Chapter 25
And the shame, the shame of wanting more won't fade…
Vale
Kieran’s silence was absolute, fury radiating from him in waves that made Vale’s pulse quicken.
His eyes had that strange distant quality—present but not, focused on something internal while his body stayed rigid.
His hands trembled at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling in an unconscious rhythm.
His gaze would snap into sharp focus for a moment before drifting somewhere else entirely—dissociation wrapped around fury, both states coexisting in the same body.
“Thorn!” Eliza exclaimed as she adjusted lighting arrays around the parlor room, oblivious to the tension. “Hi, I’m so excited to work with you again!”
Kieran’s response was barely audible: “Hi.”
“Here, let me get this on you.” Eliza approached with a lapel microphone, and Kieran’s body went rigid as she clipped it to one of the gauze strips. “This mic is much better than the set up we used last time. It will capture every breath, every whisper. The intimacy will be incredible.”
“C-can we hide it?” Kieran asked.
Vale moved forward before Eliza could respond, catching her arm. “Actually, I need a word with you first. Thorn, take a moment—drink some water.”
He drew Eliza into the hallway, closing the door behind them. The smile he’d been wearing dissolved.
“Your mixing speed on the last video was brilliant,” Vale said quietly, each word precisely measured. “The audio quality, the way you layered the ambient sound—genuinely impressive work.”
Eliza brightened. “Thank you! I thought you’d be pleased with—”
“It was also completely inappropriate.”
The temperature in the hallway dropped. Eliza’s smile faltered, confusion flickering across her features.
“You posted footage of my artist without my explicit permission. You made editorial decisions about content that wasn’t yours to make and you exposed a private moment that could have had serious consequences.”
“But—the response was incredible,” Eliza protested. “Four million views. The way people connected with it, the narrative it created—I thought you’d want that kind of visibility for him. It’s exactly the kind of authentic moment that builds careers.”
“I don’t care what you thought I’d want.” Vale’s voice remained soft, but his posture shifted—predatory, threatening. “You work for me. You follow my direction. You don’t make decisions about what gets released without clearing it with me first.”
Eliza’s jaw set stubbornly. “With all due respect, I know viral content when I see it. That video was perfect. The mystery caregiver angle, the intimacy, the way it positioned Thorn as someone worth protecting—it was good content.”
“Content that could have destroyed everything if it had gone wrong.” Vale took a step closer, and Eliza instinctively backed up until her shoulders hit the wall.
“Do you know what kind of exposure that created? What kind of scrutiny? People are debating online if he faked it. Thorn is sensitive and sweet, those comments have caused him genuine distress.”
“It keeps people talking about him.”
“Tell me, Eliza—do you want to be an assistant forever?”
Eliza’s eyes widened slightly.
“Because I have connections. Real connections. Major labels, established producers, artists who could transform your career from promising to significant. I could open doors for you that would take years to access on your own.” He let that sink in, watching her do the calculations in her head.
“Or I could ensure that every important person in this industry knows you can’t be trusted with sensitive material.
That you make unauthorized decisions. That you prioritize your own instincts over client direction.
That conversation would take about three phone calls.
Your career would plateau exactly where it is now—a competent assistant who never quite makes the jump to respected professional. ”
Eliza’s face was pale. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” Vale’s laugh was soft and barbed. “This industry isn’t fair. It’s about reputation and trust. And right now, I’m deciding which reputation you get to carry forward.”
The silence stretched between them while she glared at him.
“I understand,” Eliza finally said, her lips barely moving. “It won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t. Because you’re going to remember that everything you see here, everything you observe between me and Thorn, everything you witness during these sessions—it all stays private unless I explicitly clear it for release. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good.” Vale’s smile returned, warm and professional as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened.
“Because you really are talented, Eliza. Your eye for composition is exceptional. The way you captured that seizure—the framing, the ambient sound, the raw intimacy—it was genuinely brilliant work. I want to keep collaborating with you. I want to help you build the career you deserve. But that only works if you understand the boundaries.”
Eliza nodded slowly, and Vale could see her vulture instincts reasserting themselves—calculating, adapting, moving forward because the opportunity was too valuable to lose over wounded pride.
“The NDA you signed covers everything. Not just the content we produce, but anything you observe about how we work together. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Excellent.” Vale opened the parlor room door, gesturing for her to enter first. “Now let’s make something incredible.”
They returned to find Kieran exactly where they’d left him, staring at nothing with that strange distant focus, rage still radiating from every line of his body.
He looked up as they entered, and Vale caught the way his gaze snapped into fear before sliding away again—present and absent simultaneously.
Still holding it together. Still channeling everything into fury instead of letting yourself feel what else happened down there.
“Having the microphone visible adds to the aesthetic,” Vale said to Kieran as if nothing had interrupted the flow of conversation. “Raw documentation rather than polished production.”
Eliza nodded enthusiastically, all traces of their confrontation hidden behind professional excitement. “Exactly! Like we’re witnessing something private being made public.”
Vale pulled up his hood and pulled the mask over his face, rendering his face unrecognizable while allowing him to still see.
“Thorn,” he called softly. “Show Eliza your blocking.”
Vale watched as Kieran walked Eliza through his choreographed movements—the precise placement of books, the timing of their fall, the way his path would weave around the room.
“Incredible,” Eliza breathed, adjusting her Steadicam rig. “The percussion element, the spatial awareness—you’re not just performing a song, you’re inhabiting it.”
Vale settled at the piano bench as anticipation thrummed through his chest. Everything aligned—Kieran’s rage barely contained in his shaking body, Eliza reminded of her boundaries, the perfect acoustic environment he’d spent years perfecting.
