Tycoon Actor C546 (Patreon)

The encounter with Vince had left a small splinter under his skin, but Lucas didn't let it show. He moved back into the party and found Kobe and Maggie where he'd expected to — at the center of a loose gathering of people, easy laughter, glasses raised. He slid in beside them.

The group turned out to be the teams behind the other Best Animated Feature nominees: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Turning Red. All of them remarkable films. All of them beaten tonight, not just for the feature award but for Original Score as well — Golden had taken that one too.

None of them were sour about it. Or if they were, they were carrying it with too much class to show. There was a particular graciousness in the room that came from people who understood what it meant to be in the conversation at all.

Still, underneath the warmth, Lucas could read it — the quiet particular deflation of people who had made something genuinely good and come up short anyway.

Maggie, for her part, seemed almost unsettled by winning. She kept listening to del Toro's producer talk about the production — the puppet design, the stop-motion process, the years behind it — with the attentiveness of someone taking notes she wasn't sure she deserved to take.

When the group eventually broke up — not before a round of photos, Lucas and Kobe pulled in on either side for each one — Maggie let out a slow breath.

"I cannot believe our film beat those," she said, half to herself. "I genuinely cannot."

"Come on." Kobe nudged her shoulder. "You made something great."

"I know we did. But I watched their films." She shook her head. "If we hadn't won, I would have put my money on Guillermo's Pinocchio. That film is something else."

Lucas nodded. She wasn't wrong. Pinocchio had been the one that gave him pause when he'd gone through the nominees — del Toro's fingerprints all over it, emotionally dense in a way that animation rarely allowed itself to be.

Puss in Boots had momentum on its side, a fan base that had shown up everywhere. Turning Red had Pixar behind it, which historically meant something.

But K-Pop: Demon Hunters had hit a frequency none of the others quite reached — something in the cultural current that year that the numbers bore out by a wide margin.

Maggie had made the right call trusting the story she wanted to tell.

"By the way—" She turned to Lucas, expression shifting into something more careful. "I don't want to pry. But that man who came over earlier. Was that really your father?" She paused. "I'm only asking because he looked so different from the photos I've seen."

Kobe hadn't brought it up, but the recognition had been there on his face too.

He knew who Vince Knight was — former WB director, a name that had carried real weight in Hollywood for a stretch.

The man who'd approached the table tonight bore almost no resemblance to that version of him.

"I don't know what happened to him," Lucas said. His voice was level, unhurried about it. "But yeah. That's my 'father.'" The word sat in quotes without needing them.

Kobe and Maggie didn't push further. They didn't need to.

"Alright." Kobe lifted his glass. "We are at an after-party, and someone at this table just won an Oscar. Let's act like it."

"Yes." Maggie brightened immediately, raising her glass to meet his. "Finally."

Lucas toasted with them, and the smile came without effort. But somewhere underneath it, a thought turned over slowly.

'What the hell happened to him? Looking like that, there's probably already photos circulating, tabloids running stories, media making a whole thing out of it. But I don't keep up with news about him or Myla, so I wouldn't even know where he's at in his life right now.'

He thought about those Ariana photos that had been everywhere a few months back — that same hollowed-out quality. 'Something's going on.'

He filed it away without knowing why. Just the feeling that there was something off about it.

"Lucas."

He turned.

Jimmy Kimmel was crossing toward him, already smiling in that slightly conspiratorial way of a man who had spent a whole evening at your expense and felt fine about it. He pulled Lucas into a brief hug. "Good to see you in person. You usually disappear after the carpet — I half expected you to be gone."

"I'm still here." Lucas gestured toward Kobe and Maggie. "Moral support."

Jimmy turned, clocking them both. His face lit up. "Kobe — and Maggie, right? Congrats on the Oscar. I'm serious, my kids have been absolutely insufferable about that film for months. My youngest made me watch the final battle three times in one weekend." He opened his arms and Maggie stepped in for the hug, laughing. "At a certain point I started researching just to keep up."

Maggie pulled back grinning. "Kids love heroes fighting demons."

"They do," Jimmy said. "And it's not just kids — that's the thing. Every demographic. People just want to see someone go after the bad guys." He glanced over at Lucas. "Which is exactly why this one is where he is right now. You've spent years going after predators, and now you've got Geoffrey Eckstein in your crosshairs — I mean, the man is a supervillain. The public is very invested in how that one ends."

Kobe and Maggie laughed. Lucas gave a measured smile.

