Mrs Chen was surprised to see that the mysterious Stan Harrison was this young, nevertheless she knew he deserves her respect, she extended a hand with a smile.
Stan accepted it. Her grip was steady, deliberate, practiced. The kind of handshake that functioned simultaneously as greeting and evaluation.
"It’s a pleasure to finally put a face to the na," she said.
Her tone revealed nothing concrete, neither approval nor skepticism. Just the asured, professionally neutral warmth of a senior shareholder eting a peer she had spent weeks preparing to assess.
"Likewise," Stan replied.
The remaining two introduced themselves in turn.
David Park. Mid-fifties. Eight-percent stake. Background in technology and distribution. The sort of investor whose questions during board exchanges had always been sharp, technical, and entirely free of sentint.
Then Marcus Wei. Early forties at most. Six-percent stake inherited recently from his father, still in the process of establishing his own weight within the shareholder structure.
Each handshake carried the subtle pressure of a negotiation not yet formally begun. Brief assessnts passed silently between them, posture, composure, confidence, restraint.
And each exchange arrived at the sa underlying conclusion:
Stan Harrison existed exactly as the reports had described him. Real. Present. Calm. And the single largest individual shareholder seated at the table.
Everything else they decided about him would co later.
Stan exchanged the necessary professional courtesies before finally taking his seat between Vivian and Xenia.
Then, almost absently, he glanced across the arena toward the Netflix section.
Lily Reeves was watching him. She didn’t look away when their eyes t.
Instead, she held his gaze for two asured heartbeats before allowing her attention to drift calmly across the newly assembled Star Entertainnt table, Stan, his fellow shareholders, his branch manager, and the platform’s most prominent female strear seated together in quiet conversation.
Then she turned back toward the stage program with the composed neutrality of soone who had just added several new items to an internal list requiring future investigation.
Stan returned his attention to his own table. Around the arena, the lights began to dim.
The first perforr was about to take the stage.
...
Across the arena, Lily Reeves’s attention drifted briefly away from the stage.
Not obviously. Not enough for anyone around her to notice.
But her gaze found the Star Entertainnt section once again.
Toward Vivian, then toward Stan Harrison seated beside her. And toward Xenia.
The strear leaned slightly toward Vivian now, listening attentively as the branch manager outlined what was almost certainly the frawork of Star Entertainnt’s developnt proposal.
Every few monts, Xenia nodded with visible interest while Stan sat beside them in calm silence, saying very little and yet sohow shaping the entire conversation simply through his presence.
Lily’s fingers stilled against the edge of her program.
A faint pressure tightened unpleasantly in her chest.
Jealousy. Not dramatic. Not visible. But undeniably present.
Because she understood exactly what she was looking at.
Vivian had not secured that conversation on her own.
She had secured it because of Stan.
The sequence was painfully transparent to anyone experienced enough to read a room professionally.
Vivian approached Stan with familiarity. Stan trusted her enough to grant her operational freedom around him. Xenia was clearly comfortable with Stan on a personal level. And because those three variables aligned beneath the banner of Star Entertainnt, Vivian had been handed an opportunity most branch managers would spend years trying to engineer.
An early-stage proposal eting with one of the country’s fastest-rising female strears before the event had even officially begun.
Lily’s eyes narrowed slightly.
That kind of access mattered.
Not because Xenia was rely famous, but because online influence had begun bleeding aggressively into mainstream entertainnt trics over the past several years.
Audience migration. Cross-platform monetization. Streaming conversion rates.
Viewer-retention overlap between digital personalities and traditional film properties.
Every major entertainnt company was watching the shift carefully.
And Star Entertainnt, as always, was moving faster than most.
If they integrated Xenia successfully into even a single high-performing project, a supporting role, a recurring dia appearance, a limited campaign partnership, the ripple effects across online engagent alone would be enormous.
TikTuk traffic. Streaming buzz. Fan migration. Algorithmic amplification.
A traditional entertainnt giant absorbing one of the platform era’s fastest-growing personalities directly into its ecosystem.
That wasn’t simple talent acquisition. That was strategic expansion.
And Vivian was sitting at the center of it. Lily’s expression remained perfectly composed.
Internally, however, the irritation sharpened. Because she understood sothing else too.
If Vivian had approached Xenia alone, without Stan Harrison seated beside her, the entire interaction would have unfolded differently.
More cautious. More formal. More guarded.
But Stan’s presence altered the gravity of every conversation around him.
People leaned toward him instinctively. Not socially. Structurally.
As though opportunities naturally condensed around him simply because he occupied the room.
Lily disliked that realization more every ti it resurfaced.
Beside her, Daniel spoke quietly without looking up from his tablet.
"Director Reeves."
"Yes?"
"I’ve started pulling preliminary information on Harrison."
"Anything useful?"
"A lot of empty space."
That drew her full attention imdiately.
Daniel continued typing as he spoke.
"The financial structures connected to him are unusually insulated. Several corporate pathways terminate inside holding groups with almost no public exposure. I’m still tracing the ownership layers."
Lily remained silent for several seconds.
Across the arena, Vivian smiled faintly at sothing Xenia said.
The sight irritated Lily far more than it should have.
Because she recognized that expression.
Confidence. Not complete confidence. Not yet. But the beginning of it.
The kind born from standing beside soone powerful enough that other people began taking you seriously simply through association.
Lily’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
For years, Vivian had existed in her shadow.
The younger sister. The spoilt emotional one. The reckless one.
And now that sa younger sister sat beside the most mysterious figure in the arena while negotiating on behalf of Star Entertainnt itself.
Worse still, She was doing it well.
Applause rippled lightly through the arena as the stage lights shifted for the opening act.
Lily turned her attention forward again.
But her thoughts no longer belonged entirely to the performance.
Because for the first ti that evening, a possibility had begun taking shape in the back of her mind, one she deeply disliked.
If Stan Harrison continued backing Vivian publicly...
Then Vivian Reeves might eventually beco genuinely dangerous within the industry.
And Lily had no intention of underestimating her sister badly enough to make that mistake twice.
She folded her hands neatly atop the table.
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