Chapter 241: 241. Implode

At eight o’clock on Monday morning, the splash screen on the MovieFlix app and the landing page of the Miller Studios portal went dark for three seconds.

When the cache cleared, there was no flashy promotional sizzle reel. No dramatic orchestral brass swelling through the speakers, no cinematic montage of Daniel’s past box office hits, and no corporate buzzwords about “reimagining the future of content.”

There was just a simple, stark white layout against a slate-grey background, centered around three bold lines of black text:

THE MILLER OPEN FILMMAKING CHAMPIONSHIP

No Entry Fees. No Agencies. Blind Judging. Guaranteed Distribution.

Below the headline sat a clean, unadorned breakdown of the rules and the prize pool.

The individual trade categories—Screenwriting, Cinematography, Sound Design, and VFX—carried one-hundred-thousand-dollar cash purses for first place, scaling down to twenty-five thousand for third. The Screenwriting division required a thirty-page script built around a single fixed premise, stripped of the writer’s name and background before being sent to an internal blind-read board. The Cinematography division barred expensive cine-lenses and dedicated high-end camera packages, requiring contestants to shoot a continuous two-minute narrative scene on consumer smartphones or entry-level mirrorless bodies under available light.

And at the very top of the roster sat The Short Film Invitational: an open bracket for eight-to-fifteen-minute narrative shorts across any genre.

First place: five hundred thousand dollars cash.

Second place: two hundred and fifty thousand.

Third place: one hundred thousand.

Cash payouts extended all the way to the twentieth-place finalist.

Every single one of the twenty finalists was guaranteed a three-year non-exclusive licensing deal on MovieFlix, with monthly streaming royalties paid directly to the filmmaking team based on verified subscriber watch time. The top ten would be packaged into a two-hour theatrical anthology and given a multi-week run in eighty cinemas across North America, the UK, and Australia.

And the final kicker, printed in simple twelve-point font at the bottom of the page:

The category winners and the primary creative leads of the top three short films will be offered a three-year, fully funded production contract at Miller Studios. Full union rates. Studio bungalow offices. Zero mandatory executive script revisions.

—

By eight-fifteen, the internet had stopped functioning normally.

On Reddit, r/Filmmakers had to lock their front page within forty minutes as thirty thousand new posts flooded the queue. The master megathread hit twenty-two thousand comments before nine in the morning, pinning the subreddit’s moderators to their keyboards as servers strained under the traffic.

u/Super16_Rebel: Wait, hold the fuck on. Is this real? Did someone hack the MovieFlix domain? Because there is literally no submission fee. I just went all the way to the confirmation screen. You just put in your email and upload the Vimeo link or the PDF. Sundance charges me $85 just to send an automated rejection email every six months.

u/BoomPole_Dan: It’s real. Look at the domain SSL cert. It’s direct from Miller Studios’ Burbank server block. Five hundred grand for a short film. That’s more than the entire production budget of an average A24 feature.

u/Cinematography_Nerd: Look at the camera rule for the DP category. ‘Submissions shot on Arri, Red, or Sony Venice bodies will be automatically disqualified. Maximum sensor retail value: $2,500.’ Holy shit. Daniel Miller just told every trust-fund kid with a rented Alexa Mini to go fuck themselves.

u/ScriptDoctor_99: Blind script reads. No agent attachments permitted. No manager query letters. If you put your name on the cover page, the parser rejects the PDF. Guys, do you realize what this means? If you’re a nobody working the night shift at a gas station in Nebraska and your script is actually good, a studio head is going to read it without asking what your dad does for a living.

Over on Twitter, Film Twitter turned into an open-air marketplace within ninety minutes.

The hashtag `#MillerOpen` became the number one trending topic worldwide, bypassing political news and sports scores. Unknown cinematographers were posting their local zip codes looking for writers; sound mixers in Manchester and Toronto were volunteering to clean up dialogue tracks for free just to get on a team; indie actors with zero agency representation were posting self-tapes in tiny living rooms begging local directors for auditions.

By ten in the morning, the corporate side of the industry began to panic in public.

