Chapter 8: Soulmate Echoes
The hold music was a thin, synthesized violin string being plucked over and over again. Cylene stared at her computer screen, the glow painting her face in a cold blue light. Her posture was perfect, back straight, headset clamped over her silver-blonde hair, but her knuckles were white where she gripped a pen.
“Yes, Mr. Finch, I understand the beneficiary change was recent,” she said, her voice a smooth river over stones. On her screen, his wife’s information glowed: Emily Finch. Née Wainwright. “I’m just confirming the details for our records. And you’re certain there are no… outstanding litigations? Sometimes probate can be complicated if there are.”
His voice crackled through the line, tired and oblivious. “Litigations? No, nothing like that. My wife’s an artist. A writer. Quiet life.”
Quiet life. Cylene’s mind split. One part meticulously clicked through tabs: Emily Finch, listed as a co-signer on a life insurance policy taken out six months ago. The other part raged, a silent scream bouncing off the walls of her skull. This was the minefield. Here was the marriage certificate, a public record she could access with her company login. Here was the policy, a financial tether. And somewhere, buried in the legal archives of a different state, was the old, settled case of Reed v. Wainwright—a plagiarism suit that had been whispered about in writer’s circles for years, dismissed after a private settlement. A pattern. A fucking pattern of theft and lies.
“I see,” Cylene said, typing meaningless notes. “And the primary cause of the original policy was…?”
While he droned on about mortgage protection, her phone lay beside the keyboard, a dark slab. On it, in her notes app, was a draft. A text to Pedro. It had gone through a dozen iterations, from furious to pleading to coldly factual. The current version was simple, and it terrified her.
Pedro. Juliet told me you were sad like me. She is the most beautiful creation we’ve made together. You spoke to me of Alma gemela- soulmate. I believed, I loved, and lived to be yours. Your betrayal destroyed me. But realising as I’ve gone through Emily’s taunts- I found evidence she drugged you the first time. And I— I’m shattered. You hadn’t willingly… te amo, pero esta es no facíl. Yet love doesn’t easily die.
She had written Alma Gemela—Soulmate. A phrase from their past, from a sun-drenched terrace in Mexico a lifetime ago, when his fingers were laced with hers and the future was a script they were writing together. It was a risk. A testament to a love that refused to die, or maybe just to a shared destruction.
Mr. Finch was wrapping up. “...just want to make sure Emily is taken care of, you know?”
“Of course,” Cylene said, the professional mask flawless. “Everything appears to be in order, Mr. Finch. Thank you for your time.”
She ended the call and the silence that followed was thick and loud. She pulled off the headset, the foam warm from her skin, and stared at the draft on her phone. Her thumb hovered over the ‘send’ button.
The apartment was too quiet. The faint smell of the lavender laundry detergent she used on Juliet’s clothes couldn’t mask the sterile emptiness. She thought of Pedro’s forehead pressed against his steering wheel under the streetlight, a man reduced to shadows and regret. She thought of Emily, with her stolen scripts and her secret husband and her predatory, calculated smile. Emily trying to steal her life, her jobs, her soulmate.
Her own phone rang, sharp and startling. The screen flashed: ARTA.
Cylene snatched it up. “Arta. Tell me you have something.”
Arta’s voice was all business, a scalpel on a sterile tray. “I have everything. The marriage license to Arthur Finch is real and current. They married in a courthouse in Ventura two years ago.”
Two years. Cylene’s breath hitched. “While she was with Pedro. Wait that is before..”
“Concurrently, yes. But it gets better. Or worse, depending on your perspective. I dug into the background you gave me, the Reed plagiarism lawsuit. It was more than plagiarism. The plaintiff, Martin Reed, alleged Emily Wainwright—that’s her maiden name—not only stole his manuscript outline but was also in a personal relationship with his literary agent at the time. She used the affair to gain access to his submissions. The case was settled under a confidentiality agreement, but the pattern is there. She targets creative men, inserts herself, and takes what she wants. Professionally. Personally.”
“It’s a con,” Cylene whispered, the pieces locking into a hideous, perfect picture. “She’s a con artist.”
“A sophisticated one,” Arta confirmed. “She married Finch, a wealthy but terminally dull property developer, for security. She targeted Pedro for his industry access and his talent. She stole your scripts because they were good, and because she could. She’s been married this whole time, Cylene. Pedro was the other man, not the other way around. That’s your leverage. That’s the bomb.”
