Xenia approached him with a warm, effortlessly alluring smile, but Stan noticed something else almost immediately.

She was broadcasting.

A compact handheld camera rig rested against a discreet stabilizer in her grip, the faint recording light glowing softly beside the lens.

She was live on TikTuk.

Beside him, Vivian’s posture shifted the instant recognition set in. Xenia’s face had dominated TikTuk Live’s top position for weeks after Streak’s first major gifting session propelled her into platform-wide visibility.

Even after Sophie Youngs’s stream and the now-famous two hundred million dollar appearance reshuffled the rankings, Xenia remained one of the most recognizable figures on the platform. Anyone even loosely connected to the streaming industry knew who she was.

Xenia reached the Star Entertainment table wearing a smile that managed to be warm, genuine, and impeccably professional all at once, the expression of a streamer happy to see someone while remaining fully aware that hundreds of thousands of viewers were watching in real time.

"Sir Stan."

She spoke his name with easy familiarity tempered by careful restraint. No nickname. No reference to the online identity she unquestionably knew was his. No acknowledgment of the financial backing that had quietly accelerated her rise through the platform ecosystem. She understood the boundaries perfectly, what could be said publicly, and what absolutely could not.

Stan had never revealed that connection himself. If she exposed it carelessly, if she turned private knowledge into public spectacle and disrupted whatever he was building, it would not only create problems for him; it could very easily destroy the relationship between them entirely.

"Xenia." Stan matched her tone perfectly, polite, composed, and appropriately casual for a public industry event.

He had wondered whether she would attend tonight. With her current platform momentum, she was exactly the kind of rising entertainment figure major companies wanted evaluated in person, and Star Entertainment’s invitation list would have included her weeks ago. Seeing her here confirmed not only that the invitation had been sent, but that she had accepted with every intention of crossing paths with him.

The quiet satisfaction behind her professionalism made that much obvious.

"I didn’t expect to see you here," she said, technically truthful in the precise, carefully engineered way livestream personalities often mastered. "It’s good to see you in person again."

"Yes, It’s been a while," Stan agreed with a slight smile...

The stream camera mounted on her stabilizer captured every second of the exchange.

Stan didn’t acknowledge it directly. He didn’t need to. He understood perfectly the rules Xenia had established for this interaction, friendly, public, carefully restrained, with everything that actually mattered left unspoken in the spaces between the words.

Beside him, Vivian had been observing the conversation with the focused attention of someone rapidly reassessing a situation she had not anticipated. Then she stepped forward smoothly, professionalism settling over her like armor.

"Xenia. Vivian Reeves, branch manager of Star Entertainment Velaris City. I’m overseeing talent acquisition for tonight’s event on our side."

She extended her hand. Her tone was polished and warm in the precise, calibrated way entertainment executives deployed warmth. Nothing remained of the emotional fracture from earlier that evening. The composure was complete.

Xenia accepted the handshake easily. "Of course. It’s a pleasure."

"Likewise." Vivian’s cadence grew steadier with each sentence, the familiar rhythm of corporate negotiation restoring her footing. "I won’t keep you long, but I’d like to extend an invitation. Star Entertainment has a development proposal we’d be interested in discussing with you. If you’re open to it, we have space at our reserved section, and I’d be happy to walk you through the framework before the program begins."

Xenia’s smile widened slightly.

It was the expression of someone who had arrived tonight hoping for exactly this kind of opportunity while knowing the odds were uncertain at best, and who was now watching the most powerful entertainment company in the world invite her directly to their table before the event had even started.

"I’d love to," she said.

Then, with the seamless fluency of someone simultaneously managing a live audience and a real-world conversation, she glanced toward the camera mounted on her stabilizer.

"I’m going to pause the stream for the duration of the show," she told her viewers smoothly. "We’re moving into a private business discussion."

She ended the broadcast cleanly, capped the lens, and slipped the compact rig into her shoulder bag.

Then she looked back at Vivian with open anticipation. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"Lead the way."

The three of them made their way toward the Star Entertainment table.

Vivian guided Xenia through the reserved section with the smooth, unhurried grace of a host who understood that seating arrangements were never just seating arrangements. Where someone was placed communicated how seriously they were being taken, and she seated Xenia directly beside Stan.

Xenia settled into the chair with visible satisfaction, the expression of someone who, twenty minutes earlier, had not expected this version of the evening to become reality.

Stan made no comment on the arrangement. He didn’t need to. Vivian had assessed the situation and handled it efficiently, which, he reflected, was precisely what a competent branch manager was supposed to do.

Before taking his own seat, he turned his attention to the others already seated at the table.

They were three people, fellow Star Entertainment shareholders.

He had corresponded formally with two of them before, board communications, quarterly briefings, the restrained but functional exchanges that defined relationships between major stakeholders holding different portions of the same empire.

The third he had never interacted with directly. None of them had he ever met in person.

The eldest of the three rose first to greet him.

She appeared to be in her late fifties, carrying the composed, observant presence of someone who had spent decades inside executive boardrooms and long since stopped finding them intimidating.

"Mr. Harrison."

"Ms. Chen."

Stan recognized her immediately from the correspondence records.

Madeline Chen, fifteen-percent stake, longtime independent board member, and one of the shareholders whose voting patterns he had studied extensively after the acquisition.

She 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.