The trade papers didn’t know how to frame it. Deadline ran an article with the headline: “Daniel Miller Launches Open Tournament Model for Studio Recruitment; Agency Insiders Warn of ‘Unregulated Risks’ to Guild Packaging.”

Beneath the article, an anonymous senior partner at a top talent agency in Century City gave an off-the-record quote that laid the panic bare:

> “It’s irresponsible. The development system exists for a reason. Packaging through established agencies ensures that productions are vetted, bonded, and staffed with experienced professionals who understand corporate liability. Bypassing the agency ecosystem to hand three-year studio deals to unvetted amateurs off the internet threatens the entire labor structure of this town.”

The comment section on Deadline—usually filled with bitter, cynical industry assistants—tore the agency quote to shreds within five minutes:

> “Translation: We can’t take our 10% commission on a kid from Chicago until Daniel Miller already makes him famous, and now our packaging fees are useless.”

By midday, the server monitors down in Culver City were humming at ninety percent capacity. In less than six hours, over two hundred and forty thousand user accounts had registered on the MovieFlix creator portal to download the technical submission packets.

—

While the film industry was having an existential meltdown over submission fees and blind reads, Tuesday morning in Brentwood was quiet, sunny, and seventy-two degrees.

A light coastal breeze drifted through the outdoor brick courtyard off San Vicente Boulevard, rustling the leaves of the large olive trees planted in terra-cotta pots outside the storefronts. The courtyard was tucked away from the main thoroughfare, home to a high-end French bakery, a quiet linen boutique, and a small, independent children’s bookstore that had been selling antique and European editions since the late 1970s.

Scarlett pulled open the heavy wooden door of the bookstore, the brass bell above the frame giving a soft, quiet chime.

She had spent the last two months essentially living inside the walls of the Bel Air estate, and after forty-eight hours of listening to Daniel, Margot, and Florence debate Scandinavian crib safety ratings, she had finally hit her limit on cabin fever.

She wore flat, comfortable leather boots, thick black leggings, and an oversized, heavy charcoal wool coat that hit mid-thigh. Her dark auburn hair was tucked beneath a slouchy grey knit beanie, her eyes shielded by dark tortoiseshell sunglasses.

She looked like half the wealthy women in Brentwood running morning errands—except for the fact that she was twenty-eight weeks pregnant, and her son was currently using her lower ribs as an improvised punching bag.

“Morning,” the elderly woman behind the counter said, looking up from a stack of invoices with a pleasant, polite smile. She didn’t recognize her, or if she did, she had the practiced Brentwood courtesy that kept her from staring.

“Morning,” Scarlett said, her husky voice low and easy. “Just browsing the older illustrated collections.”

“Back corner, dear. Past the nursery rhyme displays.”

Scarlett spent forty unhurried minutes in the back alcove of the shop.

The quiet was intoxicating. She ran her fingers over the cloth-bound spines of antique English children’s books, picking out a vintage hardcover edition of The Wind in the Willows with the original pen-and-ink sketches, a boxed set of Beatrix Potter tales bound in forest-green linen, and an oversized French picture book about a little bear that Florence had mentioned wanting three days ago.

She paid with a studio corporate debit card, declined a receipt, and took the heavy brown kraft-paper bag by its twisted twine handles.

“Have a lovely day, dear,” the woman behind the counter smiled as the brass bell chimed again.

“You too,” Scarlett murmured, stepping back out into the warm sunlight of the courtyard.

She took a slow, deep breath of the fresh morning air, adjusting the heavy shopping bag against her hip.

Her private driver, Joe—a retired former LAPD patrolman who had been running security for Daniel’s household for three years—was parked at the curb across the street in a dark, nondescript studio SUV. As Scarlett reached the sidewalk, Joe saw her through the windshield, immediately putting the truck in gear to swing around toward the curb.

Scarlett paused at the edge of the brick pavers to wait for the car to pull up.

Right then, a sudden, sharp gust of coastal wind swept down San Vicente Boulevard, catching the heavy front panels of her unbuttoned wool coat.

The coat blew completely open.