Cylene closed her eyes. The relief that washed through her was toxic, laced with a vicious, searing triumph. It wasn’t just about the scripts anymore. It was about justice. For her. For Pedro, for Juliet. For all of them.
“What do I do?” Cylene asked, her voice low.
“You send what we have to Pedro. Let him see what she is. Then, you hold it over her head. You tell her to recant her plagiarism claims against you publicly, to acknowledge your authorship, or you send the evidence of her affairs—because that’s what it was—to her husband. And to the press. She’ll collapse.”
“And if she calls my bluff?”
“It’s not a bluff. I have the documents. The timeline is irrefutable. She was married to Arthur Finch when she taunted you and she ‘fell in love’ with Pedro. She will lose everything. Her marriage, her reputation, any standing she’s weaseled for herself. She’ll fold.”
Cylene thanked Arta and hung up. The professional calm was gone. Her hands were shaking. She looked at the draft text to Pedro, at the two words, Alma Gemela.
She deleted the draft.
She started a new message. Attached the marriage license PDF Arta had sent. Attached the timeline she’d compiled, with dates of Emily’s marriage and the start of her affair with Pedro. She typed, her fingers flying, no longer measured or poetic, just stark and real.
Pedro. Look at this. She was married. The whole time. The Reed lawsuit details are attached—same pattern. She is a fraud. What she did to you was calculated. What she did to us was collateral damage. You need to see this. We need to talk. Now. I’m enclosing a video from your first night with her… it.. is damning.
She stared at the screen, at the cold, hard facts where a love letter had been. This was the shared destiny now. Not a terrace in Mexico, but the wreckage Emily had left behind.
She took a deep breath, and pressed send.
The whooshing sound was fake, a little digital sigh, but it felt like releasing a breath she’d been holding for years. Her hand, still gripping the phone, went numb. The silence in her apartment was no longer empty; it was now charged, a live wire strung between her and wherever Pedro was, waiting to spark.
Across town, Pedro’s phone buzzed on the cluttered coffee table, rattling against his favourite coffee mug. He ignored it. He was annotating a script with furious red slashes, the words bleeding into incoherence under his anger.
It buzzed again. And again.
Finally, with a grunt, he grabbed it. He saw Cylene’s name and his first instinct was a weary defensiveness. Another round. Then he opened the message. He scrolled. The red pen dropped from his fingers, rolling across the floor.
His eyes scanned the marriage license first, the official seal, the date. Two years ago. The air left his lungs in a single, punched-out gasp. He saw the timeline, the cold, clinical alignment of dates next to photos of him and Emily laughing at industry parties. His world tilted, the floor feeling unstable beneath his feet.
“No,” he whispered to the empty room. It was a denial, feeble and automatic. He tapped the video file. It was dark, grainy security footage from the hotel bar where they’d first met. He watched his own drugged, stumbling form being half-led, half-carried by Emily toward the elevators. He saw her cool, triumphant smile aimed at the camera as the doors closed. A sour, metallic taste flooded his mouth.
He stumbled to his bathroom and was sick, heaving nothing but iced coffee and self-loathing into the basin. The cool porcelain against his forehead offered no relief. The reflection in the mirror was a stranger’s—hollow-eyed, pale, fool written across his face in capital letters.
Back in the living room, his hands shook so badly he could barely type. He called her. It rang once.
Cylene saw his name flash and her heart hammered against her ribs. She accepted the call, bringing the phone to her ear. She didn’t speak.
A ragged breath came through first, then his voice, shattered and rough. “Cylene.”
“You saw it.”
“I saw it.” A long pause, filled with the static of his shame. “The video… my God. She… I was…”
“You were assaulted, Pedro.” The words were clinical, factual. She said them for him because he couldn’t. “She roofied you. It wasn’t an affair. It was a setup.”
He made a sound like a wounded animal. “All this time. I blamed myself. I thought I was just… weak. That I’d ruined us.”
“She ruined us.” Cylene’s voice cracked, finally. All the bitterness, the heartache, the lonely insurance calls and silent dinners with Juliet rose in her throat. “She targeted you. She targeted my work. She stole our life.”
“Alma Gemela,” Pedro breathed, the phrase a ghost from her deleted draft, now a shared scar. “I said that to you. On that terrace. I meant it.”
“I know.” She closed her eyes, tears tracking hot lines down her cheeks. “What do we do now?”
