Date: June 1986
The summer heat pressed against New York, but inside Vanderford's offices the air was cooler, electric with momentum. For the first time since restructuring, the subsidiaries were not just surviving—they were expanding, each in their own rhythm.
Marcus spread ledgers across the oak table, precise rows of figures in his careful handwriting. "Lotus Films is fully funded for its second feature. Production budget: eight hundred thousand. Marketing with Orion: capped at two-fifty. With a conservative run, even limited screens will return two-point-five million net if reviews land halfway decent."
Carl leaned back, cracking his knuckles. "The script's strong. Thriller, urban setting, simple sets. We'll reuse Workshop props to cut cost. Cast mostly unknowns—hungry, cheap, believable. And Demi."
Demi glanced up from her marked-up script. She had circled lines, annotated margins with sharp notes. "This role is mine. It's gritty without being exploitation. Exactly the kind of project that proves I can act."
Julian nodded. "Good. But remember—the film isn't just about story. It's a proof of model. We're not chasing critics, we're proving repeatability."
Marcus added, "If this film breaks even or better, Orion will treat us as serious partners. That means easier negotiations, maybe even better splits."
Julian leaned forward, voice quiet but firm. "And it puts us closer to needing our own distribution. Not yet. But soon."
---
Raga Records was buzzing in its own way. The quartet's City Shadows had sold out its limited run, Mira's numbered sleeves becoming collectibles among jazz fans. Independent stores had called for more. The Vanderford Distribution Desk—barely a desk at this point, run out of Marcus's corner—was swamped with invoices.
Julian walked through the cramped space one morning, listening as an assistant read phone orders. "Brooklyn store wants thirty more. A Jersey shop wants twenty-five. Radio DJ in Chicago requesting a promo copy."
Julian tapped the ledger Marcus had left open. "Good. We'll press another batch, but stagger the release. Scarcity first, then scale. And next month, sign two more acts—different genres. Diversify the roster early."
Sophia frowned. "We're moving fast. Contracts take time."
Julian's reply was measured. "Speed builds reputation. Contracts protect reputation. We will do both."
That evening, he opened the Mind Internet again. Frozen archive: countless stories of labels that had ignored diversification—Motown overcommitting to one sound, smaller jazz labels collapsing as tastes shifted. Current feed: chatter about new indie bands in garages, underground scenes in Seattle and Los Angeles. He bookmarked several names, small then, destined for future fame.
Rule in ledger: Diversify early. Never let one sound define the label.
---
Vanderford Publishing had its own echo chamber. Mira placed a fresh issue of The Journal on Julian's desk. The cover essay—"Architecture and Identity: Building Belonging in Modern Cities"—had been reprinted in two European journals. A cultural critic in London had cited Vanderford as "a promising intellectual press."
Julian skimmed the essay, noting the balance between scholarship and accessibility. "Good. Continue threading culture into business. Intellectual weight legitimizes the empire. We don't just sell; we shape narratives."
Mira smiled faintly. "So the Journal isn't just a paper. It's armor."
"Exactly," Julian said. "Armor, and a weapon."
---
The Workshop pulsed with steady noise—hammers, saws, type presses. Carl marched apprentices through long hours, but with the new union compact signed, the mood was different. Wages were fair, overtime voluntary, safety procedures clearer than most studios offered. There was grumbling, yes, but also loyalty.
Julian observed one evening as carpenters erected a set wall for the thriller. Apprentices moved with rhythm, older craftsmen teaching them with a mix of barked orders and quiet guidance. It was no longer just a workshop. It was a training ground, a factory of craft.
He wrote in his ledger: Labor peace is not weakness. It is leverage.
---
But even as the subsidiaries hummed, Julian knew credibility had sharpened rivals' eyes. A small article in Variety mentioned "Vanderford's growing empire" with faint derision, noting his "ambitious diversification across sectors unusual for such a young enterprise." It was a compliment disguised as skepticism.
Julian read it once, folded the paper, and smiled. "They're watching," he told Marcus. "Good. Let them. The moment they underestimate us, we'll already be past them."
That night, Demi curled against him in the loft, the city lights spilling across the floor. "You make enemies as easily as you make allies," she said softly.
Julian kissed her hair. "Enemies are proof of relevance. Irrelevance is worse."
She laughed quietly. "You sound like you planned this all along."
"I did," he murmured. "I just haven't told them the ending yet."
Production for Lotus's second film kicked off in a rented warehouse in Brooklyn. The place reeked of paint and dust, but Carl had transformed it into a makeshift studio. Wooden frames became alley walls, neon signs were rigged, and borrowed fog machines gave the space a seedy glow.
Julian stood with arms crossed as Demi rehearsed a scene. She wore a plain jacket, hair tousled, face smudged with makeup to look worn. She played a runaway caught between desperation and defiance, her lines sharp and raw.
When the director called "Cut!", Julian walked over quietly. "You're not just reciting. You're channeling. Good."
Demi blew out a breath, smiling faintly. "That's because I trust the material. And because you didn't sell me into some exploitative trash."
