Page 28 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

“I heard.” I dart my eyes to Xander. “He’s going to scare off half the industry before we even open the doors.”

“Good,” Xander says. “We don’t want half the industry.”

I grin. “Confidence. I like it.”

“It’s not confidence,” he replies. “We know what works.”

And that’s the truth. We do. We’ve been the artists. We’ve been the ones getting pushed, reshaped, packaged into something easier to sell. We know exactly where the pressure points are, and exactly how to remove them.

“Artists first,” I say, flipping the eggs. “Space to create. No label breathing down their necks. No clock watching.”

“Control stays with us,” Xander adds. “But the process belongs to them.”

“Which is why this works,” I say. “Because nobody else is doing it right.”

Gabe rubs a hand over his jaw. “Nobody else can afford to.”

“Good thing we can,” I say lightly, fiddling with my guitar pick in my pocket.

Gabe’s phone buzzes again. He looks at it with rage dancing in his eyes, then answers anyway. “Stockton.”

I pick up my plate and hop onto the counter, watching him pace again.

Xander takes his food but doesn’t sit. Just stands there, eating for fuel and nothing more.

I study him. “You’re distracted.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” I say easily. “And I’m offended you think I wouldn’t notice.”

He doesn’t respond.

I grin. “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

That gets me a look.

Interesting.

“Careful,” I add lightly. “You keep looking like that and I might have to hang out with her myself.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Oh, I definitely do now.”

Gabe mutters something into the phone about contracts and liability and “non-negotiable terms,” and I tune him out.

Because now I’m curious.

And curiosity has always been my worst habit.

By mid-afternoon, the house finally sounds as it should.

Music bleeds through the walls in unfinished fragments. A bass line sounds somewhere down the hall while voices drift between control rooms in clipped, focused bursts. Engineers move between studios carrying coffees and cables, and the whole building smells faintly of dust, expensive equipment, and ambition.

We’re still building the roster. Still figuring out who’s worth betting on.

In Studio B, a local band is halfway through a trial recording session, and the lead singer has been butchering the same chorus for the last ten minutes. Each attempt sounds tighter with the instruments and weaker with his nerves. Through the glass, I can practically feel Julian losing patience.