Riva stared at the invitation on her screen and felt a knot twist in her gut—quick, sharp, and hard to name.
Karl Winters.
In her last life, after her name had been dragged through the mud and every "friend" had vanished, he'd been the only one to throw her a lifeline.
No strings attached. No grandstanding.
Just a good lawyer showing up out of nowhere. During those long, cold months, his name had been the only warmth that didn't feel like a setup.
Now, she was going to use him. She was going to take that old kindness, sharpen it into a tool, and place him on her board.
For a heartbeat, the guilt was a heavy, physical weight.
Then the brutal math of survival kicked back in and scrubbed it clean. She needed Winter's reach. She needed the empire's muscle. She needed an ally massive enough to stand between her and Marcus… and whatever shadow the Lawrence family cast behind him.
This wasn't romance. This wasn't a reunion.
It was a matter of survival.
And she'd learned the hard way that feelings were a luxury she couldn't afford. Never again.
Three days later, Prism's main conference room was full of expensive suits and quiet ego.
Every executive, every department head, and the investor reps who liked to play "advisor" were packed in.
This was the first real strategy summit since Neon Shadow hit number one—the kind of meeting that didn't just set a direction; it set the next three years.
Marcus Grey sat at the head of the table in a custom suit that looked more like armor than silk.
His fingers drummed against a gold-edged folder—his "vision." His eyes swept the room and snagged, last, on Riva at the far end.
A split-second look. A silent command to stay in line.
Riva kept her eyes on her tablet. In the morning light, her profile was a study in detachment, as if the corporate noise couldn't even graze her skin. Beneath the table, her fingertips had gone ice-cold—not fear.
Focus. The terrifying stillness that comes just before the strike.
"Everyone," Marcus said, his voice resonant and commanding.
"Thank you. Neon Shadow proved the Prism model is the new gold standard. Now the question is simple: how do we turn one win into ten? Into a hundred?"
He stood and crossed to the screen. The projector hummed to life, bathing him in artificial light. The title slide flashed up in sleek, aggressive typography:
PRISM EMPIRE: INDUSTRIAL CONTENT + IP MULTIPLICATION
"My plan is straightforward," Marcus said, clicking the laser pointer. The red dot moved across the chart.
"First: we greenlight Neon Shadow 2 today. Same team. Double the budget. We lock down the IP before people move on."
A ripple of approval went around the table. The investor reps nodded along.
"Second," Marcus continued, his energy building to a practiced, predatory crescendo. "We sign exclusive output deals with the majors—Netflix, Amazon. We commit to three tentpole projects a year. They guarantee the floor, we feed the beast. It's the fastest, cleanest path to an IPO."
A new slide popped up: a cash-flow forecast with numbers big enough to make the room hold its breath.
Marcus then clicked to the next slide.
"Third," he said, "we launch Prism Universe Studios."
His laser dot bounced across glossy concept art—games, comics, live events, branded experiences. "We don't leave money on the table. We squeeze every hit IP for everything it's worth. The data's clear: people want it fast. They want it easy. They want to feel good without doing homework. They want the same recipe, because it feels safe."
He paused, letting the room catch up, then turned back with that smile he could put on in his sleep.
"I know," he said, spreading his hands, "this might sound like it's missing a little… soul." He let the word hang, then tossed a look down the table at Riva—like she was adorable, and slightly inconvenient. "Our dear Riva has always had her artistic principles. She loves the kind of movies that win critics and lose money."
The tone stayed playful.
The message didn't.
"We're not a film club," Marcus said. "We're a business. We're building something that plays on Wall Street someday. We answer to shareholders. You can't pay the electric bill with passion. You pay it with numbers."
The room went quiet. Eyes flicked back and forth, everybody pretending this wasn't a public lesson.
Marcus walked back to his seat and leaned in, palms on the table—his trust me posture. A week after the auditors moved in, he wanted everyone to remember who got to keep the clean version of the story.
"Most of you have been with me a long time," he said. "I'm the one who took Prism from three guys in a cramped room to a player Hollywood can't ignore. I know what this market wants. I know what the capital thinks."
The words hit Riva like sandpaper.
I'm the one. I brought us here.
Her ideas, her work, her taste—washed out and replaced with his name.
Riva lifted her eyes.
She didn't jump in. She didn't scramble to defend herself. She didn't even look at Marcus right away.
She looked at the room—at the faces lit up by his numbers, at the ones trying not to choose, at the ones already writing notes they'd later claim were theirs.
Then she set her tablet down, leaned back like she wasn't on anyone's clock, and spoke.