Instinctively, Scarlett dropped her right hand to the underside of her stomach to balance herself as her boots shifted against the curb. Her white cotton maternity henley was stretched taut across her belly—a large, high, undeniable twenty-eight-week baby bump, perfectly round and sitting prominently over her hips.

For about four seconds, she stood in the bright California sun with her coat parted, smiling down at her stomach as she felt a sudden, vigorous kick flutter beneath her palm.

Across the four lanes of traffic, parked in the red zone outside a bank in a rented silver Hyundai sedan, sat a veteran freelance paparazzo named Gary.

Gary had been sitting in the heat for two hours eating cold McDonald’s hash browns, waiting to see if an actress who lived down the street would come out of a pilates studio. He had an eight-hundred-millimeter telephoto lens rested on a beanbag across the rolled-down passenger window, bored out of his skull.

His eyes flicked across the street as the dark coat blew open.

His brain caught the bone structure of the jaw first. Then the dark auburn hair. Then the curve of the lip beneath the sunglasses.

Then his eyes dropped to the stomach.

Gary’s heart practically kicked through his ribs.

His finger hammered the shutter button.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-click.

The motor drive rattled off thirty-four frames in five seconds flat. Raw, full-frame, high-resolution digital files at eight hundred millimeters in broad, unshadowed daylight.

Frame 14 caught her profile: the hand cradling the bottom of the belly, the distinct, beautiful curve of her face turned down toward her stomach, her lips curved into a soft, private smile.

Frame 22 caught her stepping down off the curb into the open passenger door of the black SUV, the coat falling back around her as Joe held the door frame.

The SUV pulled into traffic, its tail lights blinking as it merged toward the 405 on-ramp.

Gary sat in the front seat of his rental car with his hands shaking so hard he could barely press the playback button on the back of his camera body.

He zoomed in on the LCD screen. He double-checked the focus on the eye. He zoomed in on the wedding finger—bare, no ring on that hand today because her knuckles were slightly swollen from the third trimester and she kept the antique diamond on the bathroom vanity.

He looked at the belly.

Seven months. At least.

Gary didn’t call his agency. He didn’t call his editor.

He pulled out his phone, scrolled to the direct mobile number of the managing editor at TMZ, and hit call.

“Harvey,” Gary blurted into the phone, his voice cracked with pure adrenaline. “Pull the front page. Clear the top banner right now.”

“Gary, I’m in the middle of a legal meeting, what do you have?”

“I have Scarlett Johansson on San Vicente ten minutes ago,” Gary said, breathing hard. “Full body. No coat. Harvey, she’s seven months pregnant. She’s carrying a basketball.”

The line went completely dead for two seconds.

“Send the raws,” the editor said, his voice dropping into a dead, terrifying whisper. “Send them in forty seconds. Do not talk to anyone else.”

—

The TMZ blast hit the internet at 1:14 PM PST.

The red breaking-news siren graphic was accompanied by a massive, high-contrast crop of Frame 14:

BUMP WATCH EXCLUSIVE: SCARLETT JOHANSSON HEAVILY PREGNANT IN BRENTWOOD!

The A-List Superstar Steps Out With Massive Baby Bump After Months In Hiding — Who Is The Father?!

The post broke the site’s traffic records within eight minutes.

The servers buckled under the load, throwing 502 Bad Gateway errors across North America as half the entertainment industry tried to load the gallery at the exact same moment. Within fifteen minutes, the photos were ripped and reposted across every major account on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit.

The initial shock was absolute.

Scarlett had been completely invisible since the promotional tour for The Avengers wrapped late the previous year. Her publicists had issued a bland statement in the spring saying she was taking an extended sabbatical to focus on private production ventures and script development. There had been no red carpet appearances, no talk show couches, and no high-profile restaurant spottings in Manhattan.

People thought she was reading books in the Hamptons.

Instead, she was walking around Los Angeles carrying a child that looked like it was due in eight weeks.

And then, within twenty minutes, the internet did what the internet always did: it turned into an unhinged, feral, global detective agency.

The question of paternity exploded into a category-five cultural storm.

