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Lucian Vale liked the building best at night.During the day, Vale Productions was an organism—assistants moving like capillaries, executives pulsing with urgency, phones vibrating with other people’s crises. At night, it was honest. Empty corridors. Muted lights. Glass that reflected only intention.He stood in his office, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the forearm, city sprawled beneath him like a board he’d already learned how to win on.His phone buzzed.He didn’t look at it immediately.People mistook Lucian’s stillness for unwillingness. Like his silence meant he wanted to hear something else. In truth, he heard what he needed to hear. In truth, what they said rarely mattered as much as how they said it. If he was even sitting in silence, it meant they had done something right. A good play or a good opportunity. When he finally glanced down at his phone, he knew it was time for his play.Marcus Hale.Lucian answered without greeting. “You’re late.”Marcus laughed on the other en
Aiden Wolfe ended the call in the backseat of the car and stared at his own reflection in the darkened window for a moment longer than necessary.Isadora Vale never raised her voice. She didn’t need to. Her words had slid in smooth and elegant, each one precisely placed, like she’d been rearranging furniture in his head while he watched.Midnight meetings are for people who think they’re in control, she’d said lightly.Lucian likes to pretend he is. I prefer to know.Aiden had smiled through it. Of course he had. Smiling was his native language. The little games of the brother and sister were amusing sometimes. He slipped the phone into his pocket just as the car pulled up to the hotel entrance. Cameras flashed immediately—muscle memory from men who could smell proximity to relevance and power. But what waited inside for him, surprised him quite a bit. Serena stood near the bar, back straight, posture composed, a champagne flute untouched in her hand. She looked like someone playin
“You’re doing it wrong again,” Ava said, voice light.Serena lifted an eyebrow. Surprised, but not shocked at her mother in law barging in like this early in the morning. “I’ve been making tea in this exact way for months."“And for months you’ve been murdering the bag.” Ava stepped in, plucked the tea bag out before it could turn the water bitter, and dropped it into the trash with the casual authority of someone who’d won this argument a dozen times. “Tragic loss of flavor.”Serena let out a small and real laugh. “You say that every single time.”“Because every single time I’m right.”Ava slid in beside her, both of them leaning against the counter now, shoulders almost touching. They faced the big window together. The city shone below—restless, indifferent, beautiful in the way only places that don't sleep at night will be. Serena stayed quiet. “Rough one?” Ava asked quietly.Serena blew out a breath through her nose. “Yeah.”Ava nudged her gently with an elbow. “You survived. Tha
Vale Productions didn’t do cozy.The building stabbed up from Sunset Boulevard—cold steel, smoked glass, and the kind of deliberate restraint that cost more than flash ever could. Lucian had the lobby stripped years ago: no posters, no gold-framed headshots, no reassuring wall of awards. He believed prestige should whisper. Anything louder was insecurity wearing a tuxedo.Serena felt the hush the second the elevator doors sealed her in.It wasn’t peaceful quiet. It was surgical. The kind that made your own heartbeat embarrassingly loud. She laced her fingers together hard enough that her nails left pale half-moons in her palms. Across from her Lucian Vale stood like a statue somebody had forgotten to label “caution.” Eyes on the floor numbers and expression unreadable as always. Forty-two floors. An ice age.Neither of them spoke. The afterparty noise still echoed in her skull—drunken laughter, camera shutters like machine-gun fire, Aiden’s palm pressed passively against the small
The thing about power, Isadora Vale had decided a long time ago, was that it wasn’t about who held it. It was about who understood its silence.And tonight, Hollywood was very, very loud.From the balcony of the Devacraux estate, she could see the ballroom below like a living organism—glittering, shifting, predatory. Every move choreographed. Every laugh rehearsed. And at the center of it all: her brother. Lucian Vale.He looked exactly how he always did when things began to unravel—composed, surgical, all clean lines and quiet ruin beneath them. The press would call it control. Isadora knew better. It was survival. She wasn't his sister, not exactly. She was adopted. She never liked him much either. Their sibling relationship was non existent. Yet, she’d flown in from London two days ago after catching wind of the Ravelle biopic mess through one of her associates at Oriel Pictures. She wasn’t supposed to care about American film politics anymore—she’d spent years building a clean l
The terrace felt like a reprieve.Not truly quiet—Hollywood never granted that mercy—but subdued, as if the city's relentless hum had been dialed back just enough to breathe. Faint strains of music drifted from the ballroom, softened into a distant pulse, while the laughter inside mellowed into something bearable, no longer sharp enough to cut.The night air carried a deliberate chill, crisp against the skin.Lucian emerged onto it like a man stepping into a private reckoning.He didn't lean on the railing. No cigarette. No feigned contemplation. He simply stood, posture rigid, jaw locked, hands hanging loose at his sides in a way that betrayed their readiness to clench.Through the glass doors, if he tilted his head just so—past the crowd, the glittering chandeliers, the mirrored illusions—he could still spot her. Serena, seated at that table amid the polite predators. Serena, smiling with the precision of someone mapping every escape route.It should have steadied him.It didn't.He