"Speaking of which," Lucas said, "you really put me through it tonight. Every twenty minutes, all evening — I was starting to think I was co-hosting."

Jimmy laughed and spread his hands in a gesture of helpless admission. "What do you want me to tell you? Do you know how hard it is to hold four hours of live television together? You need material, you need throughlines, you need a through-line that the camera can find in the crowd and still get a good reaction shot from."

He pointed at Lucas with the hand holding his glass. "You are genuinely the easiest vessel I have ever had for that. You say nothing, you do nothing, the audience loses their minds. That's a gift, Lucas. Most hosts would pay good money for a straight man like you in the front row."

Lucas considered that for a beat.

"Glad I could help with the ratings."

"You have no idea," Jimmy said, completely sincere.

Jokes aside, Lucas meant what he said. Jimmy had held four hours of live television together with the kind of ease that looked effortless and wasn't — and the fact that he'd been invited back to host three times wasn't an accident. The man was good at it.

They talked for a while longer, before Lucas, Kobe, and Maggie finally decided to make their exit.

Outside, the press line was still populated. Of course it was.

The questions came in the usual order: Maggie first — how did it feel, her first Oscar, was it what she imagined — and she handled it well, warm and unguarded, still visibly riding the night. Then the cameras swung to Lucas, and the tone shifted slightly.

How did he feel about losing?

He told them the truth. Brendan Fraser had given a performance that deserved the recognition and he'd meant every word of that standing ovation. He had no complicated feelings about it.

That held for about two questions. Then someone in the back pushed forward and the questions changed shape — the drone footage, the park, Geoffrey's lawsuit — and Lucas gave a single, quiet nod to his security and stepped off the line. Kobe and Maggie fell in beside him without discussion, and the three of them moved toward the waiting cars.

---

The house was lit when he got back — warm light through the windows from the street, the front entrance already open before he reached it, one of the staff holding the door. He could smell the food from the foyer.

He followed it to the dining room.

Jennifer had done something with the table. Candles, covered dishes, the good glassware — the kind of setup that required coordination with the kitchen staff and advance notice, neither of which she would have lacked.

She was already seated when he walked in, dressed down from whatever she'd worn earlier, looking entirely pleased with herself.

Lucas looked at the table, then at her. "What's the occasion? I didn't win."

"So what?" She gestured at the chair across from her. "You won as far as I'm concerned. You were the most talked-about person in that building all night and you barely opened your mouth."

He thought of Jimmy Kimmel, glass raised, explaining with complete sincerity that Lucas was the finest straight man he'd ever had in a front row. He sat down and shook his head. "That's not the compliment you think it is."

"It absolutely is." She uncovered the nearest dish. "Eat."

He ate. The food was good, the room was quiet, and for a stretch of time the evening settled into something easy — just the two of them at the table, no cameras, no questions, no one needing anything from him.

Jennifer noticed the shift before he mentioned it. She always did. She set her fork down and looked at him across the candlelight.

"Something's off. What happened?"

He told her about Vince. The approach, the hollow look of the man, the birthday invitation, the two-sentence exit. He kept it brief because there wasn't much to make long — the encounter had lasted less than five minutes and left more questions than it answered.

Jennifer listened, and when he finished she picked up her phone and searched without commenting. The results loaded fast. She turned the screen toward him.

News articles — recent, several of them. Vince Knight was ill. The coverage was careful with specifics but not with tone; whatever it was, it wasn't minor. And beside that thread, something else: photographs of Myla that had surfaced in the past few weeks, captions that hinted at distance, a few gossip columns reading into the timing. Nothing confirmed. Nothing sourced. But the kind of accumulation that didn't come from nowhere.

Lucas read through it beside her, saying nothing.

"Is this even real?" Jennifer said quietly, half to herself. She looked up. "Did he say anything to you tonight? About any of this?"

"Nothing." Lucas leaned back in his chair. "He asked about his birthday. I told him I couldn't make it and walked away. I wasn't going to stand there and pretend."

Jennifer nodded. She didn't argue the point — she understood exactly why, and Vince had given her no particular reason to feel otherwise. She set the phone face-down on the table and reached for her glass, and that was the end of it for the night.

---

Days passed. Lucas was nearly packed for New York when Neil showed up at the house — in person, which he'd been doing more frequently lately.

Jennifer caught it. She looked at him from across the foyer with an expression that was half-amused, half-appraising. "You've been coming around a lot recently. Should I be worried about what multimillion-dollar project you're about to drop on my husband?"