Pedro’s voice changed, hardening through the ruin. It was a tone she recognized, the director taking charge of a spiraling scene. “We end her. You have a plan. Arta’s plan. Tell me.”
“We have to be smart. If we go public with this, it becomes a scandal. You’re implicated. Juliet gets dragged through it.”
“I don’t care about me,” he said, and for the first time, she believed him. “Tell me the move.”
Cylene wiped her face, pacing the worn patch of carpet. “We confront her. Together. We show her everything. We tell her she recants the plagiarism claims publicly, credits me for the scripts, and walks away quietly. Or we send this package to her husband, Arthur Finch, and to every trade paper in the city.”
“She’ll try to counter. She’ll lie.”
“She has no leverage,” Cylene said, a cold certainty settling in her gut. “We have the documents. We have the timeline. We have you. A victim willing to go on record.”
The word ‘victim’ hung between them. Pedro absorbed it, a new and uncomfortable skin. “When?”
“Tomorrow. Neutral ground. A public place where she can’t make a scene.”
“Name it.”
“The garden cafe at the museum. Noon. Can you be ready?”
On his end, Pedro looked at the script covered in red ink, a project Emily had pushed him toward. He tore it in half. “I’ve been ready for two years without knowing it. I’ll be there.”
They were silent again, but the silence was different now. It was shared. It was a plan. The wire between them was no longer live with old anger, but thrumming with a grim, united purpose.
“Cylene?” he said, his voice soft.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For… seeing what I couldn’t.”
She didn’t forgive him. Not yet. But she nodded, though he couldn’t see it. “For Juliet, for what we were,” she said, and hung up.
She placed the phone down gently. The adrenalin ebbed, leaving her feeling scraped-out and terrifyingly clear. She walked to Juliet’s doorway, watching the slow rise and fall of her daughter’s breath under the Moana blanket. This was the stable and loving environment. This was the line she would hold.
Tomorrow, she would look Emily Finch in the eye and take it all back.
The morning air was brittle and cold, tasting of impending rain. Cylene stood in front of her closet, her hand hovering over practical blouses before she pulled out a simple black dress. It was armor. Pedro waited in his car down the block, engine off, a silhouette of tense shoulders behind the windshield.
He looked gaunt under the harsh noon sun in the museum’s atrium café. “She’s late,” he said, his voice flat. The clatter of dishes and the hiss of an espresso machine felt obscenely loud.
“She’ll come.” Cylene’s knuckles were white around her phone. She’d forwarded everything to Arta. “She’s too arrogant not to.”
Emily arrived five minutes later, a vision of curated calm in cream linen. She glided between the tables, smiling like she was joining old friends. “Cylene. Pedro. This is a surprise.”
“Sit down, Emily.” Pedro’s command was low, leaving no room for her performance.
She sat, adjusting her napkin with delicate fingers. “So dramatic. What’s this about? The deposition is in two hours, you know. We really should be preparing.”
“We know about Arthur Finch.” Cylene laid a single printed copy of the marriage license on the table between them. “We know you were married two years ago. We have the security footage from the Sable Hotel bar.”
Emily’s smile didn’t falter, but her eyes chilled. She didn’t touch the paper. “I don’t know what fantasy you’ve cooked up now, Cylene. But this is pathetic, even for you.”
“It’s not a fantasy.” Pedro leaned forward, his chair scraping loudly. “You drugged me. You set the whole thing up. You’re a predator.”
“And you’re an adulterer,” she sighed, as if bored. “A weak, cheating husband. Who do you think a judge will believe? The grieving cuckold, or the celebrated writer whose work was stolen?”
Cylene pushed a second document forward—the Reed lawsuit summary. “Martin Reed sends his regards. And his evidence. It’s a pattern, Emily. We have it all documented. Arta has it.”
For the first time, a crack appeared in Emily’s porcelain composure. Her gaze flicked to the Reed file. “Settled. Confidential.”
“The settlement is confidential,” Cylene countered, her voice ice. “The facts aren’t. You have until the deposition starts to publicly retract your plagiarism claims against me. You credit me as the sole author of ‘Shoreline’ and ‘The Greying’. You walk away quietly.”
“Or what?” Emily’s laugh was a sharp, brittle thing. “You’ll tell my husband? Arthur knows I have… creative friendships.”
“We’ll send him the timeline,” Pedro said. “The footage. We’ll send it to Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Martin Reed is ready to give a statement about your methods. Your reputation won’t just be tarnished. It will be dissolved.”
