Fly Life wasn't a record label the way people imagine record labels. It wasn't glossy. It wasn't safe. It lived inside a walk-up in Chelsea, four floors above the street, where the air always smelled like old coffee and cardboard and somebody else's desperation. There were no plaques on the wall or gold records in frames; just unpaid royalties, cracked egos, and a weekly Wednesday night called Past, Present, Future that kept the whole thing alive.Hector was the Royalties & Accounts Manager - the numbers guy, the one everyone trusted to keep the lights on. Alistair Bridges was the president, dressed like a boss and moving like one, always pretending he had mob ties, always acting like the city owed him respect. For a while, it worked. Until it didn't.Because the truth is, Hector didn't come to Fly Life to steal. At first, he did everything right. He built trust. He protected people. He thought that made him indispensable. Untouchable.Then his boss hit him. Outside. In broad daylight. The kind of punch that rearranges your life in a single second and leaves you tasting blood. It was the second time.After that, the numbers stopped being numbers. They became choices. A fraction hidden as "processing fees." A catalog streamed all night from accounts that didn't exist. A machine built in silence while his newborn daughter slept in the next room.The music went up. The money moved. The city watched.And by the end of the year, Alistair Bridges was dead.
