The Pemberton Leash
The travel from Xavier’s private production office on the film lot to Xavier’s guesthouse and film set backlot consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The guesthouse sat at the back of Xavier’s property, separated from the main house by a grove of olive trees and a stone path that curved like a question mark. Iris stood in the center of the living room, still holding Eli’s hand, while Xavier unlocked the front door with a code he entered without looking.
“Three bedrooms,” he said, stepping aside. “Kitchen’s stocked. The back door leads to a courtyard with a fountain. Eli might like it.”
Eli had already let go of her hand and was walking the perimeter of the room, his small fingers trailing along the spines of books on a built-in shelf. He stopped at a sketchbook left open on a side table—Xavier’s, from the look of the half-finished charcoal study of a staircase.
“You draw?” Eli asked.
“I do.”
“Mom says I’m good at it.”
Xavier’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Let’s see.”
Eli pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket—a crayon drawing of a dragon with mismatched wings and a castle that leaned dangerously to the left. He held it up like evidence.
Xavier studied it for a long moment. “The perspective on the castle is ambitious,” he said. “Most adults can’t handle a vanishing point. You’re seven?”
“Seven and a half.”
“Then you’re ahead of schedule.”
Iris watched them, something cracking open in her chest that she’d spent seven years sealing shut. She turned away before either of them could see her face.
The security briefing came an hour later, after Eli had fallen asleep on the couch with Xavier’s sketchbook open across his chest. Victor stood in the kitchen doorway, his posture a study in controlled readiness.
“The Pemberton financial group just made a bid on the film’s distribution rights,” Victor said, voice low. “They’re offering thirty percent above market value. The production company’s legal team is stalling, but they can’t hold out forever.”
Xavier leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “They want to bury the film before it releases.”
“Or hold it hostage until you agree to their terms.” Victor’s gaze flicked to Iris, then back. “The family patriarch’s name isn’t on the bid. It’s routed through three shell companies. But the signature trail leads to Cole Pemberton’s personal accountant.”
Iris’s phone was still in her hand. She had read the text message ten times since leaving the studio, each time hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something less threatening. They hadn’t.
*We know about the boy. Tell Xavier to drop the film, or you’ll never see the inside of a studio again.*
She hadn’t shown it to him yet. She had wanted one hour—just one—where Eli could meet his father without the shadow of a threat pressing down on both of them. But the hour was over.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
Xavier read her expression and nodded toward the courtyard.
Outside, the fountain burbled softly, its water catching the last of the daylight. Iris handed him the phone without speaking.
He read the message. His face didn’t change, but his hand tightened on the device until the edges of the case pressed white against his knuckles.
“This happened when?”
“While I was signing the contract. I didn’t tell you because—” She stopped. Because she didn’t know how to say that she’d wanted to pretend, for a few hours, that they were just a family figuring out how to be a family.
“You don’t have to explain,” he said, and the quiet in his voice was worse than anger. Anger she could match. This was something else—a stillness that reminded her of the moments before a car crash, when time stretched and the brain tried to calculate every possible outcome.
“The film set tomorrow,” he said. “I need you there. The cinematographer wants to block the final scene, and I need your input on the lighting sequence.”
“Xavier, they know where I am. They know about Eli.”
“Which is why you stay close to me. Victor will have eyes on you the entire time. If anyone approaches you on set—anyone—you walk toward the nearest crew member and call my name.”
She wanted to argue. She wanted to pack her bags and take Eli somewhere the Pemberton name meant nothing. But she also remembered the way Xavier had looked at Eli’s drawing, the careful attention he’d given a child’s crayon dragon.
“One more day,” she said.
“One more day.”
The film set the next morning was a controlled chaos of cables, light stands, and production assistants carrying clipboards like shields. Iris had been on enough sets to navigate the flow, but this one felt different. The air was thinner. Every face she didn’t recognize was a potential threat.
She found her position at the craft services table, a clipboard of her own in hand, pretending to review the call sheet while she catalogued exits. The backlot’s main gate. A door through the soundstage. A fire exit marked in red.
“Iris Reyes.”
The voice came from behind her, smooth and cultivated, like cream poured over gravel. She turned.
Beckett Pemberton stood six feet away, wearing a linen suit that cost more than her first car. He was younger than his father, early thirties, with the kind of easy confidence that came from never having been told no.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.
“I’m a producer on this film now. Well, my father’s company is. The paperwork went through this morning.” He smiled, and it didn’t reach his eyes. “Funny how these things work out.”
Iris set her clipboard down. Every instinct told her to walk away, but she knew Beckett well enough to understand that running would only make him follow.
“What do you want?”
“I want to have a conversation. A friendly one.” He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something expensive and cloying. “I know about your arrangement with Xavier. I know about the boy.”
“There’s nothing to know.”
“Seven years ago, you had an affair with the heir to the Pemberton empire. You left. You came back with a child.” He tilted his head, studying her like she was a puzzle he’d already solved. “I’m not here to judge. I’m here to offer you a way out.”