"Trust is the rarest currency in Hollywood," Julian replied. "If you hold it, they can't break you."
She touched his arm, a quiet intimacy, before stepping back as crew reset the lights. Around them, apprentices adjusted set walls, gaffers tested cables. The production wasn't glamorous, but it was efficient, lean, and controlled. Exactly as Julian wanted.
---
While Lotus burned through its schedule, Raga Records had momentum of its own. The jazz quartet's City Shadows earned a small review in DownBeat Magazine, praising its "unvarnished energy" and "refreshing independence." That single column brought a ripple of orders from record stores outside New York—Chicago, Detroit, even as far as San Francisco.
Marcus presented the sales sheets to Julian in the office. "Not huge, but consistent. Word-of-mouth is working. The scarcity strategy is paying off—stores are clamoring for more."
"Good," Julian said. "Scarcity makes believers. Believers spread gospel."
But he wasn't satisfied with just a trickle. He opened the Mind Internet that night, pulling data from the frozen archive. He typed queries:
"Undervalued jazz catalogs 1980s."
"Classical labels in debt."
"Rock masters sold cheap."
Reports poured in. Small jazz labels on the verge of bankruptcy, their catalogs ripe for acquisition. Classical libraries gathering dust in warehouses, ignored by majors chasing pop. Early contracts from rock bands who had sold rights cheaply and regretted it.
Julian scribbled in his ledger: Acquire catalogs quietly. Pay fair but lock masters. Value compounds over decades.
The next day, he reached out to a small-time catalog owner in Queens—an older man holding rights to a dozen jazz albums no one cared about. Over coffee in a diner, Julian listened as the man lamented how majors had passed him by.
"These recordings are good," the man said, shaking his head. "But no one wants them. Kids want MTV, not smoky clubs."
Julian's voice was calm, persuasive. "That's why they're valuable. You don't see it now, but in ten, twenty years, collectors will pay dearly. Nostalgia compounds faster than interest rates. Sell to me. I'll keep them alive."
The man studied him, surprised by the certainty in his tone. "You talk like you've already seen the future."
Julian only smiled. "I've seen enough."
They shook hands, and the catalog quietly shifted into Vanderford's control.
---
Meanwhile, Julian's attention turned to a different prize: comics. The Mind Internet's frozen archive buzzed with one name in particular—Marvel. A company rich in characters but poor in management, stumbling financially, and years away from collapse in his old timeline.
Julian read article after article in the current feed: declining comic sales, management turnover, nervous chatter about film adaptations that never landed. The seeds of vulnerability were already sprouting.
In his ledger, he wrote: Marvel: undervalued IP mine. Do not buy yet. Wait for weakness, then strike.
He shared none of this with his team—not yet. Timing mattered more than hunger.
---
By the end of June, Vanderford Holding felt more alive than ever. Subsidiaries hummed: Lotus with a lean production, Raga with expanding credibility, Publishing with reprints abroad, Workshop with a steady hum of carpenters and apprentices.
And yet Julian knew it was all fragile. One union strike, one failed release, one legal trap could stall momentum.
That night, in the loft, Demi curled beside him with a glass of wine. "Do you ever stop thinking?" she asked, amused.
Julian traced a finger along the edge of his notebook. "Stopping is death. Planning is survival."
She laughed softly. "Then keep planning. Just remember you're human too."
Julian kissed her temple. "I remember. That's why I build—not just for me, but for everyone who will carry it when I'm gone."
The city hummed outside, neon against the dark. Inside, the seeds of expansion rooted deeper, unseen but inevitable.
The last day of principal photography arrived like a held breath finally released. The Brooklyn warehouse that had been a set for a month felt both exhausted and exalted: paint scuffed, cables coiled, coffee cups cooling in forgotten corners. Carl barked the final commands with his usual mix of impatience and pride. The actors, raw and ragged from the rhythm of shooting, folded into quiet relief when the director finally called, "That's a wrap."
Julian watched the moment from where he usually watched the long operations of his companies—half-hidden, never interfering unless necessary. Demi stood near him, hair pinned back, her face free of performance for the first time in weeks. She laughed suddenly and gave a short, tired clap. "We did it," she said, and the sentence held all the exhaustion and small triumph of those who build things from nothing.
Carl shook hands with the crew; apprentices gathered in a loose knot, trading stories about the shots they'd learned to love. Julian walked the set, touching the props briefly, as if approving them. When he passed the props table, a young carpenter grinned and held up a battered streetlamp they'd built. "Sir, we kept the wiring safe this time," he joked.
Julian let himself smile. "Good work," he said. "Keep that care." The praise was small but precise, the kind that taught rather than flattered.
In the days that followed, editing consumed the Workshop. Carl and his editor worked through reels in a dimmed room while Mira and the Journal team prepared the promotional essays that would give the film weight, not hype. Julian used the quiet hours to think about the infrastructure needed for the next stage—distribution for films and music, accounting clarity for the subsidiaries, and the long list of intellectual property he had begun to collect.
