Amelia walked home as she always did, headphones in without music.
The city’s noise is better than playlists.
A woman leaned out a second-floor window to call a toddler in with that voice that makes love sound like scolding. Amelia looked away and kept moving. Family scenes lived better behind glass.
She felt her phone buzz.
Chase: Still on for Wednesday? I promise terrible jokes and honest answers.
Then another, immediately: Summers Brew? Noon-ish?
She stopped at the curb and typed: Noon is good.
Summers Brew sounds good, but really HOT.
She erased the last three words, shaking her head at the corny pun, and sent it anyway.
He answered with a thumbs-up she found endearingly clumsy. Pocketing the phone Amelia continued home, counting steps to keep intrusive thoughts from getting ahead of themselves.
Amelia’s apartment was a quaint studio with a small fish tank and three potted plants, two of which were still valiantly alive.
She looked around the room, seeing a reflection of the life she had lived and the possible future hovering at the edges.
The unopened letter from her mother still hung on the corkboard. Flicking it, she could tell her mother’s handwriting already a verdict before the seal was broken. “Your life is small,” it would say, or some variation. As if smallness was a bug rather than a feature.
———————————————————
Vincenzo’s stream wasn’t public this evening.
A tight quiet audience was alien to him, but the attention was more vital. The studio lights came up, the indicator on the monitor glowed a muted blue instead of red.
El Viento INTERNAL — EXECUTIVE BOARD ACCESS
VIEWERS: 7 Names populated the side panel as confirmations chimed in, clean and discreet:
Calder Viento
Adolf Viento
Eliza Viento
Lucius Viento
Shen Viento
Marianah Crosse
Lewis Cypher
No emotes. No spam. No noise.
Just attention.
Vincenzo settled into the velvet chair, one of the names stood out.
Calder Viento — ONLINE
The name glowed. Vincenzo’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Chase’s “spark” had become Ernesto’s stand-in for approvals tonight. Something, not quite jealousy but not quite pride, flashed across his face before resetting to a boardroom appropriate grin.
“Good evening,” he said, voice low, almost tender. “Thank you for making time. Tonight’s brief is… about influence.” He tapped a key. The image filled the screen.
It was from the night before: Chase in the rain, shoulders squared, looking tired but principled. Amelia above him on the steps, barefoot, caught in warm porch light. The framing was deliberate. Romantic, unresolved, dangerously intimate. “Look at him,” Vincenzo said, voice softening further. “My oldest friend. The man who still believes struggle is a virtue. I admire that. I always have.” He zoomed slightly on Chase’s face.
“But admiration isn’t enough. I can’t watch him keep renting integrity when life’s rent is coming due. He’s too good to stay small, too stubborn to ask for a hand. So I’m building it for him.” Another image replaced the first – Chase and Amelia laughing inside the hall, unaware of the lens.
“And her… she’s the spark. Together, they’re a story people will chase. Relevant. Relatable. The kind of buzz that doesn’t fade. The kind that can help push narratives… Our narratives.”
A quiet pause. Board decisions updated silently.
Board approval held at one hundred percent. Vincenzo leaned forward, eyes bright with something that looked like affection but burned like possession.
“VIM isn’t just another branch. It’s our chance to own the conversation. We ship them covertly, we let the community discover them, fall in love, spread the word. Chase and Amelia become the faces of something bigger. And when they rise, we rise with them. With me.” He smiled. Not for approval, but because the logic was clean. And because Chase…his Chase…would finally see what real freedom felt like. Because Vincenzo had gifted it to him.