Vale noticed a tremor in his own fingers, still stuck on the heat of Kieran’s body, the way he clenched around Vale while trying desperately to hold onto his guitar, to keep playing as his pleas turned to sobs and then whimpers.
The memory made Vale’s pulse spike even as his hands found the opening chord.
You’re going to take all that fury I carved into you and make something the world will never forget.
“Ready when you are,” Eliza announced, camera raised.
Kieran positioned himself with his back to the camera, his heavy breathing audible even from a distance—controlled but rapid, like someone preparing for battle.
He rolled his shoulders, cleared his throat, and began with a humming vocalization that transformed into the song’s opening rhythm.
Kieran turned to face the camera so suddenly it looked like an invisible force had spun him around.
“I cracked open my ribcage like the spine of a book,
Take a look, take a look at the pages inside…”
There it is. The fire I knew was hiding beneath all your careful protections. The rage you were too scared to touch until I made you feel it while taking everything else from you.
The soft vocalization—”Mm-mm”—escaped his throat like someone trying to hold back screams, then launched into the next verse with building intensity:
“Every chapter written in the language of ache,
Every verse a mistake I was trying to hide…”
Eliza backed up as Kieran advanced, almost spitting his lyrics at her, each word delivered like a condemnation and a curse. The pre-chorus built like gathering storm clouds—Kieran’s voice continuing to climb:
“Reading between the lines I’d drawn in blood,
Thumbing through the flood of everything I was...”
The chorus was a gunshot through the room:
“But you didn’t like what you saw in the margins,
So you banned the book, banned the book—”
His feet found the first stack of books with perfect timing, the thud punctuating “banned the book“ with percussion that felt like heartbeats, like doors slamming, like the sound of dreams being discarded.
“Took a match to my confessions,
Burned the lessons, burned the look...”
he continued, kicking another stack as he moved through the space, almost weightlessly.
Vale’s fingers found their entrance, his beloved piano joining the devastation as Kieran moved into the second verse.
The way he delivered “I shelved myself in sections, sorted pain by publication date“ made Vale’s chest tighten—this wasn’t just about internet comments anymore, it was an autobiography set to music.
“Catalogued my fractures in the Tragedy aisle,
Filed my smile under Fiction—’cause it hadn’t been seen in a while…”
Kieran was magnetic, pulling focus even as he moved backward through the room toward Vale. His gaze never left the camera, accusatory and unwavering, until he snapped down to snarl directly into Vale’s ear with the intimate fury of lovers fighting:
“I was Dewey Decimal, organized by damage,
Every bandage catalogued and cross-referenced pathetic page...”
You hate me right now. You’re performing that hatred, channeling it, making it beautiful. And later tonight when you’ve burned through this rage, I’ll make you feel better with gentle hands.
Kieran swept sheet music from the piano and moved to demolish another book arrangement, the sound of papers rustling adding a randomized texture that a studio production could never achieve.
He sang toward the ceiling first, his arms spread wide like someone addressing the divine, then turned that devastating gaze directly into the camera lens:
“Every book I ever was; Is just a ghost of what you thought you wanted;
When you asked me to unfold.
You didn’t like what you saw in the margins;
So you banned the book,
Banned the book—”
But halfway through, something shifted. Instead of moving to the next book stack, Kieran looked down at his hands with pure disgust. He pulled the guitar over his head and began smashing it against the hardwood floor in perfect rhythm with Vale’s continued playing.
He sang while destroying his instrument, each impact landing perfectly with the beat, wood splintering and strings snapping but his voice never faltered,
“Took a torch to my collection,
Burned my sections, burned my nook,
Now I’m holding ashes, holding ashes, holding ashes—”
The repetition became obsessive, hypnotic, each shattered piece of that guitar was a piece of himself Kieran was willing to destroy for this moment—rage given physical form, fury made visible.
Vale played the soft outro, watching in awe as Kieran—eyes red-rimmed with fury and exhaustion, stumbled forward and grabbed the sides of Eliza’s camera, startling her as he pulled himself close to whisper the final lines like a man gone mad:
“Take a look, take a look, take a look,
Did you take a look?
At what’s left when the smoke clears?
Just the reader,
Just the reader...
Just the fear.”
He dropped to his knees among the wreckage of his instrument like someone whose rage had finally burned through every support structure.
“Cut!” Eliza breathed, hitting a button on her camera.
Vale moved before conscious thought engaged, ripping off the mesh mask as he reached Kieran’s side. His arms wrapped around the shaking boy, pulling him close while surveying the destruction they’d captured together.
“Perfect,” Vale whispered against Kieran’s hair, smoothing the dark strands back from his flushed face. “That was absolutely perfect.”
Kieran just stared at the remains of his guitar—strings snapped, neck cracked, wood scattered across hardwood like the aftermath of inevitable violence. His breathing was ragged, his chest heaving beneath gauze wrapping, and Vale could feel the tremors running through him.
“You were magnificent,” Vale continued, pressing a kiss to Kieran’s forehead. “Every word, every movement, every moment of rage. They’ll never question you after this.”
Eliza packed up her equipment with very little fanfare, already moving forward because that was what vultures did—they took what they could and kept flying.
Kieran’s hands clutched at Vale’s shirt as the first sob tore from his throat, and Vale wondered if his beautiful boy was seeking comfort or trying to push the architect of his breaking away.
The distinction didn’t matter. He’d live inside the glass house that was Kieran and shatter him every day for the privilege of piecing him back together with bloody fingers, satisfied with the knowledge that his DNA lived in the cracks.
The guitar lay in pieces around them like a sacrifice accepted by gods who demanded blood or bone and got both wrapped in white gauze, captured in perfect 4K resolution.