At first, the comments were a chaotic scattershot of confusion:

@PopCultureBitch: SCARLETT JOHANSSON IS PREGNANT?!?!?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE’S SEVEN MONTHS ALONG WHERE HAVE I BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK?!

@CinemaLover92: Wait who is she dating??? I thought she was single after the New York breakup years ago??? Did she get married in secret to some French art guy again?!

@GossipGirl_LA: Look at the car in the background of photo 4. That’s a studio transport vehicle with a Burbank lot permit sticker in the lower left corner of the windshield. Look at the sticker. It’s a Miller Studios executive permit.

That single observation, posted by a random pop culture account on Twitter, was like tossing a lit match into an open drum of gasoline.

The timeline was reconstructed with terrifying, forensic speed.

Users on r/Fauxmoi pulled up archived video footage from the international press tour of The Avengers.

They dissected every fifteen-second interview clip of Daniel Miller and Scarlett standing beside each other on the red carpets in London, Tokyo, and Los Angeles.

They pulled screenshots of Daniel leaning down to say something in her ear while Robert Downey Jr. was answering a question, showing the sudden, unguarded, intimate smile that broke across Scarlett’s face. They found an interview from a French television station where the host asked Scarlett who she trusted most with her career, and she didn’t hesitate for half a second before saying, “Daniel. He’s the only one who doesn’t lie to me.”

Then came the real-estate records.

A user on a property blog pointed out that Scarlett had sold her Manhattan penthouse quietly in November and had registered a private corporate shell company in California with a mailing address that matched the corporate legal offices of… Miller Studios.

The internet came to an abrupt, screeching, collective realization.

It wasn’t a French art dealer. It wasn’t an anonymous New York businessman.

It was Daniel Miller.

And that was when the discourse completely lost its mind.

Because Daniel Miller was not a single man.

Daniel Miller was already the center of the most famous, unconventional, and heavily debated relationship in modern Hollywood. His life with Margot Robbie and Florence Pugh was common knowledge—even if the details of their private Bel Air fortress were guarded with military secrecy, the industry and the public knew the three of them were a locked, unbreakable unit.

The idea that Scarlett Johansson—one of the most powerful, fiercely independent, and commercially dominant actresses on planet Earth—had quietly joined that household and was now carrying his child broke the collective brain of social media.

The reactions fractured into three distinct, warring camps.

The Meme Factory.

@FilmBro_Dan: Daniel Miller is literally collecting Oscar nominees. Bro is building an entire prestige drama cast inside his own master bedroom.

@Stark_Intern: Other directors: ‘I hope my movie gets good reviews.’

Daniel Miller: ‘I will casually direct the highest-grossing film of all time, revolutionize indie filmmaking, and build an empire with Margot Robbie, Florence Pugh, and Scarlett Johansson while the rest of you cry on Twitter.’

@Hollyweird_Memes: Imagine being a child and your parents are a multi-billionaire director, Black Widow, Harley Quinn, and Princess Leia. That kid is going to win every single parent-teacher conference by default.

The r/Fauxmoi Essayists.

u/TeaSpiller_LA (4.2k upvotes): Okay, we need to have a serious conversation about the power dynamics here. There is literally NO WAY this is just a casual fling. Scarlett Johansson does not have a baby with a man who is already publicly committed to two other major actresses unless this is a coordinated, consensual domestic arrangement. Look at her career. She has sued major studios for contract violations, she took control of her own production company at twenty-five, she is famously ruthless about her privacy. If she’s having a child with Daniel Miller, it means she CHOSE this. She chose the compound. They are building a literal dynasty and they completely shut the media out until the third trimester.

u/Cinephile_Queen: Honestly? Good for her. Monogamy in Hollywood has a 99% failure rate anyway. They have infinite money, total privacy, massive creative freedom, and they clearly don’t give a shit what the trades think. Margot and Florence have looked glowing and relaxed for the last couple of years. If Scarlett found peace in that setup, let them live.

The Denialists & Moralists.

@Conservative_Mom77: This is disgusting and immoral. Hollywood continues to normalize the breakdown of traditional family values. Daniel Miller should be ashamed of himself.

