Dealing with the Dynasty
The travel from Sunburst Café, Los Angeles to Starlight Talent Agency, Dante’s office consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The elevator doors slid open onto the tenth floor of the Starlight Talent Agency building, and Dante Rutherford stepped into a lobby that hadn’t changed in seven years. Same beige carpet with the faded coffee stain shaped like Florida. Same reception desk of faux marble. Same smell of desperation and printer toner.
The receptionist looked up from her phone, a twenty-something with acrylic nails and the dead-eyed patience of someone who had learned not to care. “Can I help you?”
Dante set his palms flat on the counter. “I need to see Grant Mazin.”
“Mr. Mazin doesn’t take walk-ins.”
“Tell him Dante’s here. He’ll take this one.”
She hesitated, eyes scanning his face with the flickering recognition of someone trying to place a former TV star. The pause stretched two seconds too long, and then she picked up the desk phone and pressed a single digit.
“There’s a guy here named Dante,” she said into the receiver. A pause. “Yeah. Okay.” She hung up and pointed toward the security door on the left. “He says go straight back.”
The door buzzed open before Dante reached it.
Grant’s office had always been the smallest on the floor—a converted supply closet with a single window that looked out onto the brick wall of the neighboring building. Grant sat behind a metal desk cluttered with three monitors and a half-eaten sandwich. He was fifty-three, built like a refrigerator that had been left out in the rain, with gray cropped hair and a scar that split his left eyebrow in two.
He didn’t stand. He just tilted his head and said, “You look like hell.”
Dante closed the door behind him. “I feel like I crawled out of it.”
“Seven years. No call, no text, not even a goddamn Christmas card.” Grant leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight. “Then your name pops up on my access log at nine in the morning. Figured you were either dead or stupid.”
“Maybe both.”
Grant studied him for a long moment. Then he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder, sliding it across the metal surface. “I’ve been keeping tabs. Figured it was only a matter of time before you showed up.”
Dante opened the folder. Inside were printed screenshots of bank transaction records, property liens, and a single photograph of a man in his late twenties with slicked-back blond hair and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Silas Ravenwood.
“He’s been watching Nadia Prescott for six months,” Grant said. “Her checking account, her credit card activity, her rent payments. He knows where she lives. He knows what grocery store she uses. And he knows she has a kid.”
Dante’s thumb pressed into the edge of the folder, denting the cardstock. “How deep did he dig?”
“Deep enough to find the birth certificate. No father listed, but Ravenwood’s not an idiot. He’s connected the timeline. The question is whether he’s going to use it as leverage or as a weapon.”
Dante closed the folder. “I need to move faster than he expects.”
Grant nodded, slow and deliberate. “Then let’s talk about what you need.”
—
The gym was in the basement of the agency building, a forgotten relic from the 1980s that the Starlight executives had never bothered to renovate. The mirrors were cracked. The rubber mats smelled of bleach and old sweat. A single heavy bag hung from a ceiling beam, duct tape wrapped around its torn seams.
Dante wrapped his hands himself. He’d forgotten the specific ritual of it—the way the cotton pulled tight across his knuckles, the way the tape bit into the skin at the base of his thumb. The last time he’d been in a proper gym was six years ago, for a role as a washed-up boxer that had never made it past the first cut of auditions.
He started with the bag.
The first punch was weak, his shoulder protesting from years of disuse. The second was better. By the third, he remembered the mechanics: hip rotation, shoulder alignment, the snap of the wrist at the moment of impact. The bag swung, and he followed it, throwing a combination—jab, cross, hook—that left his lungs burning.
He kept going.
Thirty seconds turned into a minute. A minute turned into three. By the time he stopped, his arms were shaking and sweat dripped from his chin onto the mat. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and counted his breaths until the room stopped spinning.
Grant stood in the doorway, arms crossed. “You’re going to tear something if you go that hard.”
“Then I’ll tear it and keep going.” Dante straightened, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “I need a contact list. Everyone who owed me a favor. Everyone who still works in the industry and isn’t on Ravenwood’s payroll.”
“That’s a short list.”
“Then I’ll take a short list.”
