Raphael found the logic amusing, but he couldn't deny Ari was right.
His survival strategy in Hollywood was simple: commercial blockbusters over everything. That was exactly why he had hired Ari in the first place.
But *Honey* was a different beast. The words "teen dance movie" had triggered a completely different connection in Raphael's brain.
*What if...* he thought. *What if I hijack the production team behind 'Honey' to make a completely different teen dance movie?*
He immediately called Ari and pitched the idea.
Ari was floored, but he couldn't talk Raphael out of it. Eventually, he threw his hands up and agreed to look into it.
With Ari handled, Raphael made a note of his audition times for *X-Men 2* and *The Matrix Reloaded*, and quickly left the agency.
That night, Raphael headed to Neal Moritz's mansion for a quintessential Hollywood house party.
Like most industry bashes, it was deafeningly loud and packed shoulder-to-shoulder; there was barely room to breathe, let alone stand.
But the moment Raphael walked through the front door, the blaring, high-decibel roar of the party seemed to evaporate. Every single pair of eyes in the room snapped toward him.
The co-lead of a movie that had just cleared two hundred million globally. The new face of Anakin Skywalker. The guy holding a massive, eight-figure global fashion endorsement.
All of that put an invisible, impenetrable barrier between Raphael and everyone else in the room.
Neal Moritz wasn't exactly a titan of the producing world yet. Among the crowd he had managed to pull together, Raphael was undeniably the biggest fish in the pond.
Hearing that Raphael had arrived, Neal personally pushed through the crowd to greet him, throwing an arm around his shoulder and aggressively playing up the "we're practically brothers" angle before steering him into a private study.
Raphael couldn't help but find it a little funny, but he played along. Neal was, after all, the guy who gave him his first real break—especially since Neal had taken a huge risk by dumping his buddy Paul Walker to cast Raphael instead.
Even if that decision had been heavily influenced by the reality-warping effects of his cheat code, Raphael still considered it a favor owed.
The conversation went exactly as Raphael had predicted. The second the door closed, Neal started venting his frustrations about Vin Diesel's "betrayal."
"...I was the one who went to bat for him to play Dom! The executives at Universal wanted Colin Farrell! I practically bled to convince Ron Meyer to sign off on Vin! And what does he do? The ungrateful bastard bails on us! Fuck him..."
The barrage of profanity made Raphael's head spin.
He knew who Ron Meyer was—the Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal and the guy currently running the show at Universal Pictures.
Hearing that, Raphael had to admit Neal had a right to be pissed. Diesel had used a flimsy excuse to walk away from the *Fast* franchise; it was a pretty dirty move.
But Raphael wasn't about to nod along and join the bash-fest. If he wanted the *Fast* franchise to actually reach its billion-dollar potential in the future, he couldn't afford to burn bridges with Diesel—he had to at least maintain a cordial, professional relationship.
Why?
Just ask Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson how well making an enemy out of Vin Diesel worked out for him.
Raphael listened to Neal vent with saint-like patience. When the producer finally ran out of steam, Raphael cut straight to the chase. "Neal, what do you need me to do? Just lay it out."
Neal's expression flipped instantly, morphing into a look of profound, brotherly gratitude.
"Raph, *The Fast and the Furious* is a monster hit. Universal is already demanding a sequel. If Vin wants to act like a diva, we'll just make the second one without him! I want you to step up. I want you to anchor the sequel. What do you say?"
Raphael took a deep breath. He knew this was the critical pivot point. He lowered his voice, speaking with absolute, deadpan seriousness.
"Neal, I'd love to do it. It's an honor that you trust me with this. But since we're putting it all on the table, I have a few thoughts on how we need to structure it..."
Raphael laid out his terms. First, he argued that a single protagonist couldn't carry the momentum of the franchise alone. They needed to bring in a co-lead. Not necessarily someone with equal screen time, but a heavy-hitting supporting character who could share the load.
Specifically, Raphael demanded they introduce Roman Pearce—the fast-talking, comedic muscle of the franchise.
Furthermore, Raphael explicitly stated that the action sequences—especially the street racing—had to blow the first movie out of the water. It needed to be a massive upgrade across the board.
As for his paycheck, Raphael offered a compromise. He'd take a reasonable base salary so Neal could pump the extra cash into the production budget.
But there was a catch: the contract had to stipulate massive, aggressively tiered box-office bonuses. If the sequel broke two hundred million and proved he could carry a franchise without Diesel, Universal had to pay out heavily on the back end.
Raphael's logic was bulletproof. Neal couldn't find a single flaw in the pitch. He earnestly agreed to take the terms to Universal and told Raphael to bring Ari to the next meeting so they could hammer out the specifics of the sequel's development.
With the business successfully concluded, the tension in the room vanished.
"...Alright, Raph. Let's go have some fun. I invited a ton of models and drama students tonight. I guarantee you'll find something you like."
With the shop talk out of the way, it was time to enjoy the perks of Hollywood.
