From A Producer To A Global Superstar

Chapter 574: E.P ?

The conference room had settled into a different rhythm by morning, the residue of yesterday’s theater still faintly detectable in the glances exchanged between chairs, in the way Alice smiled at her notes a beat too long, in the particular warmth of shared humiliation that had transformed four senior executives and their leader into something closer to co-conspirators. The light through the windows was sharper today, less forgiving, as if the sky had decided to stop indulging the mood and return to business.

Dayo sat at the head of the table with his hands folded, not spread flat in performance, but resting in the relaxed posture of a man who had already won the only game that mattered and was now prepared to discuss the war that followed. He wore a charcoal suit, no tie, the collar open in a concession to creative authority that stopped just short of casual. His expression was calm, focused, the mask of leadership he had worn for years—but there was something at the corner of his mouth, a slight elevation of the left side, that the others recognized with the particular irritation of people who had been thoroughly outplayed.

"The single drops in five days," he said. His voice carried the weight of ordinary announcement, but his eyes moved across them with the particular assessment of a general reviewing troops after a battle. "We need to intensify the push. I want saturation—not just digital, not just traditional. I want presence."

Valerie made a note, her pen scratching against paper with the sound of someone who had already shifted into operational mode. "We have the standard interview circuit lined up. Radio, two podcasts, the late-night show that wanted you last year. But we turned them down because—"

"Because I don’t do the circuit unless it’s necessary," Dayo finished. He leaned back slightly, the smirk at the corner of his mouth becoming more visible. "I know my own reputation, Valerie. I wrote most of it."

Wayne looked up from his tablet, his expression puzzled. "You’re not suggesting we *decline* the circuit? I thought you said intensify—"

"I’m not suggesting we decline anything." Dayo’s smile widened, but he said nothing more. He let the silence stretch, watching them watch him, enjoying the particular power of information withheld. He had learned yesterday, if he had ever forgotten, how exquisite it was to make people wait.

Alice set down her pen. "Dayo, you’re doing that thing again."

"What thing?"

"That thing where you know something and you’re savoring it like a glass of wine you don’t intend to share."

Dayo laughed, the sound short and genuine, but still he said nothing. He looked at Ulrich, who had been quiet since entering, his broad frame settled into his chair with the particular stiffness of a man who had not yet decided whether he was still wounded or merely embarrassed.

Ulrich met his eyes. For a moment, the room seemed to pause around them, the air compressing with the memory of yesterday—Ulrich’s booming laughter, his theatrical entrance, the way he had led the charge into mockery only to find himself standing in a room that had suddenly gone cold, then hot, then revealed as stage. He had been the first to laugh. He had been the one to show the post to every department, to read comments aloud with his voice echoing through hallways, to orchestrate the collective amusement that had been meant to humble the man who now sat smiling at him.

"Don’t," Ulrich said. His voice was rough, carrying the particular texture of a man speaking through a soreness he would not name. He shifted in his chair, his jaw set, his eyes narrowing with the exasperation of someone who had started a war only to discover the enemy had already poisoned the water supply. "Don’t play with us, Dayo. Just spill it already."

The words were not a snap, not truly. They lacked the heat of genuine anger. Instead, they carried the grudging fatigue of a man who knew he had lost, who knew the score had been settled in a game he had initiated, and who now found himself required to sit through the winner’s victory lap. It was the voice of a sore loser trying to hurry the trophy ceremony.

Dayo’s smile became a full grin, bright and unrepentant. He looked at Ulrich with the particular warmth of a man acknowledging a worthy opponent who had, nonetheless, been defeated. "Sore?"

"Exhausted," Ulrich corrected, though his mouth twitched with the effort of suppressing his own amusement. "You exhausted us. We spent an entire evening planning our entrance. Rehearsing our timing. And you—" He gestured vaguely, the motion encompassing the memory of Dayo’s frozen silence, the empty eyes, the devastating cold that had turned their laughter to ash. "—you sat there like a statue and let us dig our own graves. The least you can do is not make us dig another one this morning."

"Fair," Dayo said. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender that none of them believed, then let them fall to the table with a soft impact that shifted the room’s energy from playful to focused. "Calm down. All of you. I’m not pranking anyone today."

"Famous last words," Wayne muttered, but he was smiling.

Dayo took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice carried none of the theatrical withholding. It was clear, direct, the voice of the strategist who had built an empire from nothing. "As you all know, we’ve been planning to bring Luna back from retirement. The conversation has been ongoing for months. The logistics, the negotiations, the careful approach required for someone who left the industry on her own terms."

