Page 40 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

Dylan: We need to talk. About the new album.

I let the words sit there.

The timing isn’t a coincidence. It never is with him.

I don’t respond, not yet. Not because I’m ignoring it, but because I don’t know what the right move is here, and I don’t make moves without knowing exactly where they land.

Instead, I lock the screen and set the phone face down on the desk, a small act that creates just enough distance to think.

Because that’s what Dylan is.

Not just a complication for the label, but for Xander, which, by extension, makes him a problem for all of us.

Xander built his younger brother Dylan’s band from nothing. Managed them before anyone else saw what they could be, before the tours, before the numbers, before the kind of attention that attracts people who think they know better. And then, somewhere along the way, someone else stepped in and took over after the fallout with cleaner contracts, bigger promises, the kind of move that appears to be progress from the outside.

It wasn’t.

It just put distance where there shouldn’t have been any.

Now Dylan’s reaching out directly to me, cutting across lines that still exist whether anyone acknowledges them or not, and doing it because he knows exactly where I sit. Close enough to Xander to matter, separate enough to be useful.

And that’s the problem.

Because Xander doesn’t enjoy being circumvented. Especially not when it comes to something he built.

I haven’t told him about the messages.

Not yet.

I don’t deal in problems. I deal in solutions.

I push the thought aside, at least for now, and reach for my coffee, taking a sip as I pull up the next contact. Only for another notification to cut in before I can dial.

Caitlin West: Still interested in doing a feature. Timing feels right. Call me.

I almost laugh.

Too early.

We already have the vision. The problem is letting the industry decide what it is before we officially show them ourselves.

The last thing we need is some tabloid writer shaping the narrative into “three ex-rockstars hiding in the mountains chasing relevance” before anyone understands what we’re actually building here.

I don’t respond to her either.

Instead, I stand, because movement helps, and step out into the hallway, where the house carries on around me. Music bleeds faintly from one of the studios, voices farther in.

This is what we built.

Not just a label, but a system. A place where things can happen without interference, without pressure, without the constant demand to perform before something is ready to exist.

We were tired of it, all of us, being pushed, molded, marketed before the music even had time to breathe. So, we stepped out. Built something better.

A place where artists can think for themselves, where they’re not constantly reacting, just creating.

Now we just have to convince everyone else of that.

I head toward the stairs, rolling the tension out of my shoulders as I go, my phone buzzing again in my hand before I’ve made it halfway down.