Reel (Hollywood Renaissance 1)

“That’s not fair,” Evan says. “Neevah has killed this role. You know it. You’ve said it. Everyone at Galaxy has been blown away by her performance.”

“But did she lie to us?” he demands. “If we had known she had lupus, we could have—”

“Discriminated against her?” I ask, the anger barely checked beneath my low tone. “Based on her medical condition?”

“Uh, no.” He clears his throat, hearing what he didn’t say voiced out loud. “Of course not.”

“The fact is,” Evan says, “Neevah passed the insurance company’s medical exam with no red flags. We’ve obtained a letter from her doctor that states at the time she began our movie, her official diagnosis was discoid lupus, a condition that is not considered life-threatening and primarily affects skin and hair.”

“When she negotiated her personal hairstylist into her contract,” I add, “she disclosed a hair and skin condition, though she didn’t call it lupus. There was no reason or requirement for her to. If you’re looking for some legal loophole to save you money and vilify Neevah, you won’t find one, and you’ll have me to deal with.”

“Oh, I’ll have you to deal with?” he sneers. “The elephant in the room is that you’re fucking the lead actress . . . again. Maybe if you knew how to keep your dick separate from your work, you could objectively see that this is bad for business.”

“What will be bad for business,” I say, my voice rolling out wrapped in barbed wire, “is when I punch you in the face and Galaxy has to choose between me, the director who’s going to make them lots of money and give them the ultimate movie to check all their fucking DEI boxes, or the privileged asshole who tried to weaponize his power against a young woman fighting for her life.”

I sit back in my chair, reining my rage by a string, but determined I won’t give this son of a bitch the satisfaction of seeing it.

“I don’t see public opinion favoring you in that scenario, Stone,” Evan adds.

“Public,” Lawson mutters. “None of this has to go public. I mean, at Galaxy, we’re a family. Of course, we want to accommodate whatever needs to be done so Neevah can be well. If you misconstrued anything I said—”

“Get up,” I say through gritted teeth. “Get off my set right now, Stone. Take your ass home to LA. If I catch you on my lot when we get back, I promise I’ll find a way to take that job from you and make your name shit in this town.”

“I think—”

“You heard him,” Evan interrupts Lawson. “Get your ass up. Get off the set. And don’t even stop to see your wife, who you don’t deserve, by the way. You can see her when she gets home.”

Lawson stands, his expression and posture stiff, and leaves the hotel dining room without another word.

“That last part about his wife was pretty cold-blooded,” I tell Evan. “Don’t even stop to see your wife on the way out? Dayuuuum, Evan.”

“That was my favorite part, actually.”

We share a smile across the table and sigh in unison. The reality is, we may have called Lawson out and stripped his ass of some bravado, but we are losing money, and this is hard.

“You know he could still cause trouble for us,” I say, some of my hubris draining away with the adrenaline. “Maybe blackball me.”

The irony of making Dessi Blue is that so much has changed since then, but some things remain the same. The reality is that in this town, there are barriers harder for me to clear than others. A powerful man like Lawson Stone can do a lot of damage in ways I might not even be able to foresee.

“He can try,” Evan scoffs. “We may not be those young, scrappy kids anymore, but they knew how to get shit done. Knew how to find money when it was scarce, and managed to make great movies without studio backing. We’ll do it again if it comes to that, but I don’t think it will. Not if he’s smart.”

“Thanks for having my back, by the way.” I meet Evan’s eyes cautiously. “I know you didn’t approve of me getting involved with Neevah.”

“It was clear from day one that Neevah was perfect for this role, and it’s just as clear that this is not just you wanting to get in some actress’s pants. You love her.”

I lift one querying brow. “Do I? How you know that?”

“I’ve known you almost twenty years, Holt. That’s a lot of years and a lot of women, and I’ve never seen you like this.”

I’ve never felt like this.

“So enough of the mushy stuff,” Evan says abruptly. “I’ve prepped Kenneth and Jill and the team about Neevah’s situation and the implications, but I thought you might want to address the cast and crew.”