The Vanderford Distribution Desk (VDD), which had been sketched hastily a few weeks earlier, needed a formal face. What had begun as a corner of Marcus's desk and a stack of invoices now took on a legal life: a staff inbox, a rented office in a nearby block, a contract with a New Jersey pressing plant, and a small fleet account with a local courier. Julian signed the incorporation memo himself one humid morning, sealing the unit as a service arm under Vanderford Holding.
He called a small meeting to formalize roles. Marcus read the operations plan—shipment timetables, invoicing cadence, credit windows. Sophia outlined partner contract clauses: audit rights, defined lead times, and penalties for reporting failures. Mira showed a prototype sleeve design for the next Raga release, a deliberately tactile package meant to feel like an object you'd treasure on your shelf.
"We're not building a logistics empire," Julian said. "We're building a contained engine that gives our music and film releases control of their first distribution mile. We control reporting and the first movement of product. We don't own racks in supermarkets. We own the truth of the numbers."
Sophia nodded. "Control the data, control the story." Marcus added the math that made it palatable: staggered orders so cash flow never collapsed, minimum print runs, return policies that favored scarcity while guarding against stockouts.
They launched the VDD quietly. The first operation was modest: another pressing run for City Shadows, a small batch for college radio promo, and direct shipments to ten independent stores vetted by Marcus. It felt ceremonial—a small cluster of boxes leaving their door—but it was the first test of a system that, if it worked, would scale across music and film.
While logistics found its feet, Julian's other quiet work continued—acquisitions that happened in the back-channels of commerce. The Queens jazz catalog had been a first success, small in revenue but large in strategic value. It taught him the rhythm of catalog buying: look for embarrassed sellers, negotiate fair terms, and always secure the masters. He had a new list now, curated from the frozen archives of the Mind Internet and cross-checked with current market murmurs.
One name had resurfaced in his searches more than any other: Blizzard. In his frozen file for future companies, the name showed as a tiny firm in a garage—years away from the breakout that would make it a household name in gaming. Another line in the ledger glowed: Marvel, a trove of characters whose film value would later explode. Julian wrote them down but circled them with caution: timing mattered. He had learned to respect the slow burn. Buy too early and you sink capital into speculative assets; buy too late, and someone else pays the premium.
He arranged a discreet meeting with a middleman who sometimes handled distressed media assets. Over black coffee in a quiet diner, Julian sketched parameters more than made offers: which catalogs he'd consider, the limits on leverage he'd accept, the protections he'd insist upon to keep creative control. The middleman liked the clarity. "You're not like the panic buyers," he said. "You want infrastructure." Julian only smiled. Infrastructure was a language he trusted.
Back at the Workshop, the union compact held better than he'd expected. The joint arbitration committee had convened once to flesh out a grievance about overtime scheduling, and the mechanism had worked—the committee examined logs, a compromise was proposed, and the issue defused. It didn't mean the union had become affectionate; it meant contracts with teeth had teeth. Apprentices felt more secure; the carpenters who once muttered about startup scrappiness now spoke of longevity. Julian watched the change like a gardener watches saplings take root.
Even Demi's career began to feel steadier. Carl's edits on the thriller sharpened its pulse; early test screenings in neighborhood theaters suggested the film had a strong late-act payoff. Agents who had sniffed in the margins now sat forward in their chairs. Demi received thoughtful scripts that offered range, not exploitation, and she learned how to read a clause with a practised eye—billing order, residuals, approval rights—lessons Julian taught her patiently, out of habit rather than pedagogy.
One night, after a long string of editing sessions, Demi found Julian in the VDD office, bent over inventory lists. She sat beside him, her shoulder against his. "You ever wonder what it looks like when you finally take your foot off the accelerator?" she asked.
Julian didn't look up immediately. He thought of the ledger rules—never sell sovereignty, build credit with art, convert art into leverage—and of every small victory they'd seeded. "I don't plan to take my foot off," he said honestly. "But I imagine a day when the engine hums and I can walk among the branches instead of tending every sapling."
She kissed his temple. "I like that image. You, walking among your trees."
He closed the notebook and wrote one last line for the week: Scale quietly. Guard fiercely. Let growth be inevitable, not explosive. Then he underlined it twice.
Outside, the city moved in its indifferent orbit—streetlights, cabs, late-night diners—but inside Vanderford Holding, small systems began to snap into place: a distribution desk that told the truth, a label with a reputation for fairness, a publishing house with intellectual weight, a workshop where craft met contract. The list of future targets—Blizzard, Marvel, worn film libraries, overlooked music masters—sat in his notebook like seeds banked in cold storage.
Julian left the office later that night with Demi at his side. The air was cooler after the heat of production months. As they walked, he felt the long arc hinge ever so slightly in their favor: not a leap, but a steady bend toward the future he had memorized. He had no illusions about the fights ahead—competitors would sharpen knives, regulators would sniff for dominance—but he also had something more valuable than edge: preparation.
The seeds of expansion had been sown with patience and guarded ambition. Now he would water them, quietly, insistently, until they became a forest.