Page 6

I leaned back on the leather couch, one leg stretched out, water bottle sweating in my hand. The room was dim, the way I liked it. No distractions. Just sound and space.

The track looped again.

Amir glanced over his shoulder. “You hear it now?”

“I been heard it,” I said, my voice low. “You finally caught up.”

He smirked and cut the sound, rubbing a hand over his beard. “So that’s what we on today?”

“You asked.” I twisted the cap back on my bottle. “I told you it needed something dirty. Some soul. You tried to fight it.”

Amir grunted. “Man, whatever.”

The studio settled into our kind of quiet?—

Not silence, just sound nobody needed to name.

My phone buzzed in my hoodie pocket.

Jalen’s name flashed across the screen.

Amir clocked it with a tilt of his chin. “That your manager?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Solid dude. Doesn’t blow smoke.”

I stood and slipped out of the booth, walking slow down the hallway toward the small lounge. I hit answer, let the silence breathe a beat.

“Yo,” I said.

“Raj,” Jalen replied, voice as upbeat and polished as ever. “You got a minute?”

“You already got it.”

“Cool, cool. So, update on that intro we discussed.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It’s on for this weekend,” he said. “Gallery event in East Liberty. Nothing flashy—just art, a little press, and a quiet introduction.”

A pause.

“Sienna Ray,” he added.

I didn’t say anything right away. I couldn’t. If they were pulling out Sienna for thiscollab,then they wanted more than good music out of us. She was huge…

“She’s game to meet. Just a conversation. If the vibe’s right, we move forward with the studio collab.”

I looked out the window, jaw set.I thought this was just music.

No need for warm-ups and roundtables just to get in the booth. I was ready to work. Always had been. And if Sienna Ray was who I knew her to be, she’d show up, hit her marks, and leave the mic smoking. Same as me.

“I thought this was only about music,” I said flatly, already clocking the angle.

He exhaled like he’d been waiting on that. “It is. But you know how this goes. Perception feeds attention, and attention feeds everything else. This ain’t a media circus. Just chemistry. Organic moments. You do what you do. She does what she does. And if it clicks?”

I sighed, pacing slow.

I’d seen it before. Labels setting up little love story illusions to push the project. Add a few curated visuals, some smirks across the studio, and boom—everybody eating off a narrative that wasn’t even real.