From A Producer To A Global Superstar

Chapter 560: Several miles away

Several miles away, inside a private conference room hidden beneath layers of security and secrecy, four people sat around a long black table. The atmosphere was tense, very tense, the kind of tension that made the air feel thick and difficult to breathe. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Because the man standing at the head of the room looked furious in a way that transcended ordinary anger, his rage contained so completely that it manifested as coldness, as stillness, as something far more dangerous than shouting or violence.

Silas.

His hands rested against the table, fingers spread wide, the only sign of his agitation. Eyes cold and flat, expression unreadable, which somehow made him even more terrifying than if he had been screaming. Across from him sat four individuals, each one carefully chosen, each one responsible for a segment of his operations, each one now feeling the weight of his displeasure like a physical pressure against their chests.

Valerie, the woman who handled financial logistics, her composure fraying at the edges.

Eric, the man who managed communications, his jaw tight with the effort of maintaining calm.

Ulrich, who oversaw operational security, his posture rigid and defensive.

And Alice, the youngest of the group, responsible for intelligence coordination, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white.

The four regional coordinators responsible for one of the organization’s most important operations.

And right now, Silas wasn’t pleased with any of them.

His gaze moved across the room slowly, methodically, like a predator deciding where to strike first, where the weakness lay, where an example needed to be made. He took his time, letting the silence stretch, letting each person feel the weight of his attention before it moved on.

Finally he spoke, his voice quiet, almost conversational, which made it worse.

"What exactly is happening?"

Nobody answered immediately. The question was too broad, too loaded, too dangerous to answer without knowing what specific failure had triggered this meeting.

That was a mistake.

Silas’s voice became colder, dropping another degree that made the room feel suddenly chillier. "I asked a question. I expect an answer. Not hesitation. Not calculation. An answer."

Valerie straightened in her chair, her spine rigid, her voice steady despite the fear that Felix could see in her eyes. "We’re still investigating the discrepancies in the southern accounts. The numbers don’t align with our projections, and we’re working to determine whether it’s incompetence or—"

"Investigating." Silas repeated the word as if tasting something rotten. "You’ve been investigating for three weeks, Valerie. Three weeks. And in that time, what have you found?"

Valerie swallowed, her composure cracking slightly. "We’ve identified several irregularities. We’re tracing the sources. We need more time to—"

"Time." Silas cut her off, the word sharp as a blade. "You need more time. Of course you do." He turned his gaze to Eric, who stiffened under the attention. "And you? What do you need, Eric? More resources? More personnel? More excuses?"

Eric’s jaw tightened further, his voice coming out controlled but edged with defensiveness. "There haven’t been any unusual developments in communications. Our channels are secure. Our protocols are being followed. If there’s a leak, it’s not coming from my department."

Silas laughed.

The sound contained absolutely no amusement, a dry, hollow thing that made the hairs on the back of Alice’s neck stand up.

"No unusual developments." His fingers tapped the table, each impact precise and deliberate. "Interesting. Very interesting." He paused, letting the silence stretch again, letting each person wonder if they were the target, if their failure had finally been discovered. "Then explain something to me. Explain it slowly, because I want to be absolutely certain I understand."

Nobody liked where this was going. The room seemed to shrink, the walls pressing closer, the air becoming thinner.

Silas leaned forward, his voice becoming quieter, which somehow made it cut deeper. "Why have I received almost no useful updates concerning Dayo?"

The room froze, the temperature dropping perceptibly.

Silas continued, each word measured and sharp. "The man is preparing a major release. A song that is already generating significant attention. His company is expanding, signing new artists, increasing its market presence. His influence is growing across multiple platforms, multiple demographics, multiple regions. And somehow—" His eyes narrowed to slits. "Somehow, all four of you expect me to believe that nothing important is happening. That there are no opportunities. That there is nothing to report. That Dayo has simply... ceased to be relevant."

Nobody answered.

Because there was no good answer. They had been focused on internal operations, on maintaining their own territories, on the day-to-day management of systems that had seemed sufficient. They had looked away from Dayo because looking at him required confronting the failure of their previous attempts, required acknowledging that he had survived everything they had thrown at him and emerged stronger.

Silas stared at each of them, one after another, measuring, evaluating, judging. He saw their fear, their uncertainty, their desperate desire to say something that would deflect his attention. And he found all of it wanting.

Finally he stepped back, the physical distance somehow increasing the psychological pressure. The room felt slightly less suffocating, but only slightly, like a noose loosened by a fraction of an inch.