Neal, ever the sleaze, had packed the house with at least thirty young women, easily making up a third of the guest list.
The math was simple: practically every single guy at the party was guaranteed to find someone to take home.
The second Raphael stepped back out of the study, three incredibly beautiful women immediately gravitated toward him.
Before he blew up, Raphael hadn't been shy about hooking up with girls at these kinds of parties. When you had nothing to lose, you didn't have to worry about extortion or waking up to a "congratulations, you're a father" phone call.
But things were different now. He was the undisputed supernova of the tabloids. He had to be infinitely more careful about who he went to bed with.
Ari had drilled that into his head months ago.
So, when Raphael recognized one specific face among the three women approaching him, he immediately zeroed in on her.
"Hey. Lima, right?"
"You know who I am?" the towering, striking woman asked, genuinely surprised.
The other two women, realizing they'd lost the draw, shot her a look of pure envy and turned away.
Raphael seized the opening. He guided the girl with the piercing, blue-gray "wolf eyes" toward a quieter corner of the room.
"How do you know my name?"
"Adriana Lima. Did I get that right? Your face is way too unique. Once you see it, you don't forget it. I saw you walk in the Victoria's Secret show."
"Wow. Does that mean you've been plotting on me this whole time, Speed Racer?"
"...Speed Racer? What the hell is that?"
"Hahahaha...! That's what they called you on that NBC late-night show. I read it in a magazine."
"Fair enough. But I *am* pretty good behind the wheel. You want to experience it firsthand?"
"What exactly are you suggesting, bad boy?"
"You're barely six months older than me. If I'm a bad boy, does that make you a bad girl?"
Adriana laughed out loud again.
She was incredibly intrigued by him. He checked every single one of her boxes, and the fact that he was so aggressively direct about his interest made the whole exchange feel perfectly electric.
Half an hour later, they slipped out of Neal's mansion together.
Raphael was still driving the Mustang his mother had given him, which caught Adriana off guard.
"I'm used to muscle cars," Raphael explained as he unlocked the door. "Driving anything else just feels wrong."
Adriana offered a wicked, devastating smile. "You don't have to explain yourself to me, bad boy. Just show me how fast you can go."
Raphael took a deep breath, dropping his voice to a low warning. "Buckle up. Hold on tight."
For the next thirty minutes, the Victoria's Secret Angel's screams echoed through the streets of Los Angeles.
The twenty-year-old Lima was in the absolute prime of her life. Rather than being terrified by Raphael's professional-grade, borderline suicidal driving, she was completely intoxicated by the adrenaline, cheering and screaming like a maniac the entire ride.
The screaming didn't stop until Raphael finally killed the engine in the underground parking garage of his apartment building.
The second the five-foot-ten lingerie model stepped through the front door of his apartment, she took total control. She shoved Raphael against the wall, trapping him in a fierce, dominant pin.
"Don't move, bad boy. You're my present tonight..."
With that, she slowly slid down the wall.
Raphael sucked in a sharp breath, his spine snapping completely straight.
As the night deepened, the apartment became the stage for a perfect, chaotic symphony.
---
Three days later, Raphael walked into Ari's office and took a script from him.
"Like you asked, I found a couple of rookie screenwriters who don't care about getting a credit," Ari said, his face twisted in a look of absolute agony. "But... are you seriously going to make a teen dance movie?"
"Absolutely."
Raphael didn't hesitate. "Who says dance movies are dead ends? Low budget, high return. As long as you keep the production costs tight, it's basically a license to print money."
Ari looked like he was developing an ulcer.
He knew Raphael's logic was technically sound. The problem was, why would a newly minted A-lister voluntarily take a massive step backward?
If this script had crossed his desk *before* they shot *Fast*, Ari would have greenlit it in a heartbeat. A teenager just trying to break into the industry should be thrilled to book anything.
But was Raphael a rookie anymore?
*The Fast and the Furious* clearing two hundred million globally. Anakin Skywalker. A dual-line global campaign for Calvin Klein. Any *one* of those three things was enough to feed a normal actor for a decade.
Ari took a deep breath.
*If you can't fight it, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.* He knew exactly how to survive in Hollywood.
"Fine. I'll get you a meeting with Marc Platt. He's the producer putting *Honey* together."
"I'll be waiting for your call!"
Raphael immediately bolted from the office.
The second he walked through the door of his apartment, before he could even take his jacket off, an "octopus" launched herself at him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. He had to physically drag her into the bedroom, fully prepared to teach the "octopus" a severe lesson about exactly who ran the house.
A few long, exhausting days of waiting followed.
It wasn't until his audition for *X-Men 2* was right around the corner—and the "octopus" had finally left the apartment to shoot a new campaign—that Ari finally called.
"I've got good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?" Ari asked, sounding like he was severely constipated.
Raphael was currently sprawled out on the sofa in Ari's office, limbs practically hanging off the cushions. "Give me the bad news. I like to eat the crust before I get to the good stuff."