The night Elias Hart died was the kind of night made to be remembered.
Valmere glittered like a jewel half-buried in fog—its skyline burning gold above a restless ocean, its streets pulsing with the heartbeat of a million watchers. The Zenith Theatre, all glass and ambition, was the center of it. Inside, beneath chandeliers that looked like frozen lightning, the world's favorite actor-singer smiled until his jaw hurt.
Every camera found him.
Every smile cost him a piece of peace.
He had built his empire from a voice and a secret, and tonight the empire applauded him back. His latest film, Seraph's Requiem, had broken every record. The crowd shouted his name, but he searched for only one face. She was never among them.
Maya Hart—though no one knew that was her name—stood in the second balcony, veiled by the dim light reserved for the unseen. Her hair was pinned in the quiet style of women who prefer not to be remembered. She wore no jewels, only a thin silver band on her finger, the secret ring he had slipped on her hand the day before he signed the contract that would eventually kill him.
The ceremony ended in champagne and flashes. Elias looked up once, toward the balcony and For a moment his smile was real.
Then someone whispered into his ear.
And the light in his face dimmed, the way stars fade before dawn.
(Time skip)
The afterparty bled into midnight. Laughter and perfume spilled through the corridors like narcotic smoke. Maya waited in their private suite at the Grand Arlène Hotel, fingers tracing the rim of an untouched glass. At 2:17 a.m., her phone lit with his name.
"Stay in," he said. His voice was low, wrong, clipped between fear and restraint. "Whatever happens, stay."
"Elias—"
But the line went dead.
At 3:02 a.m., the city screamed.
The Zenith Tower's side street had turned blue with sirens. A crowd pressed behind police tape, hungry for tragedy. Elias Hart lay where the glass had broken, fallen from the thirty-second floor through a window that had been wired with safety mesh. The papers would later call it an inexplicable accident.
But Maya knew his fear. Elias never went near windows.
When she arrived, hours later, the sun had begun to pale the city. The coroner's men refused to let her near. A detective murmured condolences to a woman he believed was a fan. His bodyguard avoided her eyes. His manager cried in front of the cameras and looked too relieved.
Maya didn't cry.
She only touched the bloodstained pavement with her hand, as if feeling the last heat he left behind, and whispered a promise.
"Whoever took you from me will meet you soon."