All Chapters of Mallory's Melody: Chapter 31 - Chapter 38

"There, now you know," Cole said, looking up at the ceiling, his face flushed.Mallory sat back and winced, incredulous of everything Cole had just told her. She recalled his every word, registered the points at which he stopped to take in a breath, savored each cumbersome and breath-taking detail he'd just narrated to her. But the actual battle was bringing herself to believe him, to believe that this Jane Anderson he spoke so affectionately about was really her mother. Mallory's eyes teared, her stomach churning turbulently.

"Can't anything go right around here!" William swept his hand through the length of his office desk, in a swift, fluid motion that sent the objects topping it flying in all directions, hither and thither—Pencil-sharpener toppling and marring the immaculate white ground with conspicuous specks of charcoal pencil shavings; an antic flower vase, now nothing but shards of ceramic, sprinkled all over the floor like confetti; Paper documents strewing his office as though an inherent part of the tiles—His phone was the only object at a near distance that wasn't damaged. He'd preserved it from the fate of its fellow objects, now by products of his wrath. No, he couldn't tamper with it, as the audition's results lay in it — the only source.

When he saw her coming up close from atop the airy balcony, he knew that alas, things were working in his favor. He'd known she would come, was rest-assured of it. Those as ambitious and drunk in the prospect of stardom as she was, would find great difficulty in rejecting his offer because then they'd be rejecting a part of themselves, that bite-size yet predominant part that made up their identity—The raging hunger for fame, and the insuppressible wanting to turn their dreams into a reality. Those two combined, birthed something indomitable, made them absolutely invincible to accomplishing their aspirations. To them, anything that wasn't in accordance with that was not worth the chase. His years of examining throngs of them had deepened his understand

  He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes