Page 3 of Discordant Cultivation

“Well, Kieran Thorne, would you like to have dinner tonight?”

Silence stretched across the line, filled with the soft sound of uncertain breathing.

Say yes. Say yes, you beautiful, broken thing.

Vale could practically hear the kid’s mind racing—hope warring with disbelief, desperation fighting instinct.

“Are you really—” Kieran’s voice cracked. “Your card says V-Vale Rose. The producer?”

“Yes.”

“I...” Another pause. “Yeah. Yes, I’d—dinner sounds good.”

Such a good boy.

“Perfect. Text me your address. I’ll send a car at seven.”

Vale ended the call before Kieran could hear the breathlessness in his voice.

Vale pulled up his laptop—already open to the folder he’d been compiling for months. Three months of social media deep-dives, screenshots organized by date, every public post saved and analyzed. He told himself it was standard industry research. Due diligence on potential talent, searching for the real name beyond his social media handle.

The lie was getting harder to maintain.

Kieran’s Instagram revealed exactly what Vale had memorized weeks ago: sparse posts, mostly performance videos shot on a phone with a cracked camera lens. Forty-three followers. Zero industry connections.

The videos were promising, though. Vale had watched each one at least a dozen times, and he had favorites he returned to when he should have been sleeping: raw acoustic sessions filmed in what looked like a studio apartment’s corner, with bad lighting that somehow made the music more intimate. Vale played them with the volume low, watching Kieran’s face transform when he sang. Unlike his street covers, when Kieranplayed something that was his, alone, Vale could see the edges of his fire.

You have no idea what you could become with the right accelerant.

The most recent post was from two weeks ago—a shaky video of Kieran mid-performance on the street, posted by someone else and tagged to his account. Three hundred views. Twelve likes. Comments full of heart emojis and empty praise from people who didn’t understand what they were really looking at.

Vale scrolled down to the caption Kieran had written: “Thanks to whoever posted this. Still figuring out the whole social media thing. Music is easier than words.”

Music is easier than words.

Vale read the caption for the twentieth time, though he’d memorized it the day it was posted. He’d been at a meeting when the notification came through and had excused himself to the bathroom to watch the video three times in a stall like a teenager with a crush.

But he was Vale Rose. He found the diamonds in the rough, polished them, and sent them on their merry ways to success. He was just doing his job.

The greenhouse lights were on when Vale glanced out the window. He should check on the roses—his mother’s legacy, the family’s pride for three generations. Mrs. Martinez had texted yesterday about aphids on the white blooms, his mother’s favorites.

He looked back at Kieran’s face frozen on his laptop screen.

The roses could wait.

Vale closed the laptop and leaned back in his chair, already planning the studio he’d book for tonight. Somewhere private. Somewhere he could control the acoustics, the lighting, the entire environment. Somewhere Kieran would feel both comfortable and trapped, like a bird in a beautiful cage. Vale’shands shook again. He should eat something, and he probably hadn’t had a proper meal since breakfast. But the thought of food turned his stomach with an anxiety that felt almost like stage fright.

Which was ridiculous. He produced Grammy-winning albums and worked with artists whose names were household words. This was just a quick session with promising talent.

The lie tasted sour on his mind’s tongue.

2

Oh, he should have known better, but the hunger made him blind…

Kieran

Two hundred dollars felt like play money in Kieran’s trembling fingers, crisp bills that belonged in someone else’s wallet. Or in a movie where the street kid gets a lucky break right before getting hit by a bus. He found them wrapped around a business card so clean it looked freshly printed on cardstock that probably cost more than his monthly phone bill. Which wasn’t saying much, considering he bought the cheapest prepaid plan that still technically qualified as having a phone.