Grant pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and tossed it onto the weight bench. “Already printed. Twelve names. Three of them still owe you real money.”
Dante picked up the paper and scanned the names. Familiar faces from a decade ago. Producers who’d gotten their start on his sets. Writers he’d championed. One name near the bottom caught his attention: *Leo Vargas – Independent Financing.*
“Vargas is still clean?”
“As far as I can tell. Runs his own operation out of Santa Monica. No ties to the Ravenwood family that I’ve been able to trace.” Grant stepped into the room and pointed at the heavy bag. “But you can’t call him yet. Not until you’ve got something to offer. Vargas doesn’t take pity cases.”
Dante folded the paper and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “Then I’ll need to earn some leverage.”
“That’s the spirit.” Grant turned toward the door, then paused. “One more thing. Silas Ravenwood doesn’t just want money. He wants a legacy. He’s been trying to buy up every independent talent agency within a fifty-mile radius. Starlight’s next on his list.”
“How long do I have?”
“He’s already made the offer. Jasper Ravenwood signed the first round of paperwork three days ago. If the deal closes, this building gets folded into Ravenwood Entertainment, and every client file in this office becomes their property.”
Dante looked at the cracked mirrors, the peeling paint on the walls, the single fluorescent light that buzzed overhead. This place had been his first real job in Hollywood. He’d spent three years in a cubicle on the fifth floor, making cold calls and fetching coffee, before anyone had given him a chance to audition.
“Then we close the deal first,” he said.
Grant’s scarred eyebrow lifted. “You have a plan for that?”
“Working on it.”
—
At 2:47 PM, Nadia Prescott’s phone buzzed on her desk at Prescott & Associates, the small legal firm where she’d worked for the past four years. The caller ID read: *Jasper Ravenwood – Executive Office.*
She stared at the name for three full seconds before picking up.
“Nadia Prescott speaking.”
“Nadia.” The voice on the other end was smooth, practiced, the kind of voice that had been trained in private schools and polished at country club dinners. “This is Jasper Ravenwood. I apologize for the abrupt call. I understand this is short notice, but I’d like to schedule an in-person meeting this evening. There’s a matter I’d like to discuss regarding your son.”
Her blood went cold. She kept her voice steady. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think we both know exactly what I mean.” A pause, the sound of papers shuffling. “Seven thirty. The Peninsula Hotel. I’ll have a car waiting for you outside your building at seven fifteen. I do hope you’ll attend, for the sake of professional courtesy.”
The line went dead.
Nadia set the phone down and looked at the clock on her computer monitor. She had four hours.
—
Dante’s hands were raw by the time he finished his third hour in the gym. He’d moved from the heavy bag to a speed bag that hung lopsided from the ceiling, then to a series of calisthenics that had left his legs trembling and his core burning. He wasn’t going to become a fighter in one day. But he could remember what it felt like to move like one.
He was sitting on the weight bench, breathing hard, when his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. The screen showed an unknown number.
He answered. “Yeah.”
“Dante.” Her voice was low, controlled, but he could hear the edge beneath it. “Jasper Ravenwood just called me. He knows about Jace. He wants to meet tonight.”
Dante was on his feet before he finished processing the words. “Where and when.”
“Peninsula Hotel. Seven thirty. He’s sending a car.”
“Don’t get in that car.”
“I don’t have a choice, Dante. He made it clear that this wasn’t optional. If I don’t show up, he’ll come looking for me. For Jace.”
Dante grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door. “Then I’ll be there first.”
“How?”
He didn’t have an answer yet. But he had twelve names on a piece of paper, one broken-down gym, and a security chief who knew the city better than anyone.
“Just trust me,” he said. “And keep Jace with Miriam tonight. Don’t let him out of your sight until I call.”
A long pause. Then: “I’ll see you at the hotel.”
The line went dead.
Dante walked out of the gym with his knuckles bleeding and his mind already running scenarios.
—
Grant was waiting in the hallway, holding a tablet with a map of the Peninsula Hotel’s floor plan displayed on the screen. “I pulled this from the city planning database. Three entrances: main lobby, service corridor on the east side, and a private elevator in the parking garage that goes straight to the executive suites.”
“Which one will he use?”