@MarvelFanatic_X: Guys, you are reaching so hard. Just because she was in a studio car doesn’t mean it’s Daniel’s baby! She stars in his movies! Miller Studios probably just lent her a car because of her contract! The baby probably belongs to some private guy she’s keeping secret! There’s no way Scarlett would share a man with Margot and Florence, she’s too big of a star for that!

Within four hours, `#ScarlettPregnant`, `#DanielMiller`, `#TheCompound`, and `#WhosTheFather` occupied the top four trending spots in thirty-two countries.

—

On the second floor of the executive administration building in Burbank, Elena’s office looked like the command center of a naval fleet during an offshore bombardment.

She sat behind a wide, minimalist desk of grey Italian slate, wearing a tailored charcoal pantsuit, her dark hair pulled back into an immaculate, razor-sharp ponytail.

Her desk was currently covered in five glowing computer monitors, three blinking landline consoles, and two junior communications assistants who looked like they were on the verge of physical collapse.

The phones were ringing with the persistent, unbroken rhythm of a machine gun.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

“Elena, that’s the London bureau of the BBC on line four,” one of the assistants, a young woman named Chloe, said, holding a trembling finger over the intercom console. “They want to know if the studio has an official statement on Miss Johansson’s personal status.”

“Tell them no,” Elena said without looking up from her primary screen, her fingers clicking through the MovieFlix backend traffic logs. “Standard press release template seven: ‘Miller Studios does not comment on the personal or private lives of its creative partners.’ Word for word. Do not add an adjective. If they ask about the permit sticker on the car, tell them the transport pool is managed by third-party fleet logistics and we don’t track vehicle assignments.”

“The New York Times culture desk is on line two—”

“Template seven,” Elena repeated, her voice crisp, calm, and utterly devoid of stress. “Chloe, breathe. Nobody is dying. It’s just thirty-five-year-old journalists who want clicks. Keep the firewall solid.”

The heavy frosted-glass door of the office swung open.

Marcus walked in, carrying a cardboard tray with four iced lattes and a large paper bag of chocolate croissants from the commissary.

He had spent the morning coordinating the print runs for Beauty and the Beast, but right now, his face was split into a wide, completely unhinged grin.

“Elena, my love,” Marcus said, setting a latte down directly in front of her keyboard. “I have just walked past the main gate on Olive Avenue. There are currently seven satellite news trucks, fourteen paparazzi on mopeds, and a man holding a sign that says ‘DANIEL MILLER FOR PRESIDENT’ standing on top of a fire hydrant.”

Elena picked up the latte, taking a slow sip through the straw, looking at Marcus with deadpan eyes. “Did security clear the driveway?”

“Driveway is clear,” Marcus chuckled, pulling a croissant out of the bag and taking a massive bite. “Joe took the back service gate through the warehouse alley when he brought Scarlett’s car back. The press doesn’t even know where the SUV is parked. But my phone has vibrated so many times in my pocket that my left thigh is completely numb. The head of distribution at Sony just texted me asking if Daniel has a secret manual on how to run a studio and always be in the spotlight.”

“Tell Sony to focus on their third-quarter slate,” Elena said smoothly.

The side door to the private executive hallway clicked open.

Daniel walked in.

He was wearing his usual uniform—worn jeans, dark work boots, and a grey crewneck sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms. He had his tablet tucked under his arm, looking completely relaxed, as if he had just spent an hour watering tomato plants in the garden rather than setting the entire entertainment world on fire twice in twenty-four hours.

Marcus burst out laughing the second Daniel crossed the threshold. “Here he is! The sultan of Burbank! The emperor of Bel Air himself!”

Daniel gave Marcus a dry look, reaching over and snatching the second chocolate croissant right out of the paper bag. “Shut up, Marcus.”

“Dan, I mean this with the utmost professional respect,” Marcus grinned, leaning against the edge of the slate desk. “You announced a filmmaking tournament at eight in the morning that made every talent agent in Beverly Hills want to jump off a roof, and by one in the afternoon, you broke every gossip server on the planet without saying a single word. That is a Hall of Fame press day.”

Daniel took a bite of the pastry, looking over at Elena. “How are the MovieFlix servers holding up?”

