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But Poe refused to make a deal. So he’s gotta pay the consequences.
Giving Sabrina one last glance to make sure she’s okay, I head back inside the factory. I send Beckett out to help Anders with clean up, and then I make it back up to the rooftop just in time to watch Iggy take his bow. As far as I can tell, the music was loud enough to drown out the gunfire. Or else people thought it was part of the backing track—it’s all the rage to use “found sounds” these days.
The rest of the night passes in blissful peace. Clips of Iggy’s performance go viral on every possible platform. When his album drops at midnight, “Deathless Life” gets a hundred thousand downloads in the first hour.
Victor Kane texts me a photo of Iggy’s contract with his signature scrawled in ink across the bottom.
Iggy and I celebrate by taking a bath in the champagne fountain.
“Thank you, man,” Iggy says, toasting me with a glass he’s too drunk to notice is already empty.
“You’re the talent,” I tell him. “I just had to shine a spotlight on you.”
Iggy sets his glass down, trying to focus his bleary stare on me.
“Why don’t you come with me, man? Come to L.A.?”
“I will,” I say. “But not yet. I’ve got two more years of school.”
“What do you need a degree for?” Iggy says. “You’re already a fuckin’ genius.”
“It’s not the degree, it’s the connections.”
As close as Iggy and I have always been, I haven’t told him what Kingmakers is really like. I can’t tell anyone who isn’t a mafioso themselves.
The island is isolated and restrictive. Each student can only bring in a single suitcase. The list of forbidden items includes alcohol, drugs, and most electronics.
At Kingmakers I do exactly what I did in high school, but on a much grander scale: I’m a broker. I provide contraband, smuggled onto the island via a network of fishermen and locals.
I’ve been hustling since I was twelve years old, saving up every penny in pursuit of my ultimate goal.
I want to be an actual Kingmaker. The appointer of stars. Creator of music, fashion, and cinema.
I don’t want to be Justin Bieber—I want to be Scooter Braun.
I have no desire for celebrity. The real power is the man behind the curtain. The producer at the epicenter of global culture.
I want to find a hundred Iggys, and I want to drop a thousand albums. I want to produce the nextAvengersfranchise. And I want to control the billions of dollars of endorsements and ads attached to all of it.
There’s one crucial factor of this dream: I have to do it on my own.
I’m building my empire without a penny of my parents’ money.
I want to stand on top of the mountain without a single asterisk next to my name.
The American Dream is to be a self-made man.
And that’s why I started my bank account at zero, no trust fund, no cheats. Every dollar I earn goes into that account—every hustle, every deal. I’m at $9.8 million now, money earned by my own meticulous, ingenious, and even reckless labor.
The commission I earned off Iggy’s Virgin contract will put me almost at $10 million.
I think $12 million is the number I need to launch my empire in Los Angeles. I have it all planned out—the Malibu mansion I’ll rent, the office space I’ll lease on Wilshire Boulevard. The parties I’ll throw and the fish I’ll reel in one by one.
I can see it all perfectly in my mind.
Two more years at Kingmakers, and then I’ll join Iggy in La La Land.
The Uber dropsme off at my parents’ house at 5:20 in the morning.
