gates and Junie pressed her face to the window. "Mom. Is this a castle?"

"No, baby. This is where Mommy grew up."

"You grew up RICH and you made us share a BATHROOM?"

Beckett, quieter, studied the grounds. "There are cameras in the trees," he observed. "And that man is wearing an earpiece."

My son. Five years old, missing nothing.

My grandmother waited at the door. Colette Sinclair — seventy-nine, a former label executive who had discovered three Hall-of-Famers and buried two rivals, wearing silk pajamas and diamond studs at one in the morning because Colette Sinclair did not adjust her standards for the hour.

She looked at me, then the twins, and her expression cycled through joy, rage, and lethal calculation in two seconds flat.

"Inside," she said. "I have soup, bourbon, and lawyers. In that order."

The children were swept upstairs into a room that had been ready for years — two beds, bookshelves, a tiny keyboard in the corner.

"How long has this room existed?" I asked.

"Since the day you left," Colette said simply. "Your grandfather updates the toys every Christmas. He's terrible at it. Last year he bought five-year-olds a vintage mixing console. But he does it."

The guilt was a familiar ache. I had left to prove I could exist without the Sinclair name. I'd married Jace Carter — beautiful, broke, blazing with talent — because he looked at me like I was a person, not a portfolio. I'd hidden everything. Lived on his advances. Clipped coupons while my trust fund gathered dust.

And when his own writing stalled after the first album, I'd started slipping him songs — through a pseudonym, a publishing shell, an untraceable email. Songbird. Eleven number ones. I told myself it was love. Keeping his dream alive was keeping us alive.

I had wanted ordinary love. I got ordinary betrayal, scored to my own melodies.

My grandfather was in his study behind a desk that had hosted presidents and pop stars. Marcus Sinclair at eighty-three was still terrifying — silver-haired, six-two, with eyes like contract clauses.

He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me, and I felt the tremor of a man who'd held himself together for six years waiting for this.

"My girl. My brave, stubborn, foolish girl."

"I'm sorry, Grandfather."

"Don't." He gripped my shoulders. "You went looking for something real. The man was counterfeit. That's his failure. Not yours."

He poured two bourbons and opened a file.

"Jace Carter. Contract renewal pending — sitting on my desk, unsigned. Tour rights, streaming catalog, sync licensing — all routed through Sinclair subsidiaries. His career doesn't just run on our money, Wren. It runs on your words. What do you want?"

I set down my glass and heard my own voice come out cold and clear.

"I want full custody of Junie and Beckett. I want Patricia Carter to learn that the woman she called 'nothing' could buy her son's entire genre. And I want Jace to come to me — not because he learns who I am. Because he finally understands what he lost. And then I want him to discover it was infinitely more than he imagined."

My grandfather leaned back with a slow, predatory smile. "That is a Sinclair strategy."

He reached for his phone — then stopped. "One more thing you should see."

He turned his tablet toward me. A Rolling Stone alert, forty minutes old.

SIENNA VOSS: "I CO-WROTE THE ALBUM. THE SONGS WERE OURS."

I stared at the headline. At the woman claiming credit for lyrics I'd written at a kitchen table at 3 a.m. while her texts sat on my husband's phone.

I started to laugh. It didn't sound entirely sane.

"Perfect," I said. "Then let her write the next one."