“The private elevator. Jasper Ravenwood doesn’t walk through lobbies.” Grant zoomed in on a section of the map. “But the service corridor connects to the kitchen on the second floor, and from there you can access the stairwell to the executive wing. You’d have to move fast. Security will be watching the main floors.”
“How many security?”
“At least four. Possibly six. Silas Ravenwood’s personal detail travels with him everywhere.”
Dante studied the floor plan, tracing the route with his finger. The stairwell was narrow. The kitchen would be staffed until at least ten PM. There was a ventilation duct above the executive suite that connected to a maintenance closet on the third floor.
“I’ll need a wire and an earpiece,” he said. “And a distraction.”
Grant raised an eyebrow. “What kind of distraction?”
“Something that pulls Silas’s security off the executive floor for at least three minutes.”
Grant considered it, then nodded once. “I know a guy who owes me a favor. He’s a fire alarm technician.”
“Make it happen.”
—
At 6:48 PM, Dante stood in the maintenance closet on the third floor of the Peninsula Hotel, wearing a black jacket and a pair of work gloves. The earpiece in his right ear crackled once, then settled into static.
Grant’s voice came through, low and clear. “I’m in the parking garage. Nadia’s car just pulled in. She’s got a tail—one vehicle, black sedan, two occupants. They’re staying in the lot.”
“Copy.” Dante adjusted the wire clipped to his collar. “How long until the distraction?”
“Two minutes. The alarm tech is patching into the system now. When it goes off, you’ll have a three-minute window before the hotel’s own security locks down the stairwells.”
Dante checked the time on his phone. 6:49 PM. Forty-one minutes until the meeting.
He thought about Jace. The way the boy had waved goodbye that morning, his small hand pressed against the window of the SUV. The shy smile that had barely lifted the corner of his mouth.
*I’m going to level up for you, kid.*
He closed his eyes and counted his breaths.
—
At 6:52 PM, the fire alarm blared through the hotel’s speaker system.
Dante moved.
He pushed open the maintenance closet door and stepped into the hallway, walking fast but not running. Staff members were already emerging from rooms, looking confused, herding guests toward the emergency exits. He turned down the service corridor, past a cart stacked with linens, and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
The kitchen was chaos—chefs shutting down stoves, line cooks grabbing coats, the head chef shouting orders over the noise. Dante moved through them like a ghost, keeping his head down, following the route he’d memorized from the floor plan.
He reached the stairwell at 6:54 PM.
The door to the executive wing was unlocked. He slipped through and emerged onto a carpeted hallway lined with mahogany doors and brass light fixtures. The executive suite was at the end of the hall, room 3107.
The fire alarm was still blaring.
He reached the door at 6:55 PM.
And found it standing open.
Inside, Silas Ravenwood sat in a leather armchair, a glass of whiskey in his hand, a smile on his face. Two security guards flanked the windows. A third stood by the door, hand resting on his hip.
Silas raised his glass. “Mr. Rutherford. I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Dante stepped into the room and let the door click shut behind him.
—
At 7:02 PM, Nadia Prescott sat in the hotel lobby, her hands folded in her lap, watching the elevator doors.
She didn’t know where Dante was. She didn’t know if he’d made it inside.
But she knew one thing for certain: Jasper Ravenwood had already lost.
Because she had Jace’s birth certificate in her purse, a burner phone in her pocket, and a lawyer’s knowledge of exactly how to bury a family like the Ravenwoods.
She just needed time.
The elevator doors opened.
She stood up.
—
Grant’s voice came through the earpiece, barely above a whisper. “Dante. You’re inside. I’m seeing movement on the hotel’s internal security feed—Silas’s detail is re-routing to the executive floor. You have maybe two minutes before they lock the building down.”
Dante looked at Silas across the room, the whiskey glass catching the light, that cold smile still fixed in place.
“Two minutes is all I need,” he said.
Silas’s smile faltered.
Dante pulled the folder from his jacket and tossed it onto the table between them. The intelligence ledger. The debt. The plan.
“Let’s talk about Jace,” Dante said.
Grant hands Dante a burner phone. “They’ve already moved on her. You have six hours before Silas tries to take the boy.”