Page 53 of All or Nothing
“How nice,” Verilla drawled, spearing us with a smile that didn’t meet her silver eyes. “Xollen always wassosweet and romantic. He liked to draw me, said I was more lovely than any model he could have hired. Has he drawn you, yet?”
My face flamed hot, anger bubbling in my belly. “Yes, lots of times,” I said through clenched teeth. I knew she was trying to get under my skin, and I hated that she was so fucking good at it.
Xollen put his hand on top of mine, still resting on his thigh but gripping it tight now. I unclenched my fingers and I let him hold my hand.
Faan leaned forward and studied us both, his soup bowl already empty. “So how do you two go about throwing together your little drawings, hm? Do you also like to draw, Joss?”
My god, I was going to have a rage stroke from all the patronizing.
“No, I write the outlines and the dialogue. Xollen does all the art.” I looked up at his pretty face, smiling brightly. “He’s so talented. He does all of that himself, and on a time crunch, too.” Xollen returned my smile and squeezed my hand under the table. I wanted to kiss him, to show them all that he was mine and I was his, but even with a permit, PDA was frowned upon on Billieu.
“How nice,” Tirri said blandly. The staff came back in and took our dishes away, a second set of people sweeping in with the next course: salad. I wished I wasn’t so stressed out so I could appreciate all of this tasty food. Xollen’s parents were clearly assholes, but damn was the food good. “And whose idea was it to post it on the nexus? That was a clever way to distribute.” Tirri looked to her son, clearly expecting him to say he’d done it.
“That was me,” I told her, lifting my chin. “It’s how we do stuff like that on Earth, and I have a little experience with throwing together websites—that’s what we call nexpages—so it wasn’t too hard. It came out looking good, didn’t it?”
“Yes, you could hardly tell it was the work of an amateur,” Verilla interjected, smiling sweetly. “Very…easy to use.”
I smiled back, anger making the crisp fruits and veggies in the salad taste sour.
“Have you registered your work anywhere?” Faan asked, shooting Verilla a sharp glance that set alarm bells off in my head. Were Verilla and his parents…working together, somehow? Why? To what end? Maybe he was just admonishing her for being rude.
Xollen shook his head, and I realized that that may have been a huge misstep on our part. I hadn’t even looked into how copyright and intellectual property ownership worked here on Billieu; I’d just assumed that because we were publishing it it would belong to us. My heart sank, and I clutched at Xollen tighter under the table.
“Then it’s a good thing we’re all here talking now,” Tirri said, spearing the last of her salad onto her utensil. “Me and your father can easily handle that for you. We can even have our security team comb the nexus for unauthorized usages and take legal action against them to set a precedent.”
Xollen swallowed his mouthful of food. “You’d…you’d do that?”
“Of course, darling. You’re myson. Do you really think I wouldn’t take care of you?”
Xollen swallowed again, and I could practically hear how hard he was wishing that his mother meant that. I didn’t believe her for a second, but I put aside my doubts and at least pretend I was falling for it. “That’s so generous, Tirri. Thank you.”
“We had our legal team draw up a contract before we left the office earlier,” Faan slid in. “You can both sign it now and we’ll get the process started.”
The staff filtered back in, still perfectly silent and inconspicuous, replacing the salad with what I hoped was the main course.
“Well, we’re not sure if we want to sign just yet,” Xollen hedged, prodding at his dinner with his utensil. “We’d like to read through the contracts first.” I squeezed his hand tight, proud of him for standing his ground. This was going to be where it started getting tough for him, I suspected, so I tried to pour all the love and strength into him that I could through our clasped hands.
“You don’t trust us?” his mother asked, looking shocked and hurt.Here we go,I thought, my stomach gone too sour to keep eating. “We just want to take care of you, darling.”
“I-it’s not that. Mom—”
“Well, it feels like that’s what it is. You know us. You know how we do business. I just don’t see what there is to hesitate about, dear.” I gritted my teeth together against the urge to start screaming at her.
“Well, you always told me to make sure I read over anything before I sign it, and this is important to us—”
“Yes, withstrangers. You never know when someone will try to undercut you. But this is completely different.”
“We’ve already given you the numbers,” Faan added, nodding. “There’s no surprises in there.”
“Oh. Um. Well—” Xollen looked over at me, panic and uncertainty swirling in his eyes.
“I’m sure it’s totally fine,” I slid in, hoping I wasn’t overstepping. “We just want to make doubly sure. Plus it’s a good idea to get a feel for how things like that are supposed to look, so we can be smart about it in the future,” I lied, impressed by my own smoothness. Like hell, this contract was on the up and up. I could practically smell the bullshit.
The smile Tirri shot me was stiff, more of a predatory baring of teeth than anything. Faan didn’t even bother hiding the scowl. My sirens were going off at full blast. There was something super shady about this contract if they didn’t want us reading over it beforehand.
“I read it over it while I was here waiting for you,” Verilla slipped in, shooting a look at Tirri I couldn’t read. “It looked airtight to me. Better than a lot of the contracts I get for the holos I star in.” Okay, something was definitely fucky with that contract.
“We’ll take a look at it after dinner, then,” I said firmly, Xollen’s tail winding around my calf even as his hand continued to squeeze mine.
