All Chapters of Billionaire Producer's Secret Wife: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The comedy set in Burbank felt like a different planet from Atlanta. Bright, artificial daylight poured through massive softboxes even though it was past 6 p.m. outside. The laugh track hadn’t started yet—today was just blocking and pickups—but the energy was lighter, bouncier, full of quick one-liners and pratfalls that were supposed to feel effortless. Serena wore a pastel cardigan that clashed with the tactical black she’d lived in for weeks, her hair blown out into soft waves instead of slicked back under a stunt helmet. She laughed on cue, delivered the punchlines with perfect timing, let the director tweak her timing on the door-slam bit until it landed just right.It should have felt like relief.Instead it felt like wearing someone else’s skin. No matter how good Fallon's training was, she simply didn't feel that comfortable with comedy yet. Every time the AD called cut, her mind slid sideways to Prague. To the table read tonight. To the script pages of Ravielle folded in her

A FEW MONTHS LATERThe conference room on the 42nd floor of Vale Productions overlooked downtown Los Angeles like a predator surveying its territory. Floor-to-ceiling glass, matte-black table long enough to seat twenty, and a single screen dominating the far wall currently displaying the latest domestic and international tracking numbers for the action tentpole Serena had just wrapped in Atlanta.Lucian sat at the head, sleeves rolled to the elbows, sleeves of his charcoal shirt still faintly dusted from the Atlanta set visit two days earlier. He hadn’t changed since the red-eye back. Sleep was a luxury he rationed.Across from him sat the usual suspects: the head of finance (nervous, always calculating), the distribution chief (optimistic bordering on delusional), the head of marketing (already scrolling socials), and two studio executives from the co-financing partner who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else.The screen refreshed. Opening weekend projections ticked upward—$118

Serena’s mentor had always possessed the unnerving gift of shrinking entire rooms around himself without ever raising his voice.It wasn’t theatrics. No puffed chest, no booming declarations. Lucian simply existed in a space the way old-money gravity exists—quiet, inevitable, the kind of presence that had spent decades staring down men who thought obscene wealth could rewrite physics itself, only to watch those same men blink first and look away. Tim Togas had outlasted them all. Boredom was the closest thing he had left to mercy.The Prague apartment—courtesy of Vale Productions, paid in full and smelling faintly of beeswax polish and centuries-old dust—perched above a narrow, cobbled street where even the wind seemed polite. Iron railings gleamed wet under sodium lamps. Inside, the silence wasn’t empty; it was thick, layered, the sort that had watched emperors and poets and spies come and go without comment.Serena stood at the bathroom sink in the bedro

Past – The Night of the Devacraux Foundation GalaTina Devacraux had learned the brutal arithmetic of affection before she could tie her own shoes. It was the first theorem etched into her bones by a family that treated love like a loaded die: roll it once, and it might buy you loyalty; roll it twice, and you'd be the one left exposed, predictable, ripe for the carve. Affection wasn't a gift in the Devacraux world—it was a liability, a crack in the armor that invited the blade. Love made the powerful sloppy. It softened edges, blurred lines, turned titans into fools who whispered secrets in the dark. And predictable people? They were clay in the hands of the patient. Easy to mold. Easier to shatter. That was the Devacraux way. Cruelty served chilled and polished, wrapped in the velvet of legacy. Contracts inked not with ink but with the invisible blood of broken promises, signed in boardrooms where the air tasted of leather and regret. Reputat

The Ravielle Set – Present Day, Los Angeles Soundstage Mid-Afternoon, During the Third Lighting Reset The rain machines hissed like secrets being forced out of lungs. Serena stood frozen near the edge of the active floor, arms folded so tightly her nails bit into her own biceps. She had been trying—failing—to anchor herself in the machinery of the set: the low growl of generators, the soft crackle of walkies, the director’s murmured instructions about losing the key on frame left. Anything to drown out the echo of Vivian Glass’s parting words. "Wear something simple. She dislikes costumes." What made matters worse, though, was that she hadn't anticipated Lucian being there. He had appeared silently behind Dominic at the monitors, arms crossed, posture deceptively still. When Aiden had broken the news—casual, almost amused, as though announcing a chan