Page 48 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

I glare at him. “Don’t get smug with me in your villain mansion.”

“It’s not a villain mansion.”

“It has gates.”

“That’s security.”

“That’s villain adjacent.”

Julian opens a door to one of the rooms and steps aside like a host revealing a magic trick.

“This,” he says, “is Studio B.”

The room beyond is quiet for the moment, the overhead lights warm. There’s a mixing desk spread out under computer screens, guitars on stands against one wall, a drum kit in the adjoining live room visible through the glass. Microphones hang suspended like questions waiting to be answered.

It smells faintly of wood, electronics, and metal.

The kind of room where things happen.

The kind of room people build entire lives around.

A weird buzz moves through me. I wonder what it would feel like to have a place where ideas turned into things. Where creativity wasn’t just squeezed into the edges of your life between shifts and bills and trying to keep everyone afloat.

I go very still.

Julian notices. “Still not curious?”

I tear my gaze away from the glass and focus on being annoyed. “I’m capable of recognizing when something is expensive.”

Gabe folds his arms. “That isn’t what you were looking at.”

My head turns toward him.

His expression hasn’t changed much, but there’s a flicker in his eyes that says he’s been watching me closely enough to know the difference.

Being read like this is too much. Partly because he’s right.

I shrug one shoulder. “It’s a lot.”

Julian leans against the doorframe, one ankle crossing over the other. “Good a lot or bad a lot?”

“Yes.”

He laughs softly.

I glance into the room again.

There’s a notebook on one side of the console. Headphones draped over a chair. A half-empty coffee cup sitting beside a stack of printed pages covered in scribbled notes and highlighted sections.

I turn back toward them. “This is going to change the town.”

Julian lifts a shoulder. “In a good way.”

I nod. “I hope you’re right.”

Gabe’s gaze narrows. “How do you mean?”

I shouldn’t answer that.