Riva hadn't slept that night. In the morning she bought and mounted an indoor camera.
By the time she reached the office, sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows that swallowed Marcus Grey's far wall.
He stood in the brightness as if it had been installed for him—hands in his pockets, suit pressed into something close to armor, posture loose with victory. Below, Century City traffic inched along in neat lines.
To Marcus, the city wasn't a view. It was a map of raw potential waiting for the final stroke of ink to make the conquest official.
Prism Pictures was riding the Neon Shadow surge—headlines purring, the press circling for the next bite. Marcus drank it in: the high ground, the heavy heat of victory in his chest, the private, predatory thrill of looking down and knowing the rest of the world finally had to look up.
The office door opened with an expensive hush.
Riva's heels sank into the plush carpet in a muted, steady thud. She wore a white suit bleached to clinical brightness, the cut sharp and exact. No softness, no apology—just clean lines and control.
Marcus turned. The mask went on instantly: warmth, concern, measured out like a dose. His green eyes did the practiced shimmer—dispensed, not felt.
"Baby?" His voice was velvet over a hook. "What are you doing here? You still look pale. You should've stayed in bed."
He crossed to her as he spoke, hand lifting on instinct, reaching for her forehead—claiming her temperature the way he claimed a room, an asset, a life.
Riva didn't flinch. She simply stepped through his reach, leaving his hand to grasp at nothing but the air she'd just occupied. She bypassed him entirely, heading straight for his desk and dropping into the guest leather chair.
She didn't ask. She was occupied.
His altar of power became her sterile table.
She leaned back, white sleeves stark against dark mahogany.
"I'm fine," she said, clean and flat. "Sit down, Marcus. We need to talk about what happens after the shadow fades."
Marcus blinked—not at the volume, but at the surgical precision of the strike.
Then he let out a short, dismissive laugh, the kind of sound that gently pats you on the head while pretending to be a compliment.
He rounded the desk and sank into his high-backed leather chair, leaning back as if the sheer weight of his posture could reclaim the room.
"Of course, sweetheart. It's perfect timing, isn't it?" His voice was a smooth, expensive purr. "I've already been in touch with Goldman and Morgan Stanley—preliminary talks for a Follow-on Offering. And after that…" He paused, a beat of choreographed silence. "The road to an eventual IPO."
He drew the words out like a sterilized forecast, the version of the story that always worked: big future, bigger headlines, and Riva safely offstage while he stepped into the light.
"That's exactly why I'm here," Riva said, cutting through his rhythm without raising her voice. She was polite. Crisp. Like a bookkeeper correcting a rounding error.
She leaned forward, her gaze pinning his shifting green eyes to the spot. "Wall Street isn't buying a hit movie; they're buying a machine. Look at our governance, Marcus. Our internal audits are still held together by startup-era duct tape and Edgar's personal favors. What do we have that could possibly survive a due diligence team paid to find blood in the water?"
His smile stiffened for a heartbeat. Something sharp flashed beneath the surface before it was rinsed away, replaced by a patronizing warmth.
"Riva, I understand the caution," he said. "But the finances are clean. You can stop worrying. Edgar is a pro—he has the mess handled."
As he spoke, his hand slid across the mahogany—automatic, casual—reaching to cover hers on the desktop. It was an attempt to bleach her edge into compliance with a single, paternal touch.
A breath before contact, Riva withdrew her hand and folded it neatly in her lap.
It was a graceful adjustment of posture, nothing more. No drama. No scene. Just a quiet refusal to be handled.
"Clean isn't the same as compliant," she said, her voice flat. "And it's nowhere near investor-grade. This morning, I pulled the filings for every comparable company that's successfully listed on the Nasdaq in the last two years. Before they even touched a roadshow, they brought in Lighthouse International for a full strategic diagnostic."
"Lighthouse International?" Marcus let the name sit on his tongue for a beat.
He'd heard of them—rigorous, clinical. They weren't headline-hunters; they were the kind of firm that scrubbed a company until the bone showed. His guard loosened a fraction, not from trust, but from the sudden, cold calculation of a man seeing a new obstacle.
He'd heard of them—rigorous, reputable. But they weren't Mackin & White; they weren't the kind of audit outfit people whispered about in cold sweats, a machine built to sniff out scandal and bleed it into the headlines. The distinction loosened him by a hair. The knot in his chest unspooled just enough.
He chose his words with a heavy, managerial gentleness. "I know their reputation. But bringing in outsiders right now? It screams a lack of confidence. It gives investors a reason to start imagining ghosts."
He gave her the smile he used when he wanted a subordinate to feel childish. "And it's going to cost time and energy. We had an agreement, remember? I handle the business. You focus on what you're brilliant at—creative, producing. That's our core."
In her first life—back when "The Perfect Partner" was the clean version of herself she clung to—this was where she would have apologized. Stepped back. Let him write the story and call it love.
Now, the words landed exactly as intended: control, laundered as care. She watched him the way a forensic examiner watches a body they've already dissected.
"Actually, it's the opposite," Riva said. The softness was gone, replaced by something hard and final.
"Lighthouse tells the market that Prism isn't a fluke. It says we're governed, transparent, and built to survive a colonoscopy. It scares off the scavengers and brings in the institutional sharks who think in decades."
She tilted her head. A faint, cool glint crossed her eyes—a look that was almost pity. "If we won't spend the effort on transparency now, Marcus, how do we claim we're fit to be a public company? And how do we guarantee that every shareholder's interest—including yours and mine—won't be liquidated by some 'flaw' we were too lazy to find?"
She didn't give him a gap to steer into. Riva stood, as decisive as a verdict.
"I'll have Anna send you the Lighthouse memo and their proposal," she said. "The creative team is waiting for me. I'm done here."
She turned and walked out without looking back.
The latch clicked. A clean, sterile snap that cut the room in half. It was a surgical incision—clean, final, separating two rooms and two irreconcilable realities.