Chapter 927: A Certain Someone

Here’s what

happened.

After I finally

cut Lila loose

from the Dex family’s gilded chokehold—agency contract shredded, freedom papers signed in someone else’s blood—I had a meeting to attend. But let’s rewind, because I know you’re all sitting there blinking like

"wait, the Dex people just... let her go?"

Yeah.

Anticlimactic as a heart attack in a hospice, right?

Usually something of this scope — powerful family heir, dirty laundry, contractual warfare — goes really bad. Like news-cycle-for-weeks bad. Like lawyers-stabbing-each-other-in-parking-lots bad. Or at least one awkward viral deposition where someone cries about "family legacy" while their stock tanks.

Instead? Crickets. Polite nods. A signature so fast it left ink skid marks.

The secret sauce?

Leverage.

The kind that turns apex predators into suddenly

enlightened cooperators

who discover the true meaning of "mutual benefit" when their own entrails are on the table.

ARIA—my Goddess grim reaper—had vivisected the Dex Family internals more than we already knew with the glee of a kid unwrapping Christmas presents made of corporate entrails.

We didn’t even need to leak them to create an enemy Lila didn’t want me to fight... and trust me I like fighting old money rich asshole but with her request times back I just played a good boy.

So, I just

slid

the folder across the table like a polite suicide note.

Their head of legal—

Pratt,

a woman who probably breakfasts on the still-beating hearts of summer associates

—read it, reviewed the files and went

corpse-quiet,

and said something like

"we don’t see the value in prolonging this discussion."

Which is corporate for

"please leave before you ruin our lives and I have to explain to my therapist why I suddenly identify with the villains in my childhood bedtime stories."

Ten minutes. Wet signatures. Done.

The Dex patriarchs and figureheads decided Lila wasn’t worth the apocalypse we’d rain down... didn’t think Lila as worth the trouble. They didn’t think one talent was worth what we could do to them if they refused.

They were dead wrong about her—

she was worth every scorched-earth tactic I had queued up

—but mathematically correct about the rest.

Why burn the empire over one artist when the cleanup costs more than her projected lifetime royalties?

Classic Hollywood math:

souls are cheap, liability is expensive

.

So, smooth exit.

Lila cried in the backseat, face buried in her hands like she was trying to hide from the miracle. I pretended not to notice because sometimes grief needs privacy more than comfort.

Reyna fake-scrolled her watch up front like a pro. Luna rubbed Lila’s back in slow, steady circles.

Rory climbed onto my lap and asked zero questions about the adult carnage—smartest kid in the car, hands down. Soo-Jin drove. Palm trees and broken dreams blurred past the tinted windows.

"Thank you,"

Lila finally whispered, voice muffled by fingers.

"Don’t thank me yet. I’m about to work you harder than they ever did—only this time the chains are velvet coupled with a few orgasms and orgies and the beatings are metaphorical."

She laughed. Wet, shattered, gorgeous. "Good. I want to."

First talent signed to Carter Entertainment. Unofficially — we weren’t fully operational yet, because why rush when you can savor the chaos? But she was ours. And the Dex family could choke on the NDA we made them sign on the way out — p

referably with their morning kale smoothie.

Now.

Remember when I said there was a certain someone I needed to meet?

It was Eziel.

Eziel Ashworth

.

And her father’s whole board. To sell me her work.

How did this happen?

Like usual. It was ARIA.

Two days before this meeting, my goddess had been doing what she does — consuming the entire entertainment industry’s data infrastructure like a whale eating krill, or like a particularly efficient serial killer hoovering up evidence.

She was

building profiles

.

Mapping talent.

Finding the undervalued, the underrated, the overlooked.

All the artists and creators sitting on gold that nobody around them had the vision to see — or the decency to pay for.

Carter Entertainment’s first year was going to be built on these people.

The ones Hollywood threw away like yesterday’s coffee grounds. The ones whose agents stopped returning calls. The ones told

"maybe next year"

so many times that next year became a punchline delivered by a therapist.

She found

dozens.

Actors working day jobs. Writers with scripts in drawers gathering dust like forgotten suicide notes. Directors who made one incredible indie and then vanished into the ether of "

development hel

l," which is Hollywood for

"we’ll call you when pigs fly and executives grow consciences."