Elena looked up from her screens, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Her dark eyes were sharp, calculating, and completely in control.

“The MovieFlix servers are pristine,” Elena said, tapping a key to bring up the live network graph. “We had a thirty-percent traffic surge when the TMZ story broke because half the people searching for Scarlett’s name clicked through the tournament portal. We’ve added eighty thousand new paid subscribers since nine o’clock.

“As for the other fire…”

Elena gestured toward the blinking red lights on her phone console.

“We have six hundred and forty unread press inquiries in the master inbox. People Magazine offered a blank check for an exclusive statement. Vanity Fair wants an on-the-record profile about the studio’s domestic culture. The Daily Mail is currently trying to bribe our third-party dry-cleaning vendor to see whose shirts are being delivered to the Bel Air house.”

Daniel let out a quiet, rumbling chuckle, leaning against the wooden credenza behind her desk. “Did you fire the dry cleaner?”

“I fired them twenty minutes ago,” Elena said without missing a beat. “We switched to an in-house laundry service on the lot. Everything stays inside the perimeter.”

She swiveled her chair around, looking up at Daniel with that familiar, deadpan look she had given him since they were working out of the two-room office in Culver City.

“Daniel,” Elena said, her voice dropping into that direct, sisterly tone that only two people on the lot were allowed to use with him. “What do you want to do with the press?”

“Nothing,” Daniel said simply.

Elena raised an eyebrow. “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Daniel repeated, finishing the croissant and brushing the crumbs off his fingers. “We don’t confirm. We don’t deny. We don’t issue a generic PR statement about ‘requesting privacy during this special time.’ We say absolutely nothing.”

Marcus nodded slowly, chewing his pastry. “Starve them out. If you don’t feed the beast, they have to eat their own tails.”

“Pretty much,” Daniel said. “The movie comes out in December. The tournament starts screening in ninety days. The work speaks for the studio. What happens behind the gates of my house is nobody’s business but the people who live there. Let the internet write their essays. By next week, someone else will get arrested in West Hollywood and they’ll forget all about it.”

Elena looked at him for three seconds, then a faint, satisfied smirk touched her lips. She turned back to her monitors, her hands hitting the keyboard with practiced, rhythmic speed.

“Template seven across the board,” Elena told Chloe. “Archive every inquiry from a tabloid into the legal trash bin. Send a formal cease-and-desist to anyone who flies a drone within five hundred feet of the Bel Air perimeter. Marcus, go make sure the DCP hard drives for the theater tests are ready. I have a tournament to manage.”

“Yes, boss,” Marcus laughed, giving Daniel a playful mock salute as he walked toward the door with his latte. “See you at the Oscars, Dan. Bring the whole family. You’ll need an entire row of seats.”

Daniel smiled, shaking his head. He tapped Elena’s desk with his knuckle. “You’re doing great, Elena.”

Elena didn’t look up from her screen, but her voice softened just enough to show the years of shared history between them. “Go home to your wives, Daniel. Before they see what people are saying on TikTok and decide to burn this town down themselves.”

—

By 6:30 that evening, the sunset over Bel Air was a bruised, heavy purple, streaks of deep amber cutting through the low clouds above the Pacific.

The black wrought-iron gates of the estate clicked shut behind Daniel’s truck, the heavy motorized mechanism locking into the limestone pillars with a solid, definitive thud.

The compound was completely quiet.

The tall ficus hedges and the stone security walls kept the noise of the canyon road entirely at bay. Down by the gatehouse, two private security guards in dark jackets were quietly monitoring the perimeter cameras, where three paparazzi cars were parked half a mile down the hill, completely blind to the long, winding private driveway.

Daniel parked in the cobblestone motor court, grabbed his leather bag from the passenger seat, and walked up the flagstone steps to the front door.

The moment he pushed the heavy oak door open into the foyer, the quiet vanished.

Loud, ear-splitting, completely hysterical laughter was echoing down the long limestone corridor from the main living room.

Daniel kicked off his boots by the carved bench, walking in his socks across the wide oak floorboards.

