The Lead Actor Mocked My Scar and Bet $100 I Couldn't Shoot — Then I Dropped My Military ID on the Table
The backlot was emptying out. Crew members, exhausted from a long day, drifted towards the parking lots. The clatter of equipment being packed away slowly faded into the drone of distant freeway traffic. It was 9:00 PM.
I spotted Leo Santos, the young rookie actor, outside his luxury trailer. He was hunched over, scrolling through his phone, looking smaller and more vulnerable than he had on the firing range. His expensive jacket seemed to hang loosely on his frame.
I walked up to him quietly. He startled, dropping his phone with a clatter onto the metal steps. His face went pale when he recognized me.
“Marcus,” he stammered, scrambling to pick up his phone. His eyes darted around, checking if anyone else was near.
“We need to talk, Leo,” I said, keeping my voice calm and low.
He wrung his hands, his gaze fixed on his worn sneakers. “I… I know what this is about.” His voice was barely a whisper. “The headlines. The video. I swear, Marcus, I didn’t want any of this.”
I watched him. His fear was genuine, almost palpable. He wasn’t like Julian, not fully corrupted yet. “Tell me, Leo,” I urged him. “Tell me what happened.”
He swallowed hard, his throat working. “Julian… he came to me. A few weeks ago, after the first round of auditions. He said he saw ‘potential’ in me. Said he wanted to ‘mentor’ me.”
Leo ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit. “Then he gave me a wad of cash. Five thousand dollars. In a plain envelope.”
My eyes narrowed. “For what?”
“To… to just mention things,” Leo admitted, his voice cracking. “To a few of the entertainment reporters I was doing interviews with. Just hints, you know? That you were a little ‘unstable’ on set. That you had ‘flashbacks’ sometimes during rehearsal. That the accident might have been because you were… distracted.”
My blood ran cold. He hadn’t just put me in the spotlight; he had twisted my grief into a weapon.
“Why, Leo?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
He flinched. “My mom,” he whispered, finally meeting my gaze. “She has big medical bills. From her surgery last year. I’m new to all this, Marcus. Five thousand dollars… it was more than I’d ever seen in my life. I just needed to help her.” He looked away again, shame burning in his cheeks. “I didn’t think it would go this far. I thought it was just gossip. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
He looked utterly miserable, the weight of his actions clearly pressing down on him.
“Julian made it seem like you were just a disgruntled ex-soldier, that you’d never really liked him,” Leo continued, rushing the words out. “He said you were trying to undermine his authority on set, that you were a liability.”
“Did he tell you anything else?” I pressed. “Anything about the accident itself?”
Leo shook his head, then paused. “He did mention something once, when he was showing me around his trailer. He has this… this private hard drive. He said it has all the ‘raw, unedited multi-cam footage’ from every single day of shooting, including rehearsal days. He said it was his ‘personal backup’ in case the studio lost anything. It’s hidden behind a false panel under his desk.”
A jolt went through me. Unedited footage. Not the carefully curated clips Chloe Bennett was using for her smear campaign. This could be everything.
“He said it was his ‘insurance policy’,” Leo added, his voice low. “Against any ‘unforeseen complications’ with the film’s release.”
My mind raced. A private hard drive. Raw footage. This was the opening I needed. Leo might have started by betraying me, but he had just given me the key to Julian’s kingdom.
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