Stained Glass Shards

27.

Ritter sat up and turned my chin to face him. The city lights streamed into the room, partially illuminating his handsome face. Under the limited light, his blue eyes glowed, piercing through me.

"He doesn't want you with me. With anyone. If he can't have you, he'd rather you be single—for the rest of your life.'

"How do you know that?"

"My leaving California wasn't happenstance. It wasn't this coincidence in life or business. This was about him forcing time with you. To lure you back into the relationship you formerly had."

"But you had a contract problem," I pointed out. "How would Griffin have anything to do with that?"

He sighed. "My business is extremely important to me. I ensure that my clients have the best representation. What I tell you is extremely confidential, and I hope you can be discreet."

"Of course." My brows knitted and I frowned. Dread coursed through me, fearing what he had to say.

"We represent a small video game company out of Detroit. We negotiated the sale of their most popular game to a larger company, which we don't represent because it's a conflict of interest. The sale of the game rights would be for tens of millions of dollars. That's every imaginable medium we can sell—digital games, board games, toys, posters, clothing, linens, and TV and film. Each subsequent sale of rights is to be sold independently, not to the major distributor of the game—they just sell the digital video for players. So my team negotiated the media rights to the game's story and images. We had sold each license and the rights to TV and film. A show is in the works to be distributed by a large media distribution company, which is an online subscription provider.

"There's a character in the video game that has become more popular than even the main hero. A video game for that character had been finished. It's in beta testing. We've negotiated the sale, but no contracts have been signed. That emergency call after our production meeting was from one of my associates, claiming they couldn't complete the contract with the production company because there was an issue with their filming."

Ritter ran his hands through his hair, turning away from me. "A lot of money on the front end was doomed to be lost. All the months spent negotiating terms, completing documents, and missing the scheduled signing date would be a waste. So when I got that call, I stood to lose a lot of money for my client and my agency's commission."

I nodded, prompting him to continue even though the knots rising from my belly to my throat let me know the direction Ritter was headed. 

"It turns out the production company was prepared to negotiate with an actor to play that beloved character. The gaming blogs and fanatics only saw one person in the role... and when he got hurt with a shoulder injury—"

Griffin!

"The production company questioned the entire series, contract, and payoffs. Griffin Belanger is the actor."

My eyes widened.

He sighed and then continued, "Griffin's manager, who I didn't know at the time, called the studio and told them the actor had a list of demands. One of those demands was to eliminate SA&T from negotiating the final sale of the media rights, which isn't usually a contingency. Why were we singled out? This got back to our client, who was surprised and felt threatened by this last-minute issue. And they wanted to review the initial contract for the original video game to have their rights returned. They wanted to end negotiations for the spin-off game. As a final blow to the sale, they wanted to stop the filming of the original show, the one where Griffin injured himself, of which five out of ten episodes had already been completed. That's a lot of money and time wasted. But above all, that one demand jeopardizes everything. One issue begets another."