The living room was lit by the warm, low flames of the gas hearth and the soft amber glow of the floor lamps.

Scarlett was lying lengthwise across the massive charcoal linen sectional, completely relaxed, wearing an oversized pair of Daniel’s grey sweatpants and a soft black tank top that left the large, round curve of her twenty-eight-week belly completely uncovered. She had three plush velvet pillows wedged beneath her shoulders, her bare feet propped up on the armrest, holding a wide ceramic bowl of salted popcorn in her lap.

Sitting on the floor right beside her, with her back resting against the base of the couch, was Margot.

Margot was wearing loose linen trousers and an unbuttoned cream knit cardigan over her five-month bump. Her blonde hair was tied in a loose knot at the base of her neck, holding an iPad in both hands, her blue eyes streaming with tears of pure, uncontrollable laughter.

And pacing furiously back and forth across the Persian rug in front of them, wearing an oversized red hoodie, dark leggings, and fuzzy sheepskin slippers, was Florence.

Florence was holding her phone in front of her face like an actor reading Shakespeare, gesturing wildly with her other hand as she belted out a tweet in an exaggerated, haughty, aristocratic British accent:

” ‘One must consider the sociological implications of the Miller compound,’ ” Florence declaimed, projecting her voice to the ceiling rafters. ” ‘Is Scarlett Johansson entering a modern matriarchal collective, or is this the ultimate manifestation of late-stage capitalist patriarchal dominance?! Discuss below in seventy-five parts!’ “

Scarlett choked on a piece of popcorn, laughing so hard that her entire stomach shook, her hand flying to her chest as she gasped for air. “Stop, Flo! Stop, I swear to God I’m going to pee my pants! My pelvic floor cannot handle this!”

“No, wait! Listen to this one from Twitter!” Margot gasped, wiping tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her cardigan, her shoulders shaking violently. “This one has thirty thousand retweets!

” ‘Sources confirm that Daniel Miller’s house in Bel Air has four separate master suites, an underground tunnel connecting the dressing rooms, and a secret industrial kitchen where the women take turns cooking for him based on a rotating calendar approved by the studio board!’ “

Florence stopped in the middle of the rug, her jaw dropping in mock, theatrical horror.

“A ROTATING CALENDAR?!” Florence yelled, pointing a finger at the ceiling. “I HAVE NEVER COOKED ON A CALENDAR IN MY LIFE! I only cook when I am emotionally moved to make pasta, and Daniel knows it! Who authorized this slander?!”

Daniel leaned against the archway of the living room, his hands casually shoved into his pockets, watching the three of them with a slow, dry smirk spreading across his face.

Scarlett caught sight of him first.

She let out another breathless, wheezing laugh, tossing a kernel of popcorn toward the archway. “There he is. The patriarch. Did you bring the rotating calendar, Daniel? Is it my turn to make the porridge?”

Margot turned around on the floor, resting her chin on the edge of the couch cushions, her face flushed pink, her eyes dancing with wicked, exhausted amusement. “Welcome home, Dan. You’re currently being canceled by three separate feminist blogs in Brooklyn, and being hailed as a mythological hero by half of Reddit.”

“I saw,” Daniel said, walking into the room.

He crossed the rug, stepped over Florence’s sheepskin slippers, and dropped down onto the edge of the couch right beside Scarlett’s hips.

He leaned down, his hand naturally cupping the side of Scarlett’s neck, pressing a firm, lingering kiss to her temple. She smelled of coconut body butter, salt from the popcorn, and that warm, sweet, unmistakable scent of clean skin.

Scarlett leaned into his touch, letting out a long, happy breath, her fingers reaching up to lightly trace the stubble along his jawline.

“Did Joe get you home okay?” Daniel asked softly, his eyes checking her face.

“Joe was a saint,” Scarlett smiled, her hazel eyes large and completely unbothered. “He took the service road behind the canyon and lost the only car that tried to follow us before we even hit Sunset. I didn’t even notice the photographer on San Vicente, Daniel. The wind just blew my coat open while I was waiting for the door.”

“The photo looked great, Scar,” Daniel said, reaching down to rest his palm flat against the center of her bare stomach.

