Chapter 2

“Mr. Thorne,” Chloe Green, my assistant, spoke, her voice hoarse, as she handed me a tablet. “You… you should really see this.”

The screen was inundated with news about last night’s concert.

This proposal was supposed to be the ultimate triumph for both our careers and our love.

I’d poured in hundreds of millions, partnered with dozens of brands. All Sera had to do was propose to me in front of tens of thousands of fans, and the commercial value of our power couple image would have been limitless.

All the pieces were in place, everything was meticulously planned and ready to go.

But now, photos of Sera and Liam Reed embracing on stage were being magnified endlessly, with blindingly harsh headlines screaming: **A-Lister Defies the Corporate Machine for Love.**

And my own bewildered retreat from the stage had been turned into countless mocking memes.

My company’s stock plummeted by three billion dollars.

I calmly scrolled through the headlines, page after page.

Until I saw Sera Hayes’ latest personal statement.

In the statement, she thanked everyone. Everyone, except me. She dismissed me, dismissed the company, as merely “an unpleasant past collaboration,” and declared she would seek her freedom at any cost.

Freedom.

I stared at those two words and suddenly, I laughed.

“Notify PR: No comment, no explanations. Notify Legal: Prepare to activate the most severe breach of contract recovery clauses.”

My assistant froze. “Mr. Thorne, shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we issue a statement to clarify things first? Public opinion is incredibly unfavorable right now.”

“Clarify?” I walked up to him, pointing at Sera’s sugary-sweet face on the screen.

“There’s nothing to clarify with a liar.”

I rubbed my temples, then slumped into the sofa.

The five years with Sera flashed before my eyes, frame by agonizing frame.

Five years ago, she clutched a worn-out guitar, singing an obscure folk song that no one cared about.

There were only a sparse handful of people in the audience. Only I heard a spark of raw talent in her music and decided to give her a chance.

I signed her, set up a small studio.

Back then, we had nothing. To save money, we slept on the floor in this cramped three-hundred-square-foot office, surviving on instant ramen and dreaming the most distant dreams.

She said, “Alex, when I make it big, the first thing I’ll do is marry you!”

I laughed back, “When you make it big, first, pay back the company’s startup funds.”

She teasingly called me materialistic, but her eyes were full of bright ambition.

To produce her first album, I sold the only property my parents had left me.

To secure her an opening slot at a music festival, I drank with investors until I ended up in the ER with a bleeding stomach, my assistant rushing me there in the dead of night.

When she arrived at the hospital, her eyes were blazing red. She gripped my hand and said, “Alex, I’ll never let you suffer like this again.”

Looking at her then, I felt it was all worth it. Every single sacrifice.

I thought we were bound by destiny, each other’s only support.

I poured all my resources and heart into paving her way to stardom, every single step.

I taught her how to face the cameras, how to handle the media, how to package herself into the perfect idol for her fans.

She learned quickly, and she succeeded.

So she became bigger and bigger, and we moved into the most luxurious office building downtown. Our little studio grew into a full-fledged company.

But our relationship, too, subtly shifted.

She started complaining about my controlling nature, saying my schedule was too packed, leaving her no time to create, longing for some “purity.”

Liam Reed, a younger man she called her “junior,” appeared around this time.

He became the embodiment of her so-called “purity.”

I confronted her about it once, just a month before the concert.

“Sera, we’re business partners, and we’re lovers. I don’t want anything jeopardizing the foundation of our partnership,” I said, cutting straight to the chase.

She sat opposite me, scrolling dismissively on her phone. “You’re overthinking it. Liam is just a friend, someone I can talk music with.”

“I’m the one handling all your music,” I reminded her.

She snapped her head up, a look of pure loathing and defiance in her eyes that I’d never seen before. “That’s different! That’s commercial! That’s a product! Don’t you get it? All you understand is business!”

“With Liam, I feel like a living, breathing person, not just a commodity in your hands!”

That was the first time I realized she was no longer the Sera Hayes who’d fought by my side.

She was just a successful product I had created.

And now, this product had developed its own thoughts and wanted to break free from me.

I chose to handle it with a cold shoulder back then.

I thought it was just her ego inflating from fame, that once the concert concluded smoothly, and our relationship was solidified by a grand proposal ceremony, everything would go back to normal.

I was wrong.

I was wrong to treat her like a controllable pawn, ignoring the most uncontrollable betrayal of human nature.