From A Producer To A Global Superstar

Chapter 533: The Lockdown

Paolo made the calls individually, the way you deliver bad news to people who don’t deserve it. He started with Helena because she was the hardest and he wanted to get it over with.

Helena answered on the second ring, her voice clipped and professional, the tone of someone who had already filed the morning’s victories and was moving on to the afternoon’s problems. Paolo told her about Derek. About Gina noticing the hovering, the questions about New York, the unauthorized calendar logins, the eight years of loyalty that turned out to be a performance. He told her fast, the way you rip off a bandage, and then he waited for the explosion.

It didn’t come. Helena listened in a silence so complete that Paolo checked his phone twice to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. When she finally spoke, her voice was colder than the silence had been.

"How long has Derek been reporting to Michael?"

"I don’t know. Years, probably. Since before I rebuilt the label."

"Does he know about the program?"

The program. That was what they all called it now. Not Market Resonance, not the predictive engine, not the thing that had delivered them four simultaneous victories. Just the program. Vague enough to hide behind, specific enough to fear for.

"No," Paolo said. "He knows there was a consultant. He doesn’t know who, what, or how it works. At least I don’t think he does."

Helena was quiet for another three seconds. "Sweep your offices. Tonight. I’ll do the same." Then she hung up without saying goodbye.

Darius picked up on the first ring, which told Paolo everything about his mental state — anxious people answered phones quickly, desperate for distraction. Paolo relayed the story and heard Darius’s breathing change on the other end. Not panic exactly, but close.

"Michael has someone in my building, Darius. He’s had someone watching me for eight years. If he’s inside Eclipse, he’s inside Meridian too. He’s inside all of us."

"What about Nia?" Darius’s voice cracked slightly on her name. "If he knows I used an outside program for her timing — if he connects it to her —"

"He doesn’t know it was Dayo’s program. He just knows you had help. Keep Nia’s next release looking normal. Make it look like you got lucky. Don’t mention the program, don’t mention New York, don’t mention Dayo. Not to anyone."

Tom answered with the measured calm of a man who processed information the way other people breathed — automatically, constantly, without emotional interference. Paolo told him about Derek’s behaviors: the hovering near doors, the casual questions that didn’t sound casual if you were paying attention, the twelve-minute wait outside a conference room during a private call.

Tom asked for specifics. What time of day did Derek hover? How many unauthorized calendar logins? Whatexactly did he ask Gina? Paolo answered as best he could, and he could hear Tom typing on the other end, building a profile, matching Derek’s behaviors against his own staff, running probability models in real time.

"This is systematic," Tom said finally. "If Michael placed one asset eight years ago, he placed others. I’m reviewing my personnel files tonight."

Sarah was last, and she was the calmest. Paolo expected shock or anger or at least the sharp intake of breath that came with bad news. Instead, Sarah listened, paused for exactly one beat, and said: "If Michael has someone in your office, he has someone in all of ours."

Paolo’s blood went cold. "You think so?"

"I think a man who spent twenty years making sure no one moved without his permission didn’t stop at one mole in one label. I think he built a network. And I think we just found the first thread." Another pause. "Thank your niece, Paolo. She may have saved all of us."

He hung up and sat in his darkened office, the Philadelphia skyline pressing against his window like a judgment. Five phone calls. Four reactions ranging from cold fury to quiet dread. And somewhere out there, Michael Erickson reading reports from people whose names Paolo didn’t know, sitting in offices he’d never swept, watching him through eyes he’d mistaken for loyalty.

The secure conference call convened at 9:00 PM Eastern. Same protocol as before — voice only, encrypted channels, no assistants, no notes. But the energy was completely different from the Manhattan hotel suite. There was no excitement, no hunger, no greed disguised as strategy. There was only fear, barely controlled, and the heavy silence of five powerful people who had just discovered their houses were never fully theirs.

Paolo told the full story again, slower this time, with details. Gina noticing Derek’s behavior on Tuesday morning. The three days of observation. The confrontation in his office. The security footage he’d reviewed — Derek near his door, Derek walking past the conference room during three separate calls, Derek at Gina’s desk leaning in with questions while she pretended not to notice. The calendar logins. The eight-year betrayal.