The heat of her skin came right through his palm.

Beneath his fingers, the little boy gave a sudden, firm, distinct thud against the wall of her belly—a solid kick that visibly rippled the skin.

Daniel smiled, his thumb stroking the curve. “He’s getting strong.”

“He was kicking the whole time Margot was reading the tweets,” Scarlett laughed softly, resting her hand over his. “I think he likes the attention.”

Florence marched over, dropping down cross-legged on the Persian rug right in front of Daniel’s knees, resting her elbows on his thighs. Her five-month bump was clearly outlined beneath her red hoodie, rounded and high.

She looked up at him, her green eyes wide with that fierce, chaotic, theatrical energy that always ran the room.

“Daniel,” Florence said, her voice dropping into a serious, conspiratorial whisper. “Do you have any idea what this means?”

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “What does it mean, Flo?”

“It means they have no bloody idea,” Florence whispered, a massive, unhinged, triumphant grin slowly spreading across her face.

She pointed one finger at Scarlett’s belly.

Then she pointed a finger at Margot’s stomach.

Then she jabbed her own thumb straight into the center of her own rounded belly.

“The entire planet,” Florence declared, her voice rising in pure, joyous, hysterical glee, “is currently having a collective nervous breakdown over ONE BABY. They are writing dissertations about Scarlett! They are analyzing red carpet footage from three years ago! They are calling press conferences!”

She threw her hands up into the air, laughing so hard her cheeks turned bright crimson.

“And they have NO CLUE that in six weeks, Margot’s stomach is going to pop through her sundresses! And two weeks after that, mine is going to pop through my dungarees! They think this is a scandal, Daniel?! When May hits, this town is going to literally implode into a black hole!”

Margot burst out laughing again, burying her face into Daniel’s knee, her blonde hair spilling over his jeans as her shoulders shook. “Oh God, Flo. Can you imagine the headlines? ‘UPDATE: HE DID IT AGAIN. AND AGAIN.'”

Scarlett leaned her head back against the velvet pillows, laughing until a single tear rolled down her cheek, popping another piece of popcorn into her mouth.

“They’re going to think you have an automated assembly line in the basement, Daniel,” Scarlett teased, her husky voice dripping with warm, effortless humor. “Elena’s going to have to hire forty more assistants just to throw the press releases in the incinerator.”

Daniel looked down at the three of them.

Florence sitting on the rug with her elbows on his knees, grinning like a triumphant little demon.

Margot curled against his side, her hand resting warm and solid over his ankle, her face glowing with that quiet, radiant second-trimester peace.

And Scarlett lying back on the sofa, her diamond ring catching the golden light of the gas fire, her hand intertwined with his over the solid, kicking belly of their son.

Outside these stone walls, the world was screaming.

Servers were melting in data centers; journalists were shouting at PR assistants on landlines; millions of people across six continents were arguing over morality, power, and secret calendars.

And inside the house, it was just four people on a rug, eating popcorn, arguing over baby names, and laughing at the absurdity of a world that took itself far too seriously.

Daniel leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to Margot’s hair, then leaned across to brush his lips against Florence’s forehead as she leaned into his chest, before looking back up at Scarlett.

“Let them talk,” Daniel said, his voice quiet, steady, and completely anchored in the warm, golden light of the room.

He squeezed Scarlett’s hand, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of his son kicking against his palm, and let out a soft, deep, profoundly contented laugh.

“We’ve got work to do anyway. Who’s putting the crib together tonight?”

“Not me!” Florence yelled instantly, scrambling backward across the rug toward the kitchen. “I’m on the rotating calendar! It’s Margot’s turn to hold the Allen wrench!”

“Florence, you coward!” Margot shrieked, scrambling to her feet to chase her down the hall, laughing so hard she could barely run.

Scarlett looked at Daniel, her hazel eyes soft, warm, and shining with that deep, unbreakable certainty that had made this house her home.

She reached up, took his face in both of her hands, and pulled him down into a slow, sweet, lingering kiss while the chaos of their growing family echoed happily through the corridors behind them.

The world could have its theories.

The empire was right here.