They nodded, the shift immediate and complete. This was territory they recognized, the serious architecture of a major career resurrection that had been discussed in vague terms but never formally anchored to a timeline.

"I’ve decided," Dayo continued, "that if we’re doing this, we do it properly. Not a feature. Not a guest verse on someone else’s track. An EP. Just me and Luna."

The words landed with the particular density of a foundation stone dropped into still water. The room went quiet. Not the held-breath silence of yesterday’s performance, but the deeper, more resonant quiet of people processing information that reconfigured their understanding of the landscape.

Valerie’s pen stopped moving. Alice’s mouth opened slightly, then closed. Wayne sat back as if the statement had physically pushed him. Only Ulrich remained still, his eyes widening with the slow recognition of magnitude.

"An EP," Valerie repeated. Her voice was soft, careful, the sound of a woman who had been in the industry long enough to understand the difference between a project and a *moment*. "Just the two of you."

"Just the two of us," Dayo confirmed.

"Dayo." Wayne leaned forward, his tablet forgotten, his expression cycling through calculation and wonder. "You two have only sung together once. One time. Years ago, when you were just starting out. That acoustic session at the—"

"The radio showcase," Alice finished. Her eyes were bright, the marketer in her already assembling the narrative. "It was before you had a label. Before Luna became Luna. Before you became..." She gestured at him, at the room, at the empire that surrounded them. "Before all of this. And now you’re both established. You’re both household names. And you’re..." She paused, the realization arriving with the force of a physical impact. "You’re a couple. Publicly. The post yesterday, the breakfast, the—" She stopped, her hands rising slightly as if trying to contain the explosion she could already see. "This isn’t just music. This is a cultural event."

"Yes," Dayo said simply.

Valerie set down her pen with deliberate care. She was the oldest among them, the one who had watched Dayo build JD Records from a single studio apartment, who had seen him navigate the industry with a combination of strategic brilliance and emotional discipline that had always kept his personal life walled away from his public persona. Until Luna. Until the post. Until yesterday’s revelation that the walls were not merely lower but, in some places, gone entirely.

"The timing," she said slowly, her mind working through the geometry of release schedules, media cycles, and public appetite. "The single in five days could serve as the opening salvo. A hint. Then the announcement of the EP. The narrative builds itself—you’re already in the public consciousness after yesterday. The personal chef. The relationship. The domesticity." She almost smiled, the memory of the prank briefly surfacing. "People are already invested in you as a couple. Now you give them the art."

"That’s the idea," Dayo said.

Ulrich, who had been quiet during the exchange, now shifted forward, his soreness visibly receding as professional instinct took over. He was A&R, his ear for commercial potential refined by decades of listening to songs before they became hits. "The songs," he said. His voice was rough but focused, the grudge set aside in favor of the work. "What are we looking at? Genre? Tone? Are we talking about the sound you established with Beautiful Things, or are you building something new for her?"

Dayo’s smirk returned, but this time it was softer, almost private, the expression of a man who had been working on something precious in the hours before dawn. "I’m already working on it."

"Of course you are," Ulrich said, shaking his head with the particular exasperation of a man who had learned never to be surprised by Dayo’s capacity for secret preparation. "How many tracks?"

"Four, maybe five. I’m still deciding on the final cut. But the sound..." Dayo paused, his eyes moving to the window, to the city beyond, to something only he could see. "It’s not Beautiful Things. It’s not anything I’ve released before. It’s built for her voice. Her range. The way she interprets melody. I’m writing to her strengths, not mine."

Alice made a sound that was almost a gasp, the instinct of a publicist who had just glimpsed a campaign that would write itself. "That’s the angle. That’s the story. Dayo Kareem, the artist who built an empire, stripping everything back to write for the woman he loves. No features. No guest producers. Just the two of them, the way they started, before the industry, before the fame." She was writing now, her hand moving across her notebook with the speed of inspiration. "The interviews you mentioned—the podcasts, the shows. You don’t go out to promote the single. You go out to tell the story of the EP. The single becomes the breadcrumb. The EP becomes the feast."

"Exactly," Dayo said.