Emily studied them, her head tilted. The café noise receded into a blur. She took a slow sip of her water, buying time. “You’re bluffing.”
“We are not.” Cylene didn’t blink.
“I need to think.” Emily’s tone shifted, turning dismissive. “I’m not making a decision under duress at a café table. The deposition is in two hours. I’ll give you my answer then.”
She stood, smoothing her linen dress. “Don’t follow me.”
They watched her walk away, her posture unnervingly straight. A cold fury settled in Cylene’s stomach. “She’s going to try something. She’s going to spin it.”
Pedro’s phone vibrated on the table. He looked at the screen. “It’s Arta. She says ‘She refused, didn’t she?’”
Cylene nodded, a grim certainty hardening within her. “Call her.”
Pedro put the phone on speaker, his hand shaking with a contained rage. “We’re here.”
Arta’s voice came through, crisp and clear. “Martin is with me. We predicted this. The deposition is too close; she thinks she can outmaneuver you legally there. So we don’t wait.”
“What’s the play?” Pedro asked, his eyes locked with Cylene’s.
“We launch the corrective campaign now. We’ve drafted the posts. We have the documents ready to link. We flood the narrative before she even gets to the courthouse steps.” Papers rustled on Arta’s end. “Martin will post his personal account of her theft and coercion on his verified Medium page. I’ll handle the trade outlets. You two need to be ready for the blowback.”
“Do it,” Cylene said. The word felt final, like slamming a vault door.
Pedro ended the call. The world seemed to hold its breath for a moment. Then his phone began to buzz incessantly, notifications piling up like falling bricks.
Across the city, in a sleek high-rise, Emily’s phone chimed in her handbag. Then chimed again. And again. A flurry of alerts she usually savored. She pulled it out, her thumb swiping across the screen.
Her step faltered. Her blood drained from her face, leaving a stark, frightened pallor.
The headline began, “Producer Alleges Pattern of Theft and Deceit by Writer Emily Finch…”
She stood frozen on the sidewalk, the world moving too fast around her, as her carefully constructed life began to publicly crack. Her thumb, slick with sweat, slid across the screen, opening the article. There was Martin Reed’s grim face, a photo she’d tried to have scrubbed from the internet, right beside a caption detailing his allegations. The words “predatory pattern” and “drugging” jumped out at her. A notification from Variety buzzed atop the Hollywood Reporter alert. Then one from Deadline. A sick, falling sensation opened up in her gut. It wasn’t a contained leak. It was a flood.
Inside the café, Cylene watched through the glass. “She’s reading it.”
Pedro didn’t look. He was staring at his own phone, at the cascade of supportive messages from old colleagues who finally knew. “Good,” he said, the word tasting like ash and cold justice.
“She’s panicking,” Cylene observed, a detached part of her clinical mind noting the tremble in Emily’s hand as she tried to hail a cab. Three sped past her, their drivers oblivious to the personal catastrophe unfolding on the curb. “She’s realizing she can’t spin this.”
Pedro finally looked up, his dark eyes finding Emily’s shrinking figure. “Where’s her husband now? Where’s Arthur bloody Finch while his wife’s empire burns?”
“Probably getting his own phone call from Arta,” Cylene said, finally taking a sip of her now-cold coffee. The bitterness felt appropriate.
Outside, Emily’s phone rang. She fumbled it, the device clattering on the pavement. She snatched it up, saw the name ARTHUR on the screen, and her breath hitched. She rejected the call. It rang again immediately. This time she answered, her back turning to the café window. “Arthur, listen, it’s not what it looks like—”
They couldn’t hear his words, only the sharp, muffled rage leaking from the phone’s tiny speaker. They saw Emily’s shoulders hunch, her free hand rising to her temple. She started walking, fast and unsteady, toward the courthouse a block away, as if the legal ritual could still save her. “No, you don’t understand, they’re lying! I can explain everything at the deposition!”
Her voice rose, a desperate, carrying shrillness. “You will not freeze the accounts! Arthur!”
The line went dead. She stared at the phone, her face a mask of pure, undiluted terror. The professional façade was gone, erased. This was the raw panic of a cornered animal. She broke into a run, her cream linen suit a blur against the grey street.
“She’s running to the courthouse,” Pedro said, standing abruptly. His chair screeched against the tile.
Cylene stood with him, a silent partner in this grim pursuit. “Let her run. Let her see there’s no safe place.”