Neil's smile came out crooked. "Actually, no. This one's different." He glanced toward Lucas, the levity leaving his face. "It's about your father."

Lucas went still. "What?" The word came out flat. "I've told you where things stand between me and that man. So what's this about?"

"I know." Neil held up a hand. "I know. He reached out to me directly — I think he knew he couldn't get to you any other way. I'm just here to find out if you want to hear what he said."

Lucas looked at him for a moment. "Fine. What did he say?"

Jennifer said nothing. She watched Neil, thinking the same thing: Vince had known better than to try Lucas's number, so he'd gone through the one door that might still open.

"He said he knows he can't be forgiven for what he's done," Neil said. "And that he wants to find some way to make up for it."

"That may well be true," Lucas said. "But his health isn't a reason for me to suddenly forget everything. That's not how it works."

Neil paused. "So you already knew he was sick?"

"I saw some articles. Nothing confirmed — just speculation, reading between the lines. I don't know what's actually wrong with him."

Neil was quiet for a moment. "I met with him. In person, before I came here." He chose his next words carefully. "It's worse than the articles suggest. I think it might be terminal."

The room settled.

Jennifer looked at Lucas. He hadn't moved, hadn't changed his expression — but she could read the thing underneath it anyway. The stillness that wasn't quite neutral.

'Damn it.' The thought moved through him before he could stop it. 'I don't even have real history with this man — I walked into this body, this life. Whatever I'm feeling right now isn't mine to feel. Is it the original Lucas? Some kind of muscle memory the body held onto even after he was gone?'

He didn't have an answer for that.

"That man is many things," Lucas said finally, his voice even. "But if he needs treatment, tell him the LK Hospital in New York is an option. The foundation has put serious investment into that facility — the technology is there. He'd get proper care." He shifted in his chair. "Is that everything? Because if it is—"

"It isn't." Neil leaned forward slightly. "He told me something else. He said he's willing to testify against Myla. His own wife. And that he has proof — documentation — that she was involved in your assassination attempt."

The silence that followed was a different kind entirely.

Lucas and Jennifer both looked at Neil.

"He said what?" Jennifer's voice was careful, stripped of everything except the question.

"I know how it sounds."

"Why would he do that?" she pressed, and the suspicion in it was visible. "What does he get out of it?"

"I'm not certain," Neil said. "But when I sat across from that man, I didn't get the sense he was running an angle. I think something shifted in him."

Jennifer turned it over. "So the falling out between him and Myla — that's real? It wasn't just tabloid noise?"

Neil nodded slowly. "Yeah. Whatever was between them — it's real. That much I'm sure of."

Lucas said nothing.

Neil let the silence sit for a moment, then: "So. What do you want to do? Do we take him up on it?"

Jennifer watched her husband. She had seen Lucas work through difficult things before — seen him compartmentalize, redirect, move forward with the kind of deliberate calm that most people mistook for indifference. But this was different. He was sitting with it in a way he rarely allowed himself to, and the thinking was written all over him.

A full minute passed.

"Go back to him," Lucas said at last. "Tell him that if he's serious — if he genuinely has proof that Myla was behind what happened to me — then I have no reason to refuse. Whatever history exists between him and me, it can be set aside. This is bigger than that."

Neil nodded. He'd arrived thinking the same thing and had been waiting to hear Lucas reach it himself.

Jennifer exhaled quietly. She thought of Myla — the social media posts, the monthly cycle of them, the pointed commentary aimed at Lucas dressed up as concern or candor. If that woman had blood on her hands, then whatever complicated feelings anyone had about Vince Knight were secondary.

"Though he did have one request," Neil said. "Small, he said. Simple."

Lucas looked at him. "What?"

"He wants to see Seraphina." Neil said it plainly. "His granddaughter. Just to see her."

The room went quiet in a different way.

Before Lucas could find his words, Jennifer said, "If his intentions toward Sera are what they should be, then I don't have a reason to say no." She looked at her husband. "Do you?"

Lucas opened his mouth, then closed it. Opened it again. "I — no. I suppose not. Not given what he's offering." He paused. "But if this turns out to be something else — if there's any part of this that isn't what he says it is—" He left the consequence unspoken, which was its own kind of statement.

Neil read it clearly. "I'll make sure he understands that. In full." He leaned back slightly. "But I don't think he's playing anything here. The suggestion has always been that Myla was involved — the problem was never motive, it was proof. If he has it, this changes things considerably."