POV: Jasmine
Aurora's schedule had become reliable enough to plan around.
Six weeks had built a rhythm where there had been none — predictable enough that Nora knew the window, that the car keys were on the table at seven-fifteen, that what had once been impossible was now simply logistics.
I had been planning this particular evening for ten days.
"He'll push tonight. Two encounters to build the baseline. Tonight is where he starts using it."
"You're going in prepared."
"Ready." I tested the recording app on my phone — clean start, clean stop — and slipped it into my inside jacket pocket. "If he gives me what I think he's going to give me, it'll be clean on the recording."
"And if he holds back?"
"Then I leave with a pleasant industry evening on record and I wait for the next one." I checked my jacket in the mirror one final time.
"But he won't. He's been patient because he thought he needed to be. He thinks he's built enough now."
"He has no idea what he's built toward."
"No. He doesn't."
The event was a label anniversary downtown — a hundred people, the kind of room where the industry came to be seen being collegial. I arrived at eight, ordered sparkling water, and positioned myself at the edge of the main floor where I could see both entrances. I knew every exit too.
I pressed record before I walked through the door.
I had timed it. The device would run for three hours before it needed anything from me.
Webb found me before the first hour was up.
He came differently this time — and that difference was itself data.
Warmer, the register closer — the approach of a man who had done the work of building familiarity and felt he had earned the intimacy that came with it.
He touched my arm briefly when he greeted me, the easy gesture of someone who had decided they were past introductions.
"Jasmine. I was hoping you'd be here tonight."
"Marcus." Pleasant. Even. Nothing in it.
He settled beside me with practiced casualness. "I've been thinking about what I outlined at the conference. I want to be more specific this time. When you understand the full structure, the value becomes obvious."
I held the neutral register and let him talk.
He named the artist — Priya Cole, emerging, strong streaming numbers, management controlled by Webb's network.
He laid out the arrangement: my creative credibility attached to the project through my Virtue Exchange profile, my name on the A&R consultation, and my judgment available to the label as needed.
In exchange, the Virtue Exchange listing would be managed by his team — no further public exposure, the sensitive material buried under legitimate professional activity.
He framed it as protection. He framed it as opportunity.
His voice stayed warm and even throughout. He did not lean in, did not raise it, did not perform pressure. He simply laid out the terms with the calm confidence of someone who expected them to be accepted.
His hands were completely still the entire time.
I watched them without appearing to watch them. The rest of him was expressive — voice warm, posture open, expressions calibrated for good faith.
His hands never moved. They had not moved the first time, had not moved the second time, and they were not moving now.
A man who could keep his hands that still under that kind of load had loaded them many times before. The stillness was not composure. It was practice.
When he finished: "That's a clearer picture. A few questions, while I'm thinking through it. The A&R consultation — that's formal or informal?"
"Formal. Documented, credited. Your name is on the project." He said it like a guarantee.
"And the timeline on the listing management?"
"Immediate. The moment we have an agreement, my team handles it." He held my gaze. "You'd have nothing to worry about from that direction."
I nodded slowly — the nod of someone working through logistics. "Let me think through the specifics and I'll be in touch."
"Of course." His smile was genuine — unhurried, the smile of a man who believed the groundwork had held. "I think this works well for both of us."
"I appreciate the specificity."
"I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed to think it through clearly."
Exactly what someone said when they wanted to believe they had been transparent. I registered it. I registered all of it.
I let the conversation run another two minutes before ending it naturally. Then I moved through the room, spoke to three people I had genuine business with, and walked out at nine-forty.
I sat in the car in the parking structure with the engine off and called Nora.
"He named her. Priya Cole. Gave me the full structure — my profile attached to the project, the listing managed in exchange. He framed the listing as leverage without calling it leverage." A pause.
"It's all on the recording."
A breath from Nora. "Play it."
I played it through the phone. Nora listened in silence — seven minutes of Marcus Webb's careful, pleasant, incriminating voice filling the interior of the car.
"That's clean," Nora said. "That is very clean, Jasmine."
"Yes."
"Three encounters in the record. The escalation is clear. The final ask is explicit."
"Yes. And his voice throughout — no hesitation, no qualifier. He was confident he was in a private conversation. He just didn't know who was in it with him."
"I'm sending this to the attorney tonight. And you need to talk to Liam." I drove home.
The recording was clean. I had what I had come for. Whatever Webb had built across three careful encounters, he had built it directly into evidence.
The patience he had used against me had become the very thing that made the record airtight — three separate dates, escalating specificity, a final ask delivered in his own unhurried voice.
I turned the city radio on — not because I wanted sound, but because I did not want silence. Some things were better processed in noise.