<🎧 Song Recommendation: Energy by Drake>
...
The next morning, there was only silence from Project: Star. No press release. No email. No angry phone call from a producer telling Von to pack his bags.
Von sat at his desk, staring at his phone, waiting for the axe to fall. But as the hours ticked by, he realized the silence wasn't negligence, it was permission. They hadn't withdrawn him. They were letting the scandal breathe.
In fact, the story was already mutating. The gossip blogs were moving on from Von the Thug to Julian the Saint. Every article praised Julian's forgiveness and his maturity. Von was just a footnote in Julian's coronation.
"He's going to win," Von muttered, scrolling through yet another article calling Julian the future of pop music. "He has better vocals. He has the fanbase. And now he has the moral high ground. I'm just the villain he gets to defeat in the final act."
Von turned his phone face down on the desk. "Damn it."