"So," she said, calm and steady, "Prism's future is a fast, efficient factory for cultural junk food."
A couple of heads tipped. No one laughed.
"Chase the trend. Copy the formula. Use data to build the 'hit,'" she went on, like she was reading it off his slide. "Run it down an assembly line, cash out, then hunt for the next shiny thing."
She wasn't angry.
She was clear.
Marcus's jaw tightened. "Riva, don't twist my words. This is business. This is reality."
"I'm not twisting anything." She finally met his eyes. No hurt. No pleading. Just cold focus. "I'm repeating your logic. And if this is all Prism is, answer me one thing."
Riva stood. She didn't go to the screen. She walked to the whiteboard on the side wall and took the marker. The cap came off with a sharp snap.
Then she turned to face everyone, marker in hand, and nodded toward Marcus's polished deck.
"What's the difference," she said, "between that plan and the old Hollywood machine we swore we'd break?"
She let the silence hold.
"We used to laugh at them for playing it safe," Riva said. "For killing new ideas. For sanding talent down until it fits the mold."
The marker tip angled toward Marcus. "And now you want us to become them—just younger, faster, and better at it?"
A few executives who'd been smiling a minute ago went still.
Somewhere at the table, a pen stopped clicking.
Riva didn't look at Marcus anymore. She turned back to the whiteboard and drew a simple set of axes.
"What's the real moat?" she said. "How fast we chase a trend—or whether we're the ones who start them?"
She tapped her tablet, throwing a second set of charts onto the side screen. Ghost's work—deep industry breakdowns, long-horizon projections Marcus didn't like. Original, creator-driven content looked ugly up front. But over time it won: retention, loyalty, downstream value. On the graph, "innovative content" climbed until it sat cleanly above "trend-chasing."
"Sure," Riva said. "People will pay for a quick hit today. But tomorrow, they show up for the thing that actually gets under their skin—work that isn't sanded down, talent that isn't pre-washed." Her voice stayed even. "That's what lasts."
She set the marker down and put both hands on the table.
"So here's my proposal," she said. "We carve out thirty percent of current cash and Neon Shadow profits to fund an independently run incubator: Prism Lab. One job—find and protect original, breakout projects. Creators get real freedom. Real budget protection."
She held the room with her eyes. No apology.
"And the first project," Riva continued, "is the one I've been pitching for months: a raw-talent competition—built to show the unedited version of skill. No manufactured villains. No fake redemption arcs. We leave the polished bullshit at the door."
"Absolutely not." Marcus snapped, pushing back so hard the chair legs shrieked. He slammed his palm on the table, rattling the water glasses. "Thirty percent? To gamble on some fuzzy 'concept'?" His face went tight and shiny. "Riva, you're drunk on your own applause. The board will never sign off on a suicide mission."
Riva met his anger head-on. The corner of her mouth lifted—barely.
Not a smile. A warning.
"Then," she said, "we send my full deck and your 'industrial IP machine' deck to every board member and every investor rep tonight."
She let the silence sit.
"Let's put it to a vote," Riva said. "Not a vote on what prints faster this quarter. A vote on what kind of company Prism is supposed to be."
She stepped back to the whiteboard and, beside the axes, drew a simple triangular prism. She pressed the marker hard. The felt tip squeaked.
"We're called Prism for a reason," she said. "We're supposed to split the light—show more than one color." She tapped the drawing once. "Not just reflect the safest, most profitable shade."
Riva's gaze moved around the table and stopped on Marcus. His face had gone dark.
"If we forget that," she said, quiet and firm, "then our name is a joke."
She didn't wait for a rebuttal.
She picked up her tablet, gave the room a short, professional nod—like she was closing a routine meeting—and walked out.
The silence that followed was total. Even Marcus didn't move.
He stared at the whiteboard—at the prism sketch, at the clean little axes sitting there like a charge sheet.
In a few minutes, she'd taken his authority, his pitch, his whole polished story—and put a crack straight through it in front of everyone.
She hadn't made a suggestion. She'd declared war.
And her weapon wasn't a scandal or a sob story. It was an idea—one he couldn't publicly laugh off without telling on himself.
A man in wire-rim glasses—one of the investor reps—shifted and murmured to the person beside him, "She's… not wrong. Long-term, it's smarter."
The words were quiet. They landed anyway.
Marcus's knuckles went white on the edge of the table.
He felt it—clean and immediate.
From this moment on, the room wasn't his.
Outside in the hall, Riva's heart was hammering—not panic. Release.
First step: done.
In front of all of them, she'd torn the "one big happy family" lie clean in half.