15. Chapter Fifteen #2
His attorneys warned him that posting the recordings outside the planned commercial system would provoke arguments under agreements negotiated before Billy was fired.
Hunter controlled enough of the masters and publishing to release them anyway.
Counsel and a small interim operations team handled the notices and urgent logistics.
Hunter hadn’t hired another manager, and no one had inherited Billy’s authority over his personal choices.
“The duet agreement requires routine notice to Serena’s representatives,” counsel told him over the phone. “We can deliver it. You don’t need to contact her.”
“That sounds good.”
“They may object to the timing and description of the solo release.”
“They can address the contracts with you,” Hunter said.
A few days later, Hunter approved a short notice that gave the necessary facts and nothing personal.
He didn’t ask Serena to endorse the correction, appear in the video, or forgive its effect on her.
By evening, counsel confirmed receipt through her representatives.
No private message followed in either direction.
The release page was as plain as the recordings. Four track titles and a play button under each. No price, advertising, sponsor, promotional photograph, or mailing-list demand. The files were free. Hunter refused advance interviews and declined every request to give a label partner an early listen.
The interim team asked for launch language. Hunter approved one sentence: “Four independent recordings and a factual statement would be available at the same time.” No one called them an era, a return, or an intimate look at his marriage. There was no countdown for fans to turn into an event.
Counsel also relayed the final report from venue security about the backstage video that was leaked.
Security had reviewed the available corridor footage and staff access records but failed to identify the anonymous source.
The circulating copies contained no usable information that led back to the person who recorded or posted it.
Hunter didn’t like the result of the investigation, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Whoever had filmed him and Serena, cut the video and posted it online had completely vanished.
Hunter set a stationary camera near the living-room wall and sat in the same chair he’d used to record. Gray daylight came through the windows. He wore a plain dark shirt. There was no makeup, music, or second camera.
He started talking, heard himself say that mistakes had been made, and stopped. Mistakes had no owner. He deleted the file and began again.
“My wife, Wendy Trace, inspired ‘Twenty Again.’ I wrote the composition from memories of falling in love with her when we were twenty. Serena Gene didn’t inspire or write the composition. She contributed to the duet arrangement and performed it.”
He kept his eyes on the lens.
“I knew people believed the opposite. I allowed that belief because the story brought attention to my work and revived my career. My manager proposed parts of the campaign, Serena performed the song, and the audience responded to what we gave them. But the decision to protect the lie was mine.”
His scraped hand tightened on his knee.
“For months, I let the public treat Serena as my muse while Wendy was treated as an obstacle, an obligation, or a reaction shot. I let cameras record her hearing her own history sung as if it belonged to someone else. I used her humiliation to make the campaign more convincing. Nothing about that was accidental.”
Hunter paused for a moment.
“A video from backstage was edited. It begins in the middle of a hypothetical I was rejecting, and it ends before I made that rejection clear. The words in the clip did not describe what I wanted. I don’t know who recorded it or who posted it. That context doesn’t excuse me, however.”
The next words were the ones he most wanted to turn toward Wendy, but he tried to live with the idea that even if she listened to his public apology, she still wouldn’t unblock him and allow him back into her life.
“Wendy didn’t participate in or approve this correction.
The false story was mine and correcting it is my responsibility.
Nothing I say or release here requires an answer from her.
These songs aren’t a request for reconciliation.
They’re a public correction because the harm and the lie were public.
Wendy doesn’t have to listen, respond, make a statement, explain her choices, or forgive me. ”
He leaned forward, not for drama but to make the last part clear.
“I ask you to not contact, follow, photograph, or demand answers from Wendy or her family. Don’t turn her work into clues about me. Leave them alone. Wendy owes the public nothing, and she owes me no access.”
Hunter reached toward the camera, then stopped with his hand in the frame.
“I knowingly benefited from a false story. This is the truth I should’ve told before it cost my wife her safety in our marriage.”
He ended the recording. Eli watched it when it was done.
“You aren’t going to do another take?” he asked.
“Did I say anything false?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
Hunter uploaded the video and scheduled it to appear with the four songs through his verified accounts. His attorneys sent a final list of likely contract disputes. The interim team confirmed that advertising was disabled and no sponsor code remained on the page.
Hunter pressed publish.
For a few minutes, the counters stayed low. Then reposts multiplied faster than he could follow them. His phone vibrated on the kitchen counter with calls, alerts, and messages from executives, lawyers, musicians, reporters, and numbers he didn’t recognize.
Every vibration made his body lift before he saw that it wasn’t Wendy.
Some people called the video calculated, others said he’d confessed only because the campaign had collapsed.
Several accused him of rewriting the story to protect his marriage.
But many heard the part that cost him more than a simple denial.
He denied wanting Serena while admitting he’d knowingly erased Wendy because the fantasy made him profitable.
Headlines began moving away from the question of which woman had inspired him and toward the wife whose history he’d sold.
Listeners shared “Keep Smiling” next to old clips of camera three turning toward Wendy, this time naming the cruelty instead of treating her face as entertainment.
The shift brought no triumph. Public belief wasn’t private trust, and millions of views couldn’t open a blocked number.
A Trace Media executive called before the view count reached its first million.
“The response is stronger than expected,” the executive said. “If we move now, we can shape this into a redemption campaign. Controlled interview, documentary short, stripped visual set. The bungalow look is working.”
Hunter sighed. “There won’t be a redemption campaign.”
“Hunter, the public is giving you a path back.”
“I don’t care.”
“We need a strategy.”
“I said no.”
The executive went quiet. “You’re leaving attention on the table.”
“That’s fine by me.”
Hunter ended the call and sent the same instruction in writing to counsel and the interim team. Trace Media could correct facts through its controlled channels, but it couldn’t market his remorse or turn Wendy’s silence into the next installment.
Near midnight, the video page showed millions of views. The release page kept receiving more listeners. Wendy hadn’t sent a message or made a public statement. No one on Hunter’s team had heard from her, and he didn’t ask anyone to look.
He opened her podcast instead.
The newest episode had been released before his video.
He knew it couldn’t contain an answer, yet old hope rose during every pause.
Wendy and Lily spoke about intimacy after prolonged stress, about patience without a deadline and closeness that couldn’t be used as proof of recovery. Wendy never said his name.
Hunter closed the page with the view count. He set the phone facedown on the counter and listened through the inexpensive speakers.
The truth was finally public. Wendy remained beyond his reach, and her voice wasn’t an invitation to cross the distance.