When he finished, no one spoke. The line was so quiet Paolo could hear the electronic hum of five separate phones in five separate cities.

Then Helena’s voice cut through. "I had my offices swept this morning. Professional security team, counter-surveillance specialists. They found a listening device in my main conference room." She delivered the information the way she delivered quarterly earnings — flat, factual, devastating. "Professional grade. Installed recently. Within the last six weeks, according to the technician. Which places it roughly two weeks before our meeting in New York."

The silence changed quality. Before, it was the quiet of people processing bad news. Now it was the silence of a room where a bomb had just been discovered and no one knew how much time was left on the timer.

"He knows about the meeting," Darius whispered.

"He knows we met," Helena corrected. "He doesn’t know what we agreed to. Not yet."

"He has someone listening in my building," Darius said, his voice rising. "He has someone in Helena’s conference room. How long until he puts it together? How long until he figures out we have access to a predictive program that actually works?"

Dayo’s voice entered the conversation like a blade through silk. Calm, uncompromising, cutting through the panic before it could metastasize.

"Here’s what we do. Full cooperation is on hold. No meetings. No shared strategy sessions. No mention of the program, the algorithm, or my name in any conversation that isn’t on this secure line. From this moment forward, you operate as if every room in your building is bugged and every employee is reporting to Michael."

The protests started immediately. Helena was first, her voice sharp as broken glass.

"I have three releases scheduled in the next eight weeks, Dayo. Three artists who’ve been told their timing is locked. I can’t just pause because Michael might be listening."

"I have Marco’s momentum to capitalize on," Paolo added, hating how desperate he sounded. "The Ibiza offers, the sync licensing, the album pre-orders. If I stop now, I lose everything we gained."

Darius jumped in, the panic finally breaking through his composure. "Nia is finally back. She has a voice again. If I pull her next single or delay it, she’ll think it’s happening again — the disappearance, the silence. I can’t do that to her."

Even Tom pushed back, his analytical calm cracking under the weight of missed opportunity. "The data doesn’t support a pause. The algorithm has delivered four validated successes. Every release we coordinate gives us more data points to refine the model. Stopping now is a strategic regression, not an advancement."

Only Sarah stayed quiet.

Dayo let them finish. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t raise his voice, didn’t try to talk over the grumbling. He just waited until the last voice fell silent and then spoke with the finality of a man who had already made up his mind and wasn’t asking for permission.

"I understand what you’re losing. I understand the momentum, the artists, the money, the opportunity. But every coordinated release we execute gives Michael another data point. He’s watching your movements. He’s listening to your conversations. He’s piecing together fragments right now — who met, what was discussed, whether a program exists that can do what his forty years of industry control couldn’t. If we keep feeding him patterns, he’ll find the source. And if he finds the source, he finds me. And if he finds me, this alliance ends. Not with a victory. With a bullet."

The word hung in the encrypted silence. No one asked what he meant. They all knew.

"I’d rather pause and survive," Dayo continued, "than accelerate and get burned. Two weeks. Maybe three. Long enough for Michael to chase the false lead we planted. Long enough for you to sweep your offices, watch your people, and secure your channels. Long enough for him to wonder if the New York meeting was actually about something else entirely."

"And what do we tell our teams?" Helena asked. "What do we tell the artists whose releases we’re delaying?"

"You tell them nothing about the program. You delay releases for ’strategic recalibration.’ You blame market volatility, competitive landscape shifts, internal scheduling conflicts. You’re executives. You’re liars by profession. Lie."

Helena made a sound that might have been a laugh, bitter and short. "Two weeks, Dayo. Not a day longer. I have a business to run and a board that doesn’t accept ’strategic recalibration’ as an excuse for missed quarterly targets."

"Two weeks," Dayo agreed. "Then we reassess."

