Page 3 of Sinful Desires
Option Two: Lazzio Entertainment. My uncle’s world. Artistry, music, film. A branch of the tree I could call mine, not just another root in the ground he had watered.
They called it a choice, but the room was quiet in the wrong way. My mother’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. My father stared through me. Kiara wouldn’t even look up from her lap.
Legacy didn’t come from freedom. It came from sacrifice. But even in the most airtight cage, sometimes something slips through.
For me, that was singing.
It wasn’t curated. It wasn’t monitored. It wasn’t theirs.
I had been singing since I could form words, humming melodies in dark corners, whispering tunes into the quiet. Eventually, I asked for lessons. My mother had agreed, but only if piano came with it.
Discipline in exchange for desire.
From eight to sixteen, every afternoon had been split in two: one hour for vocal training, one for piano. And somewhere between the notes, I found something I didn’t know I needed.
A voice that was mine.
“I want to be a singer.”
The silence afterward was worse than a slap.
My father scoffed and tossed back the rest of his scotch like it could erase what I’d said. His glare cut toward my mother, blaming her with a look he’d perfected over decades. She hesitated, voice soft.
“Dolcezza?…”
But she didn’t say anything else. She was always half trapped too.
My father finally spoke. “It’s out of the question.”
Heat bloomed under my skin. My hands curled into fists, but I didn’t back down. Not after everything I had given up.
No friends beyond the security gate. No sleepovers, no dances. No freedom. I had been raised for one purpose—to be a Harper.
But this was mine.
So I looked him in the eye and gave him something he’d understand.
“Invest in me,” I said. “Let the Harper name echo in stadiums, not just boardrooms. Millions screaming the name you built. Your daughter. Your legacy. The voice of a generation.”
My mother stirred, her throat catching. “Scarlett?…”
“Just once,” I said, “invest in me, Dad.”
The room fell silent. My mother’s hands were clenched too tightly in her lap. My father didn’t answer. He poured another drink instead.
That was his yes.
Two weeks later, everything changed. The quiet afternoons were gone, replaced by a schedule so precise it could have been military.
Choreography that pushed me past the point of exhaustion. Vocal training that stripped me down and rebuilt me note by note. Songwriting lessons with ghostwriters who tore my journals apart and made me bleed honesty onto the page, even if it wasn’t my own.
Every hour was claimed. Every calorie counted. Every movement tracked.
By eighteen, I wasn’t a teenager anymore.
I was a product.
And at the center of it all stood Lucius Harper, cold and composed beneath the lights of his office. “I’ll make you a star that shines brighter than the moon,” he’d told me.
