My Hand, My Song, My Freedom

My Hand, My Song, My Freedom

Gavin

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The smell hit me first, thick, choking smoke, then Lila' s terrified scream ripped through the festival noise. Jax, my fiancé, was a blur beside me, his face tight with a desperate need to save her. He started towards The Swamp Shack, towards the hungry flames devouring the old wooden walls. My body wanted to lunge, to grab his arm, to scream, "No, Jax, don't!" But this time, I didn't. Because I remembered. I remembered the searing pain as burning wood crashed down, crushing my left hand, destroying my music, obliterating my future, in another life. I remembered Jax' s face, twisted not with concern for me, but with fury, after Lila was dead and my hand a useless, mangled thing. "It's your fault, Scarlett! You should have saved her, not me!" his words, a brand on my soul. His family' s money, a weapon that bled me dry, blackballing me from every gig, every chance I had. I remembered the suffocating silence of his plantation, the cold dismissal in his eyes every day of our sham marriage. Oh God, and the smokehouse. Locked in, the Louisiana summer sun beating down, the air so thick I couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, utterly alone. I gasped, the memory so real I could taste the ash and the terror. Now, in this life, Jax was yelling Lila' s name again, ready to play the hero, just like before. But this time the script was mine. This time, I stepped aside. I just watched him charge into the inferno, pure indifference a cold comfort. My hand, my precious hand, was safe. My music was still mine.

Introduction

The smell hit me first, thick, choking smoke, then Lila' s terrified scream ripped through the festival noise.

Jax, my fiancé, was a blur beside me, his face tight with a desperate need to save her.

He started towards The Swamp Shack, towards the hungry flames devouring the old wooden walls.

My body wanted to lunge, to grab his arm, to scream, "No, Jax, don't!"

But this time, I didn't.

Because I remembered.

I remembered the searing pain as burning wood crashed down, crushing my left hand, destroying my music, obliterating my future, in another life.

I remembered Jax' s face, twisted not with concern for me, but with fury, after Lila was dead and my hand a useless, mangled thing.

"It's your fault, Scarlett! You should have saved her, not me!" his words, a brand on my soul.

His family' s money, a weapon that bled me dry, blackballing me from every gig, every chance I had.

I remembered the suffocating silence of his plantation, the cold dismissal in his eyes every day of our sham marriage.

Oh God, and the smokehouse.

Locked in, the Louisiana summer sun beating down, the air so thick I couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, utterly alone.

I gasped, the memory so real I could taste the ash and the terror.

Now, in this life, Jax was yelling Lila' s name again, ready to play the hero, just like before.

But this time the script was mine.

This time, I stepped aside.

I just watched him charge into the inferno, pure indifference a cold comfort.

My hand, my precious hand, was safe.

My music was still mine.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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