Chapter 1: The German Return
The door to Simon’s office hit the wall with a soft thud, stopped by a sagging tower of screenplays. Matt didn’t bother to knock anymore. “Liz, where is he? He’s not answering his—” The words died in his throat.
The assistant’s chair was empty. But over at the long conference table, its surface buried under a landslide of contracts and production schedules, a figure straightened up.
It wasn’t Simon.
Sunlight, thick and heavy with afternoon dust, cut through the usual haze of stale coffee and printer toner. It caught the warm chestnut of her hair, turned it to a sudden burnished gold. She turned, a legal pad in one hand, a pen in the other, and looked at him. Not like a startled intern. Like she’d been waiting.
A decade vanished. The framed photo on Simon’s credenza—the one in the expensive gold frame, the ten-year-old girl with a gap-toothed, fiercely intelligent grin—shattered and reassembled itself into the woman before him.
Dee.
Her father’s decree echoed in the sudden silence of Matt’s mind, automatic and bone-deep: She’s off-limits. You look, you don’t touch. You especially don’t think about it.
But the girl in that photo didn’t have these careful, observant hazel eyes. She didn’t have this posture, a quiet command that seemed to settle the chaos of the room around her. She didn’t have that mouth, currently curving into a slow, knowing smile that suggested she’d just watched him replay the entire stupid rule in his head.
“He’s at CAA. Fire drill meeting. Told me to dig out the Whisper Creek sequel notes.” Her voice was lower than he remembered. A smooth, confident alto. No hesitation. “Which, predictably, were under the 2008 network pilots and what I’m pretty sure is a petrified egg salad sandwich.”
Matt realized he was still holding the doorknob. He let go, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. A defensive move. He never did that. “Dee. Wow. You’re… back.”
“Astute.” Her smile widened, just a fraction. She placed the pen down deliberately. “Got in last night. Dad figured throwing me into the deep end was better than a welcome home balloon.”
“Germany, right?”
“Munich. A year of very orderly people and very good beer.” She leaned a hip against the table, crossing her ankles. She wore dark, tailored trousers and a simple silk shell. Nothing flashy. It was all wrong for this messy room. She looked utterly in charge. “Learned a lot. Forgot how to navigate this particular… ecosystem.”
Her gaze swept over the landscape of her father’s career—the yellowing binders, the half-empty cups, the bar cart with its amber liquid and ghosted fingerprints. It lingered on the wall of Matt’s own career, a decade of his life reduced to framed posters. White Collar. The Normal Heart. Magic Mike. She took it in without comment, but her attention felt more significant than any critic’s review.
“How was it?” he asked, just to say something. To stop himself from staring. The chiseled features, the piercing blue eyes the magazines loved to talk about—they felt like a mask he’d forgotten to put on. He felt oddly transparent.
“Cold. Efficient. They don’t have five meetings to decide where to have a meeting.” She paused, her eyes tracking back to him. “You look tired, Matt.”
The directness was a jolt. No publicist, no handler, no Simon buffering. Just a statement.
“Just wrapped Night Circuit. Fourteen-hour nights on a soundstage that smelled like burnout and cheap energy drinks.” He found himself taking a few steps into the room, drawn toward the table. Toward her. “It’s good to see you, Dee.”
“Is it?” The question hung in the air, lightly posed but razor-sharp.
He stopped a few feet away. The scent of her reached him—something clean and green, like fig and vetiver, cutting through the office staleness. A distinctly adult fragrance. A million miles from the bubblegum and library paste of her teenage years.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She picked up a heavy script binder, hefted it as if weighing its contents, then dropped it with a definitive thump. “A decade of you visibly avoiding me at premieres and charity galas? The careful three-foot buffer you always maintained? My father’s… unsubtle territorial markings?”
Heat crept up his neck. So she’d noticed. Of course she’d noticed. He’d thought he was being respectful, adhering to the code. He’d never considered it might feel like a rejection.
“That wasn’t…” He faltered. It was. It exactly was. “Simon made it clear. You were his daughter. You were young. It was… complicated.”
“I’m thirty.” She said it flatly. “And he’s not my warden. And you’re not one of his client-children anymore, Matt. You’re a producer on half your projects. You run your own shingle.”
He was. He did. The realization clicked, unsettling the old hierarchy. He looked at her, really looked. This wasn’t Simon’s little girl. This was a woman who’d negotiated film rights in a second language, who navigated international markets. A woman currently untangling her father’s glorious, chaotic mess with a look of amused determination.
“Old habits,” he said, the words feeling inadequate.
“Die hard?” she supplied, one eyebrow arching. A reference to a franchise he’d passed on. A little inside joke from someone who’d clearly read every draft, every memo in this room.
A genuine laugh escaped him, breaking the tension in his own chest. “Something like that.”
She watched him laugh, and something in her expression softened, warmed. The professional mask slipped for a second, and he saw the ghost of the clever, watchful girl he remembered. But only for a second.
“Well,” she said, pushing off the table. “The Whisper Creek notes are a lost cause. I’m going to institute a new filing system. Digital. Revolutionary concept, I know.” She moved past him, toward the credenza, her arm brushing his. The contact was electric, a static charge in the dusty air.
He turned, watching her. She stopped at the gold-framed photo of her younger self, reached out, and turned it face down with a quiet, decisive click.
“Welcome home, Dee,” he said, his voice quieter now.
She looked over her shoulder, meeting his gaze. The sunlight caught her eyes this time, turning the hazel to a liquid, fiery green. “Thanks. It’s good to be back where things are… interesting.”
She picked up a stack of papers and walked out, leaving the door open behind her. Matt didn’t move. He stared at the space she’d occupied, at the face-down photograph. The silent, dusty rules of the room seemed to vibrate, then settle into a new, uncertain order.
From the outer office, he heard her voice, clear and directing, asking Liz about cloud storage passwords. It was no longer Simon’s ecosystem. She was already changing it.
He walked to the conference table, to where she’d been standing. Her pen was still there. He picked it up. It was warm.
You look tired, Matt.
He hadn’t been seen, not like that, in a very long time.