We were going to recruit them over the next few months.

Building a roster that the industry wouldn’t take seriously until it was way too late — and by then, we’d have already cashed the checks and bought the beach house next to theirs.

But then ARIA found Eziel’s screenplay.

And this one needed immediate attention.

"Master,

she’d said that night, with that specific excitement she gets when she’s found something everyone else missed — the digital equivalent of spotting a wallet on the sidewalk and realizing it’s stuffed with unmarked bills.

"The Celestial Widow. Cosmic revenge saga. Goddess whose husband is murdered by the pantheon, descends, hunts the gods who betrayed him. Seven studios have seen it. All passed because the character mirrors surface elements of a Marvel property. They’re scared of the lawsuit."

"And?"

"And they’re idiots. I have seen it myself... the surface similarities are cosmetic. Underneath, it’s something Marvel has never touched — a grief narrative disguised as a superhero film. The emotional architecture is extraordinary. If produced correctly — right director, right cast, right marketing that positions it as

anti-Marvel

rather than

Marvel-adjacent

— the franchise potential exceeds $500 million across three films, merchandise, streaming, international distribution. Conservative estimate."

Half a billion. From a screenplay seven studios threw in the trash like an unwanted family heirloom at a yard sale run by sociopaths.

So yeah. That’s what we saw. That was us looking into the future and seeing Carter Entertainment’s first real project.

Our entry

into the film industry.

It wasn’t going to happen fast

—

these things take time, planning, patience, and the occasional strategic nervous breakdown

— but it would happen.

And we had a plan.

ARIA reached out to Ashworth-Mead. They responded within hours. Practically fell over themselves to schedule a meeting.

See,

they’d been sitting on this IP with no idea what to do with it, ready to let it go for

pennies

or a heartfelt

"thanks for the memories,"

and here comes

some company offering $85 million?

They thought Christmas came early — or at least that their accountant had finally stopped drinking on the job.

And that’s how we ended up in their boardroom.

Me. Reyna. Lila

. Luna and Soo-Jin outside with Rory, probably teaching her how to hot-wire the espresso machine for fun.

Facing Gerald Ashworth, his son-in-law Dominic, three board members, their legal team, their CFO who kept checking his phone to track the wire transfer like a junkie waiting for the next hit.

And

Eziel.

Sitting at the far end of the table. Away from her father. Away from her husband.

Placed there the way you place furniture you’ve stopped noticing — or the way you seat the

family disappointment

at Thanksgiving so the silverware stays shiny.

Let me tell you

about Eziel

.

She wasn’t trying to be noticed. Dark blouse. Hair pulled back. Minimal makeup. The look of a woman who’d stopped dressing for the room because the room had stopped looking at her a long time ago — probably around the time someone decided her genius was better as background noise.

But my

Eyes

don’t miss shit. The second I sat down, her desire architecture lit up like a city grid at dusk — or like a Christmas tree someone forgot to unplug before leaving for a three-year vacation.

Loneliness

— deep, structural, the kind that lives in the foundation and occasionally sends up damp spots on the ceiling.

Sexual frustration layered under professional composure like a bad foundation garment.

But more than all that was a creative mind that had been dismissed so many times it started believing the

dismissals

— classic

Stockholm syndrome

for

talent.

And underneath everything — anger. Quiet. Patient. Compressed. Building for years with nowhere to go, like a pressure cooker someone forgot to turn off before the in-laws arrived.

She was stunning that it punishes you for not looking — sharp jaw, auburn hair fighting the clip like it was personally offended, eyes pretending to be bored while tracking everything, including the exits in case she needed to fake her own death mid-pitch.

I let the

Taboo Aura

hit her before I said a word. I watched her posture shift. Watched her fingers tighten on her pen like it owed her money. Watched her cross her legs under the table in a motion nobody else caught —

subtle, but screaming.

I caught it.

And then I did something petty. Something deliberate. Something that Dominic and Gerald and the lawyers and the CFO would never detect.

I

wrapped her in my Pheromones

.

Not the passive stuff — but focused.