Chapter 3
Lucas was still talking, louder than necessary.
“The production team probably realized they couldn’t move forward without me,” he said, swirling the ice in his drink. “They delayed the release, sure, but that was obvious. Some roles can’t just be replaced.”
Maya rested her manicured fingers on his wrist and sighed like a woman already halfway to a red carpet.
“Honestly, I told him not to be too hard on them. Creative people panic easily.”
A few people laughed.
I kept chewing.
The braised beef in the middle of the table had gone lukewarm. The sauce was too sweet. The overhead lights reflected in the lacquered wood, making everything look slick and faintly unreal.
It felt a little like sitting on a set and waiting for someone to yell cut.
“Jane,” someone called suddenly. “Why are you so quiet? Aren’t you in that drama too?”
All eyes turned to me.
I lifted my glass and smiled.
“I am.”
Lucas looked at me with open amusement.
He wanted me to react.
To argue.
To confirm him by resisting him.
I had worked with men like that before. Men who mistook your silence for surrender because they had never learned the difference between stillness and control.
“So?” Maya tilted her head. “Then you must know whether Lucas is returning tomorrow.”
I dabbed my lips with my napkin.
“I know there’s a press conference tomorrow,” I said.
“That’s what I said.” Lucas leaned back, satisfied. “They wouldn’t hold it without me.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then my phone vibrated beside my plate.
One message.
We’re downstairs.
I glanced at the screen for half a second, then locked it again.
My pulse didn’t spike.
That surprised me too.
Maybe because I had already lived through the hardest part of the month—the sixteen-hour shooting days, the bruised knees, the hoarse voice, the constant ache in my shoulders, the fear that one leak might ruin everything before we were ready.
Compared to that, this was easy.
This was only timing.
“Actually,” I said, setting down my chopsticks, “you’re right about one thing.”
Lucas smiled.
“The press conference wouldn’t happen without the male lead.”
His smile widened.
Then the private room door opened.
Director Stone entered first, still wearing the same black coat he had probably thrown on in a hurry. Behind him came two producers, our publicist, and then Ethan.
Conversation in the room snapped cleanly in half.
Ethan Cole did not enter places so much as alter them.
He was tall without seeming to try for it, composed in the way some men became after years of learning not to waste movement. No baseball cap. No sunglasses. No entourage. No performative modesty.
Just a dark coat, broad shoulders, and the calm face the camera loved because it never begged to be loved back.
In the stunned silence, I heard Maya inhale.
Lucas straightened.
For the first time that evening, his confidence shifted.
Not gone.
Just cracked.
Director Stone’s gaze found me first, then the rest of the room.
“Sorry to interrupt your reunion,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. “We were looking for Jane.”
No one spoke.
Ethan walked toward our table and stopped beside my chair.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “Traffic.”
It was such an ordinary thing to say that it nearly made me laugh.
I rose to my feet.
Lucas stared at Ethan, then at Director Stone, then at me.
“What is this?”
Director Stone looked at him with a kind of tired disgust I had come to recognize over the past month. It was no longer hot anger. It was what anger became after it survived long enough to harden into contempt.
“This,” he said, “is my cast.”
Maya gave a brittle laugh.
“Director, you must be joking.”
“I haven’t found much to laugh about lately.”
Lucas stood.
“You replaced me?”
“Yes.”
“With him?”
“With an actor who reads scripts, shows up to set, and understands what a contract is.”
The room went dead silent.
One of my classmates whispered, “Wait. Ethan Cole is in The General’s Disfavor?”
Another hissed, “How did nobody know?”
Because we had locked the set down so tightly people had to hand over their phones at the gate.
Because everyone on that production had been running on spite, adrenaline, and loyalty.
Because after Lucas left, something invisible had changed among us.
We were no longer just filming a series.
We were protecting it.