“I don’t need a way out.”
“You will.” His voice dropped, losing its veneer of pleasantry. “When the tabloids get wind of the story—the director’s secret bastard, the mistress who tried to cash in—your career won’t survive. No studio will touch you. No production company will let you within a mile of their projects. You’ll be toxic.”
Iris’s hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the table to still them.
“Xavier’s film is good,” Beckett continued. “But it’s not worth your future. Tell him to drop it. Walk away. Take your son and go back to whatever life you built before you decided to play house with a Pemberton.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card, setting it on the table between them. “Think about it. You have forty-eight hours.”
He left. The space where he’d stood felt colder, like his presence had been warming the air and now it was gone.
Iris looked at the card. She didn’t pick it up.
She found Xavier in the director’s tent, hunched over a monitor, reviewing playback of the morning’s dailies. He looked up when she entered, and whatever he saw on her face made him stand immediately.
“Beckett was here.”
“He called Eli a bastard.” Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. “He said he’d go to the tabloids. He said I should tell you to drop the film.”
Xavier’s jaw moved, a muscle flexing once, but he didn’t speak for a long moment. When he did, his voice was tight. “What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything. But Xavier—he’s right. If this gets out, I lose everything. My reputation. My career. Any chance of giving Eli a normal life.” She drew a breath that felt too shallow. “I want to leave the project.”
He stared at her. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant hum of generators and the muffled shouts of the crew setting up the next shot.
“You want to run.”
“I want to protect my son.”
“So do I.” He stepped closer, and she saw something in his eyes she hadn’t seen before—not guilt, not regret, but a kind of furious determination. “Iris, I didn’t know about Eli. I swear to you, I didn’t. If I had—”
“What? You would have done what? Married me? Raised him in secret while the Pembertons tore you apart?”
“I would have fought for you.” His voice cracked on the last word, and the sound of it broke something in her chest. “I would have fought for both of you. I was a coward seven years ago. I let my father dictate my life because I didn’t think I had a choice. But I’m not that person anymore.”
She wanted to believe him. She wanted it so badly that her ribs ached with the wanting. But Beckett’s words were still ringing in her ears, and the business card was still sitting on the craft services table, and somewhere out there, Cole Pemberton was pulling strings she couldn’t see.
“It’s not that simple,” she said.
“It is.” He took her hand, and his fingers were warm and steady. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. When I was seventeen, I watched my father destroy a man who crossed him. Not legally—socially. He ruined his reputation, his marriage, his business. Left him with nothing. I swore that day I would never be like Cole Pemberton. But I didn’t realize, until you came back, that I was still letting him control me. By staying silent. By staying afraid.”
He squeezed her hand. “I won’t let him control me anymore. And I won’t let him touch you or Eli.”
She closed her eyes. The weight of the day pressed down on her, heavy as a blanket soaked through with rain. When she opened them again, Xavier was still there, still holding her hand, still looking at her like she was the only thing in the room worth seeing.
“Forty-eight hours,” she said. “That’s what he gave me.”
“Then we have forty-eight hours to prove him wrong.”
The safe house alert came at 9:47 PM.
Iris was in the guesthouse kitchen, heating soup for Eli, when the notification lit up Xavier’s phone on the counter. He grabbed it before the sound finished, his face going tight as he read.
“Victor,” he said, already moving. “Someone tripped the perimeter sensor on the north boundary.”
Iris’s blood went cold. She looked toward the living room, where Eli was curled on the couch, coloring in one of Xavier’s sketchbooks.
“Get him to the bedroom,” Xavier said. “Lock the door. Don’t come out until I tell you.”
“Xavier—”
“Do it.”
She ran. Eli protested as she scooped him off the couch, but she didn’t stop to explain. She carried him to the smallest bedroom, pushed him inside, and locked the door behind them.
“Mom, what’s happening?”
“Nothing, baby. We’re just playing a game. A quiet game.”
She pressed her ear to the door. Heard Xavier’s footsteps cross the living room. Heard the front door open. Heard the silence that followed, thick and waiting.
Then footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Stopping just outside the guesthouse door.
A knock.
Iris’s hand flew to her mouth. She counted the seconds—one, two, three—waiting for violence, waiting for the door to splinter inward.
Instead, she heard Xavier’s voice, low and calm.
“It’s Victor. The perimeter alarm was a false positive. Deer.”
She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Her legs gave out, and she slid down the wall, landing on the floor with Eli still clutched against her chest.
“Mom, you’re shaking.”
“I’m fine, baby. I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. But she would be. Because when Xavier came back inside, when he found her on the floor with their son in her arms, he knelt down and took her hands—trembling, cold, useless—and held them between his own.
“This is why I turned my back on the Pemberton name,” he said, his voice steady and sure. “My father Cole wants to control me through you and Eli. But I swear—they will never touch either of you again.”