Wayne had pulled up a calendar on his tablet, his fingers moving with the efficiency of a man who had shifted fully into logistics. "Five days to the single. If we announce the EP simultaneously, we risk overshadowing the single. But if we wait—"

"Two weeks," Valerie said. It was not a suggestion but a statement, the voice of experience. "Release the single. Let it breathe. Let the public absorb it, speculate, wonder if it’s a one-off. Then, when the conversation peaks, announce the EP. Use the interviews Dayo wants to do—not to promote the single, but to hint. To build mystery. To let him be seen in public in a way he never is, so that when the announcement drops, it feels like the culmination of something rather than the beginning."

Dayo nodded. "I want the shows that matter. Not the ones that pay the most. The ones that reach the audience who still buys albums. The ones who remember Luna’s first record. The ones who followed our story before it was a story."

"The podcast with the poet," Ulrich said suddenly. "The one who interviews artists about their creative process, not their chart positions. And the late-night show with the host who actually plays instruments. He’ll ask about the music, not the gossip."

"Yes," Dayo said. "And one more. The radio show in LA that gave us our first break. Luna and I both. We go back there together. We announce it there."

The room went quiet again, but this time the silence was warm, charged with the particular electricity of people who had just watched a plan assemble itself with the inevitability of gravity. They looked at each other—Valerie and Wayne, Alice and Ulrich—and saw the same thing in each other’s eyes. This was not merely a release strategy. This was a narrative arc, a love story told through music, a commercial product that would feel like a gift to the public because, in some ways, it was.

"The timing is perfect," Alice said softly. "Almost suspiciously perfect. The post yesterday, the public attention, the way people are already invested in you as a couple. It’s as if the universe handed us the marketing campaign."

"Or," Wayne said, his eyes narrowing with the particular suspicion of a man who had worked with Dayo long enough to recognize planning even when it wore the mask of coincidence, "someone arranged the universe to hand it to us."

Dayo said nothing. He merely smiled, the smirk returning with its full, infuriating weight, and let them draw their own conclusions.

Ulrich laughed, the sound booming and genuine, the first unguarded expression he had offered since entering the room. "You planned it. The post. The breakfast. The whole thing. You knew we’d react, you knew it would go viral, and you knew it would set up the announcement."

"I planned breakfast," Dayo said. "The rest was improvisation."

"Bullshit," Ulrich said, but he was grinning now, the soreness finally dissolved into the particular admiration of a man acknowledging a master. "You’re terrifying."

"Thank you," Dayo said. He stood, the movement smooth and decisive, signaling that the meeting had reached its natural end. "Valerie, coordinate the interview schedule. Alice, start preparing the narrative—no leaks until I approve the timeline. Wayne, lock down the logistics for the Lagos announcement. Ulrich—" He paused, looking at the man who had laughed first yesterday, who had led the charge and taken the fall. "—keep your ear on the music. When I have the final tracks, I want your honest assessment. No diplomacy."

"You’ll get it," Ulrich said. "Especially if it’s bad." Ulrich respects Dayo as since he joined he knew Dayo as a hype master if he said this song would explode it would if he said otherwise then it would be so they were few to went side ways.

"It won’t be," Dayo said, and there was no arrogance in the statement, only certainty. "Now go. We have five days to change the temperature of this industry. I suggest we start."

They moved with the particular efficiency of people who had been given purpose, gathering their materials, their notes, their half-formed ideas that would become fully realized strategies by afternoon. Valerie paused at the door, looking back at Dayo with an expression that held something older than professional respect, something closer to the recognition of a woman who had watched a boy become a man become a force of nature.

"She knows?" Valerie asked. "Luna. She knows you’re doing this?"

"Not yet," Dayo said. "I’m telling her tonight."

Valerie smiled, the expression warm and knowing, and left him alone in the conference room.

Dayo stood at the window, watching the city below, his reflection faint against the glass. The smirk was gone now, replaced by something more private, more vulnerable, the expression of a man who had just committed himself to a public declaration of love that would be scrutinized, analyzed, consumed by millions. He thought of Luna asleep in his bed that morning, her breathing slow and even, her face softened into the peace he had spent years learning to protect.

Five days to the single.

Two weeks to the announcement.

And then, the EP. Just him and her. The way they had started, before the industry, before the fame, before the walls.

He turned from the window and walked toward the door, his stride confident, his mind already racing through melodies he had composed in the hours before dawn, harmonies built for her voice, lyrics that said what he had never been able to say in ordinary language.

The game continued. But for the first time in years, he was not playing to win.

He was playing to reveal.

A/N: I know most of you are tired of the back and front but i promise that the coming Chapter would change soon and we would fully focus on Dayo rather than jumping from POV to the next BUT PLEASE SHOWER ME GOLDEN TICKET PLLLLLLS