They followed at a distance, two shadows trailing a flame about to be extinguished. The ordinary sounds of the city—honking cars, conversation snippets, the rumble of a bus—seemed to mock the gravity of their procession. As they neared the courthouse steps, a new energy crackled in the air.
A small crowd was already gathering at the base of the wide stone stairs. Not gawkers, but professionals with bulky equipment and sharp eyes. They were journalists, alerted by the trade alerts, and three local news vans were pulling in, satellite dishes unfolding like mechanical flowers.
Emily saw them. She skidded to a halt halfway up the steps, her momentum broken. Her head swiveled between the waiting media and the courthouse doors, a trapped calculation in her eyes. Going inside meant facing a deposition she was now catastrophically unprepared for. Staying outside meant facing the microphones.
Pedro and Cylene stopped at the edge of the plaza, watching from behind the stark modern sculpture that denoted the law’s presence. “She’s finished,” Pedro murmured, more to himself than to Cylene.
“Not yet,” Cylene replied, her voice low. “She’ll try one last lie. It’s what she does.”
As if on cue, Emily straightened her jacket. She lifted her chin, summoning a ghost of her former poise, and descended the steps toward the largest cluster of reporters. She forced a pained, brave smile.
A reporter shoved a microphone forward. “Ms. Finch! Can you respond to Martin Reed’s allegations that you stole his work and engaged in a pattern of professional coercion?”
“These claims are outrageous and defamatory,” Emily began, her voice trembling with manufactured indignation. “This is a targeted attack by individuals jealous of my success, orchestrated by a bitter ex-husband and a plagiarist he’s protecting.”
From their vantage point, Cylene flinched. Pedro’s hand found hers, not in romance, but in a solid, furious grip of solidarity. His touch was warm, an anchor in the swirling cold.
“The evidence seems substantial,” another reporter called out. “Security footage, marriage records. Your own husband has reportedly released a statement.”
Emily’s mask slipped. “My private life is being weaponized! This is a witch hunt!”
“Is it true you were married to Arthur Finch while involved with Pedro Balmaceda?” a voice shouted from the back.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her eyes darted, looking for an escape route that had vanished. That’s when she saw them. Standing together, watching. Cylene’s expression was unreadable, a calm lake. Pedro’s was pure, focused contempt.
A new, deeper fury twisted Emily’s features. The fear was burned away by a spite so venomous it narrowed her eyes. She pointed a sharp, accusatory finger across the plaza, directly at them.
“There they are!” Her voice carried, sharp and clear. “The masterminds of this character assassination! Ask her about the scripts she couldn’t sell! Ask him why he’s so eager to play the victim now!”
Every lens, every camera, every phone swung away from Emily. A unified, predatory focus locked onto Cylene and Pedro. For a second, the world was silent except for the whir of autofocus.
Then, a surge.
Reporters and cameramen rushed toward them, a wave of light and sound. The earlier order dissolved into a chaotic scrum. Shouted questions overlapped into a deafening roar. “Pedro! Can you confirm you were drugged?” “Cylene! Is this about the scripts?” “Are you two reconciling?”
Pedro instinctively stepped in front of Cylene, a physical barrier. She felt the heat of the camera lights, saw the countless black lenses pointed at her face like accusations. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a trapped bird. She hadn’t prepared for this part, for the raw, exposing glare.
The world exploded in a staccato burst of blinding white. Each pop was a physical blow, freezing her wide-eyed expression, highlighting the silver in her hair, the shock in Pedro’s protective stance. The flashes came from everywhere, pinning them in a cage of light. They illuminated the fine lines of stress around Pedro’s eyes, the tight clench of Cylene’s jaw, the terrifying intimacy of their shared siege.
In the strobe-light chaos, Cylene’s gaze met Pedro’s. His dark eyes held no regret, only a fierce, unyielding resolve. This was the cost. This was the fire they had chosen to walk through. The air smelled of hot electronics and concrete dust kicked up by scrambling feet.
A microphone brushed Cylene’s cheek. She turned her face away, the movement caught in another rapid-fire series of flashes.
“No comment,” Pedro barked, his actor’s voice cutting through the noise, but it was useless. The story was no longer theirs to control. It was being written in real time, in pixels of light.
Behind the wall of media, Emily watched, a faint, vicious smile touching her lips. Let them have the spotlight. Let them choke on it. She turned, a phantom now, and melted back up the courthouse steps, disappearing into the shadow of the grand doors unnoticed, her own escape made in the blinding cover they had provided.