Chapter 18: 18. The Only Way To Get A Smoking Hot Actress Is Blackmailing Them

Mike was lying on his bed with his phone held above his face, which was not the most dignified position he had ever been in but was perfectly functional for what he was doing.

"Now that I’m curious about that baddie actress... I need to double-check if she’s a pure actress and not that fucking stupid-ass actress who shot a porn video or maybe OnlyFans."

"But still... I already fucking know that being an actress as sexy as that probably has some weird ass stuff on the internet."

He typed "Madison Reed" into the search bar.

The results came back immediately and in volume. It included news articles, entertainment profiles, photo galleries, fan accounts, and a Wikipedia page that had been edited four times in the last month.

The woman was everywhere. Not in the exhausting, omnipresent way of someone chasing visibility, but in the quieter way of someone who had built genuine professional credibility over time and therefore kept appearing in things worth appearing in.

Mike had already found a fake picture of her that displayed her massive naked breasts. "The internet has improved a lot these days..."

"But this shit is... AI, it seems," Mike said while frowning. "Yeah... she has six fingers, and what kind of virgin masturbates to AI pictures?"

He scrolled through it.

"Ahh... here it is... something useful."

Mike read through where she was in two seasons on a legal drama called ’Carver & Associates,’ which had apparently been a modest hit before the network pulled the plug for budget reasons.

A supporting role in a film that went to three international festivals and won a screenplay award.

A cosmetics campaign that had run for two years.

A sportswear partnership.

A magazine cover from eight months ago featured her in a way that clearly showcased the photographer’s skill.

She had done an interview somewhere that he found and skimmed. She talked about her work with the measured patience of someone who had done enough interviews to know which questions were worth answering properly and which ones just needed to be gotten through.

She displayed a sense of humor when the interviewer posed an intriguing question, and responded in a succinct manner when the questions were less engaging.

She mentioned, when asked about her personal life, that she preferred to keep it private.

The interviewer had pushed gently.

She had repeated the same sentence, slightly slower.

Mike found that interesting.

"Privately, huh? Then why the fuck did she gamble every Thursday night?"

He switched to the fan forums, which were a completely different experience. Madison Reed had a fanbase that had the intensity of people who treated celebrity as a personal relationship, and they had, in the way of dedicated online communities, catalogued everything.

"Ahh, yes... a bunch of fucking virgins who think they have a chance to bag her," Mike sighed. "Just have some balls and try to get them without getting caught. Easy as that."

Every public appearance. Every background detail in paparazzi photos. Every inconsistency between what she said in interviews and what showed up in candid footage.

And about six pages deep into one of the larger forums, he found the thread that actually caught his attention.

"Hm...?"

Mike read it. "It had started eight months ago with a grainy photo taken from a distance..."

"Someone had spotted Madison at a farmers market in District 7, wearing a baseball cap and an oversized jacket, walking alongside a young man who appeared to be even younger, perhaps still a boy."

"The photo was bad enough that the man’s face was visible only in profile, but the forum had spent considerable energy analyzing it anyway."

"A second photo appeared two weeks later, clearer, taken outside a restaurant at night, catching her mid-laugh at something the man beside her had said..."

Some fans, who still had a grasp on reality, suggested that AI might have generated the images. However, there were also those fans who erupted in outrage online, attempting to start a petition to identify the man seen with Madison.

"The thread had FUCKING seventeen pages!"

Half the commenters were convinced she was dating someone and furious about it. The other half were trying to identify the man by his jacket, his shoes, and the way he held his coffee cup.

Some of them were very committed to the identification project in a way that crossed several lines Mike would have identified even without a criminal background.

The most interesting posts weren’t about the photos. The most intriguing posts revolved around the fans’ reactions to a potential confirmation of Madison’s relationship.

He read through several of those and felt something between amusement and mild professional respect for the thoroughness of these people. They had already drafted, in one sub-thread, a coordinated plan to tank the advertising partnerships she held, on the basis that her single status was "part of the brand."

Another poster had written out a full timeline of what they considered evidence that Madison’s team was deliberately hiding the relationship to protect her market value.

And then there was one post, buried toward the bottom of page eleven, from an account with no profile picture, that simply said, "I know who he is. I won’t say it here. But if it ever comes out, her career is done, and that man’s life will be ruined by those fans."

That post had four hundred upvotes and no replies because the account had apparently deleted itself shortly after posting.

"Yeah, this is a fucking wrap..." Mike smirked. "This is blackmail material indeed... I just need to stalk her and maybe find the man that was close to her."

Mike set his phone on his chest and looked at the ceiling.

"So... Madison Reed had a secret boyfriend she went to considerable lengths to hide, a fanbase that treated the possibility of that boyfriend like a personal betrayal, and at least one person in her orbit who knew the details and had decided, for reasons currently unknown, to sit on them."

He thought about the way she had sat in that poker room. She walked unbothered across the casino floor. He recalled how her eyes had moved past him, acknowledged his presence, and then continued on.

A woman who had learned to manage everything her visibility cost her. Who went to a neighborhood casino on Thursday nights, probably because it was the one place she could sit in a room without someone recognizing her every three minutes, and she could just play cards and be a person who was good at cards.

He laughed at the ceiling. Quietly, to himself.

"This is the challenge I’ve been looking forward to with a new identity." Mike looked at his phone again, where he could see the reflection of his face. "Life is not going to be fun if you don’t take any risks..."

Mike knew that the universe kept handing him the most useful information, such as the lessons learned from his past experiences and the opportunities that awaited him if he still embraced his old ways.

He was still thinking about it when he fell asleep.

...

Friday morning arrived with sunlight through the east-facing window, which he had decided was his favorite thing about the apartment.

He checked his phone before getting up, which was a habit he had developed since the system started sending updates while he slept. There was one from 3 AM that he had already seen without registering, something routine about Petricia’s desire level holding steady at 55/100, and a local news notification he had signed up for when he opened the bank account.

He opened the notification.

The headline read, "Who Is the Mystery Man in the Poker Room? Madison Reed Spotted at Local Casino Thursday Night."

He sat up.

The article was short. Someone at the casino had taken a photo on their phone of the poker room through the window in the door, and it had caught Madison at the table alongside, visible in the background, a man the article described as "tall, red-haired, and unknown."

"What the fuck?! I’m already doxxed?!"

"They ain’t joking about her fans and paparazzi being fucking insane motherfuckers!"

The photo was blurry and mostly caught his shoulder and the side of his face, which was fine. The article had no interest in him.

The article was entirely about Madison, the mystery of why she went to this specific casino, and whether the unknown man beside her was the same man from the farmer’s market photos.

The comments section had thirty-seven responses in six hours and was absolutely on fire.

"Keyboard warriors... fuck them."

Mike closed the article.

He stood up, made coffee, and stood on the balcony. The vendor cart, the nursing student, and the city are doing their Friday morning thing.

He thought about Madison Reed playing a hand she could have won and folding instead, then saying "Interesting" to no one in particular.

She was going to be difficult. Her difficulty did not stem from being hostile or guarded like Petricia, but rather, it was due to her heightened awareness.

She had spent years in an industry that taught her to read a room, and she had clearly been attentive. The approach that worked on someone who had closed themselves off due to fatigue, loneliness, and the burden of handling everything alone would not be effective on someone who had shut herself off after carefully assessing every person who approached her and making a judgment before they even spoke.

He couldn’t sneak up on her, and he couldn’t build toward her quietly.

This meant Mike had to approach her from a perspective she had not yet considered, which was by blackmailing her.

He picked up his phone and opened the system.

"Okay," he said. "I’m listening."

"What’s the plan?"