The letter was still on his coffee table, like a relic. Each time Ethan passed by it, he caught himself staring — the familiar loops of Isabella's handwriting pulling him in like a tide. Some nights he read it aloud, whispering the words into the darkness, trying to believe them harder than before.
But believing didn't pay rent.
The world outside was relentless in reminding him of what he'd lost. Adrian's face filled bookstore windows, smiling from the cover of glossy magazines. Articles praised his brilliance, his originality. Beside him, Isabella gleamed — elegant, untouchable, radiant in her gowns. They looked like they belonged to another universe, one of chandeliers and champagne. Ethan watched from the shadows, hollow and bitter, a man unmade.
Then came the phone call.
"Ethan Cole?" The voice on the line was clipped, efficient. "This is Darren from Whitmore Literary Services. We've… followed your situation with interest."
"Interest," Ethan repeated, suspicion flickering.
"Yes. We know the industry hasn't been kind lately. But talent like yours doesn't disappear. We're offering work — quiet work. Ghostwriting. It pays well. No bylines, no attention. Just words. Interested?"
Ethan's mouth went dry. "Ghostwriting?"
"You'd be writing stories for others. Their names go on the cover. You stay anonymous. It's steady, easy income."
For a long moment, Ethan said nothing. The idea disgusted him. To give his voice away, to watch his words live under someone else's name — it felt like a slow death. And yet, he thought of his empty fridge, of the stack of unpaid bills by the door, of the cold weight of failure pressing down on him.
"…I'll do it," he whispered.
---
The first assignment arrived in his inbox a week later. A bare-bones outline for a romance novel. The kind of mass-market paperback that lined supermarket shelves, the kind people devoured in a weekend and forgot by Monday. The outline was soulless, a skeleton with no heart.
Ethan stared at it for hours before finally forcing himself to write. He wrote slowly at first, detached. But as the night wore on, his words began to take shape, rising from the ashes of his despair. His sentences curled and danced, filling the hollow story with life, with longing, with bruised pieces of himself he hadn't meant to give away.
When he finished, the draft hummed with his voice. It was beautiful. It was his.
But it would never bear his name.
---
Months later, the book hit the shelves. The cover read: By Cassandra Blake.
Ethan stood in the corner of a bookstore, his hands trembling as he flipped through the pages he had written. Every sentence was his, every breath of it carried his blood. And yet the name printed on the jacket was a stranger's.
Reviews flooded in. Cassandra Blake is the voice we've been waiting for, critics declared. Raw. Lyrical. A talent to watch.
Ethan read the reviews late into the night, his heart pounding with equal parts pride and rage. His words were alive in the world, reaching readers, being celebrated. But no one knew they were his. No one cheered for him.
---
One evening, he sat in a café, reading another glowing article on his phone. A barista leaned over, noticing.
"That book's everywhere," she said brightly. "Cassandra Blake is brilliant. Have you read it?"
Ethan's throat tightened. "Yeah," he murmured. "I've read it."
"She's amazing. Her writing feels so… real, you know? Like she's been through something big." The barista laughed lightly. "It's crazy how someone new just comes out of nowhere and suddenly owns the scene."
Ethan forced a smile, though it nearly tore his face apart. "Yeah. Crazy."
When she walked away, his hands shook so violently he nearly dropped his phone.
---
The assignments kept coming. More soulless outlines. More shells for him to breathe life into. Night after night, Ethan wrote in silence. He poured himself into books that would never be his, signed away pieces of his heart with every draft.
And the world adored Cassandra Blake. Readers underlined passages, posted quotes online, tattooed his words — her words — onto their skin.
One afternoon, Ethan stumbled into a bookstore and froze in front of a display. A new Cassandra Blake release towered in a glossy stack. He picked one up, flipping to a random page.
There it was. A line he remembered writing in a moment of deep despair, pulled straight from his own heartache:
"The cruelest prison is the promise of a love that will never free you."
The line had gone viral. Social media was flooded with it, people calling it Cassandra Blake's most profound truth. Someone nearby snapped a photo of the display, murmuring, "God, she's a genius."
Ethan's vision blurred. His breath came shallow. He set the book down before anyone could see his face.
---
That night, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, Isabella's letter clutched in one hand, his phone in the other, scrolling through Cassandra Blake quotes. Each one was a piece of him, stolen, repackaged, adored by strangers.
He whispered into the darkness, "They're mine. They were always mine."
But no one could hear him.
He was alive. And yet, already a ghost.