Darius was the most shaken. His voice came through the line thin and uncertain. "What about Nia? She’s finally back. If Michael knows I used an outside program for her timing — if he connects her success to something other than her talent —"

"He doesn’t know it was me," Dayo said, his voice gentler now. "He knows you had help. That’s all he knows. Keep Nia’s next release on your own timeline. Use your own analytics team. Make it look normal. Make it look like you got lucky once and you’re trying to replicate it the old-fashioned way. The best camouflage is ordinariness."

Tom accepted with a nod no one could see but everyone could hear in his voice. "I’ll conduct a full personnel review. Behavioral analysis on anyone with access to scheduling, release calendars, or executive communications. If Michael has someone inside UCL, I’ll find them."

"Don’t find them too obviously," Dayo warned. "Don’t confront anyone. Don’t act suspicious. Let the moles keep reporting daily operations while the real work goes dark. If you confront them, Michael knows we’ve spotted his network. If you ignore them, they report business as usual. Boring. Normal. Invisible."

"Understood," Tom said.

Sarah finally spoke, her voice quiet and steady. "I’ll maintain my existing operations without expansion. No new partnerships, no festival placements that weren’t already in motion. Low profile. Quiet."

"Good," Dayo said.

Paolo said nothing. He sat in his Philadelphia office, the call on speaker, Derek probably sitting at his desk across the hall right now typing up reports about a day that had been entirely unremarkable. The man who had betrayed him for eight years, reporting fiction as fact, and Paolo had to pretend he didn’t know. Had to smile at him in the hallway tomorrow. Had to ask about his weekend.

"Paolo," Dayo said, reading his silence. "You did the right thing. Gina did the right thing. This is a setback, not a defeat. Two weeks from now, Michael will be chasing London ghosts and we’ll be ready to move again."

"I know," Paolo said. But he didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

The call ended. The secure line went dead with a soft click that echoed in Paolo’s empty office. He sat there for ten minutes, staring at his door, wondering if Derek was on the other side of it right now, listening.

He texted Gina: "We’re dark for two weeks. Act normal. Feed him nothing."

Her reply came back in thirty seconds: "Already working on tomorrow’s fiction."

Paolo almost smiled.

Dayo sat alone in his office long after the call ended, the secure line dead in his hand. He knew exactly what he had just done. He had taken five powerful, hungry, finally victorious people and told them to go back into their cages. He had paused a war at the exact moment it was starting to turn. He had traded momentum for survival, and the trade was necessary but it tasted like ash.

The false lead about "Meridian Strategies" in London would keep Michael chasing shadows for a while. A week, maybe ten days. Michael would run the Delaware LLC, find the shell companies, trace them to the Cayman trust and the Seychelles foundation and the nothing at the end of it. He would burn resources and time and the attention of his moles, all chasing a consulting firm that didn’t exist in a city where nothing was happening.

But Michael was smart. He was patient. He was the man who had waited twenty-three years to make his move against four bosses who treated him like furniture. He knew what it meant to sit still and watch. And eventually, he would realize the London trail was fiction, and when he did, he would dig deeper. He would look closer. He would find the pattern beneath the noise, the way Dayo’s program found patterns in market data.

Dayo looked at his calendar. Five release dates, now frozen. Red circles crossed out with black lines. A war against the most powerful man in the music industry, paused because the enemy had finally done what Dayo should have expected him to do — infiltrate, listen, watch from inside the walls.

He picked up his phone and texted Felix: "Security upgrade. Maximum. Every channel. Now."

Felix’s reply was immediate: "Already started. You’re covered."

Dayo set the phone down and turned to his window. The city below moved in its patterns, people going home to families and dinners and lives that didn’t involve encrypted calls and counter-surveillance and the weight of knowing that someone, somewhere, was always listening.

He thought about Luna. About Jennifer. About the sound of his daughter saying "Dada" while he danced around a living room like the world wasn’t on fire. He held that memory in his chest like a shield.

The generals were grumbling. The soldiers were hiding. The enemy was circling, closer than he had been before, armed with eyes inside the camp. But for the first time since this started, Dayo was playing defense — and he didn’t like how it felt.

He sat back in his chair, turned off his desk lamp, and waited in the dark for the two weeks to pass.

A huge thanks to WarMachine78 for the Gift