"I want answers." His voice echoed through the room, bouncing off walls that had absorbed worse threats. "Real answers. Not investigations. Not updates. Not reassurances. Answers about what Dayo is doing, who he is meeting, what he is planning. I want to know who is helping him, who is protecting him, who is feeding him information. I want to know why his career is thriving while we sit here discussing our own incompetence."

He paused, letting the words settle like ash.

"Immediately."

Nobody doubted him. Not for a second. Because when Silas stopped asking questions—when he shifted from demanding answers to demanding consequences—people disappeared. And nobody in that room wanted to become one of those people, another name erased from records, another body that would never be found, another cautionary tale whispered in dark corners.

The meeting had only just begun.

But already, the tension was thick enough to choke on.

And somewhere in the silence, beneath the fear and the calculation, a question hung unspoken in the air, a realization slowly forming in the minds of four people who had thought themselves secure:

If Silas was this angry about what they hadn’t done to Dayo—

What would he do when he learned what Dayo was planning to do to him?

The answer, none of them wanted to discover.

...

Luna woke before the sun had fully decided to rise, before the first hints of orange had begun to stain the Lagos sky, before the birds had remembered that morning was their responsibility. She lay on her side, facing the window, watching the darkness outside gradually surrender to something softer, something that promised light without yet delivering it. Beside her, Dayo slept with the deep unconsciousness of a man who had finally allowed himself peace, his breathing steady and slow, one arm thrown across the space where she had been before she shifted away from his warmth.

She did not feel tired.

That was the strangest thing.

She had slept perhaps four hours, her mind too alive, too full, too electric with possibility to surrender completely to rest. Yet she felt more awake than she had in months, her body humming with an energy she had almost forgotten existed. It was the energy of anticipation, of hunger, of aliveness—the particular electricity that came from wanting something so badly that your very cells seemed to vibrate with the wanting.

Luna lay very still, not wanting to disturb Dayo, and let her mind travel backward through the years.

She remembered the first time she had left the industry. Not left, really—fled. The music had stopped speaking to her. The melodies that once flowed like water from some inexhaustible source had dried up, leaving her standing in a desert of silence, her mouth open but no sound emerging. She had tried everything—new producers, new genres, new collaborators—but nothing had worked because the problem was not external. It was her. She had lost her touch. The music no longer resonated with whatever lived inside her, and without that resonance, she was just a woman making noise.

She remembered the desperation of that time, the way she had wandered through studios and rehearsal spaces like a ghost haunting her own life. She remembered the pity in people’s eyes, the careful way they spoke to her, as if her failure were contagious. She remembered deciding to leave before the industry could discard her, preserving some fragment of dignity by walking away first.

And she remembered Dayo finding her in that darkness.

Not rescuing her—she had never needed rescue, not really. But seeing her. Truly seeing her, in a way that no one else had bothered to. He had listened to her old songs, the ones that had made her famous, and he had understood what was missing. Not talent. Not skill. Not even inspiration. What was missing was truth. She had been singing other people’s songs, other people’s styles, other people’s expectations. She had never found her own sound.

Dayo had given her that. He had sat with her for weeks, months, playing chords and discarding them, writing lyrics and burning them, searching for the thing that would unlock whatever door had closed inside her. And when he found it—when that first song in her true voice emerged from the chaos of their experimentation—it had been like breathing after drowning. Like seeing color after blindness. Like being born into a world she had always belonged to but had never known how to reach.

That was their beginning. Not romance, not yet. Recognition. Two artists who saw each other clearly, who understood the loneliness of creating, who spoke a language that needed no translation.

And then the second leaving.

Not because she had lost her touch this time—no, she had found it, had held it, had proven she could wield it with the best of them. But because she had become pregnant with Jennifer, and the industry that had nearly destroyed her once was no place for a mother who wanted to be present, who wanted to be whole, who refused to let her child grow up watching her dissolve under spotlights and schedules and expectations that consumed everything they touched.

She had left again. And this time, Amanda had left with her.

Luna turned onto her back, staring at the ceiling, and felt Dayo’s arm shift in his sleep, searching for her warmth without finding it. She thought about Amanda—her agent, her confidante, her best friend, the woman who had been there through both leavings, who had never judged, who had simply stood beside her and said whatever you need, whenever you need it. Amanda had built a life around Luna’s absence, managing investments, handling appearances, keeping the machinery of Luna’s dormant career oiled and ready for a return that neither of them had ever been certain would come.

And now it had.