Small Hands Novel Chapter 03

Small Hands Novel Chapter 03

Rhys Calder wasn’t just dangerous He was relentless.

Four years ago, I’d anonymously produced an album called Unbroken-raw, devastating songs about surviving domestic violence, performed by a shelter resident with a voice like a cathedral.

I funded the recording, produced every track, and released it through a Vesper subsidiary with zero marketing. Just the music.

It went viral in seventy-two hours. Three hundred million streams. The proceeds-over two hundred million dollars-went to domestic violence organizations worldwide, including the Calder Foundation, established by Rhys in memory of his mother.

He’d never heard my voice. Never seen my face. Only knew that someone called V had changed the trajectory of his most personal cause.

He’d been searching for me ever since.

“V wants a meeting?” His voice came through the encrypted line-deep, Scottish-edged, the accent smoothed but not erased by years in London. “After four years of silence?”

“Circumstances have changed.”

“They must have. Where?”

“Chateau Marmont. Tomorrow. Nine PM.”

“I’ve had my best people hunting for V since the day Unbroken dropped. MI6 couldn’t crack it. You’re the best-kept secret in the industry.”

“Tomorrow you’ll know everything.”

“I’m already on a plane.”

I spent the next twenty hours preparing. Not for the meeting-for the unveiling.

For eight years, V had been a ghost. No photos. No interviews. No trace. The industry knew Vesper as an enigma-a company that broke

impossible artists and was run by someone no one could identify.

That anonymity had been my armor.

Now I was stripping it off.

I chose my wardrobe carefully. Not the soft pastels Jax preferred-he liked me “sweet and low-key,” which I now understood meant invisible and

controllable.

Instead: a black Saint Laurent suit, razor-cut. Heels that added three inches and a decade of authority. Hair slicked back, exposing the small treble-clef tattoo behind my ear from when I was seventeen.

The woman in the mirror wasn’t Wren Collier, the silent wife.

She was V.

She looked like someone who could bring an industry to its knees.

At exactly nine, Rhys Calder walked into the Chateau Marmont bungalow, and the air changed.

Tall-six-three-with dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and grey eyes like a loch in winter. Not handsome in the easy, glossy way Jax was

Commanding A face that belonged on battlefields, not magazine covers.

Those grey eyes found me. Stopped.

He sat across from me without breaking eye contact.

“V.”

“Rhys.”

“You’re not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone older. Possibly a recluse.” His mouth curved. “Not a woman who looks like she could headline Coachella and run a Fortune 500

company before lunch.”

“Underestimation is my best weapon.”

“I imagine it has been.” His gaze sharpened. “What changed?”

“My husband stole my music. He’s presenting it at your venue in five days as his mistress’s work. I need a keynote slot to take it back.”

“Done. What else?”

“Introduce me publicly. As V.”

“You’re going scorched earth.”

“My husband told Rolling Stone last month that his wife has no musical talent. His mistress is performing my songs at your venue. I held his

gaze. “I’m going to walk onto his stage and reclaim every note.”

Something dangerous and delighted flickered in his eyes. “I’ll give you the entire showcase. Primetime. Every camera, every executive in the

building.”

“In exchange for what?”

“Dinner. After you’ve destroyed them. Where you tell me the real story-including why you made Unbroken.”

“Just dinner?”

“I’m a patient man.” He raised his glass. “And I suspect you’re worth every year I’ve waited.”

I clinked my water against his whisky.

My phone buzzed. A text from Jax.

Don’t come to the showcase. It’s industry people only. You’d be out of your depth. -J

I set the phone face-down and smiled.

“What is it?” Rhys asked

“My husband just told me I’m out of my depth.”

He studied me. Then laughed-low, warm, genuine.

“I almost feel sorry for him.”

“Don’t. He earned what’s coming.