My Netori Life With System: Stealing Milfs And Virgins

Chapter 260: 260. She Wanted the Legal Drama. She Got a Different Kind Instead.

Madison’s apartment was located in a building that commanded respect through design rather than mere history. It was the kind of place where the doorman stood by choice, a silent sentinel of a high-end lifestyle, positioned in a district where the proximity to the city’s media and entertainment hubs served as a silent, glittering shorthand for wealth and influence.

To live here was to exist within a specific echelon of professional power.

The doorman acknowledged Mike with a curt, knowing nod, letting him pass without the need for a phone call. The unspoken implication was clear: Madison had already cleared the path.

She had been tracking the clock, monitoring the minutes until his arrival, and had confirmed his presence long before Mike had even reached the threshold. She was already in motion, and he was simply the object she was moving toward.

When the elevator doors slid open, she was there.

She opened the door herself, a gesture of controlled intimacy. Madison had clearly curated her appearance, but it was a curation born of a deep, instinctive precision.

Having spent years navigating the predatory glare of the public eye, where an unpolished moment could become a headline, she had evolved into a woman who possessed no "unprepared" versions of herself. Every hair, every line of her silhouette, felt like a deliberate choice, a seamless blend of effortless grace and tactical readiness.

Stepping inside, the apartment revealed itself as a masterclass in curated authenticity. It was exactly what Mike expected from a woman who understood the power of a controlled image: tasteful, specific, and utterly devoid of the superficial clutter a camera might exploit.

There were no "statement pieces" meant to impress; instead, there was a profound sense of lived-in luxury. The sofa was deep and substantial, chosen for the tactile comfort of a real home rather than the aesthetic of a showroom.

The art on the walls wasn’t a collection of expensive trends but a series of intentional selections, pieces chosen by someone who had truly looked, truly felt, and truly understood the weight of the images she had chosen to live with.

The air between them was thick, charged with the kinetic energy of the week’s silence.

"You’re on time," she said.

Her voice was steady, but there was an edge to it, a sharp, observant quality that suggested she was weighing his punctuality against the weight of his absence. She stepped back, a silent invitation into her inner sanctum.

"I try to be," Mike replied.

His voice was low, a calm counterpoint to the underlying tension vibrating in the room.

"You try," she repeated.

She lingered on the word, dissecting it as if it were a piece of evidence, her eyes searching his for the truth behind the effort. A small, unreadable shadow passed over her expression, a flicker of something that might have been amusement or perhaps a lingering, suppressed frustration.

"Come in."

The living room offered a panoramic view of the District 3 commercial strip, a sprawling tapestry of neon and glass that made the city look like a circuit board pulsing with life. It was the kind of view that provided a sense of detached godhood, a perspective that made the chaos below seem manageable.

But inside the apartment, the atmosphere was anything but detached.

Madison didn’t offer him a drink. There was no ritual of pouring scotch, no polite gesture of hospitality to soften the air.

The absence of it was a tactical decision; she wasn’t looking for smoothness. She was looking for friction.

She wanted the edges of their conversation to grate against one another until something gave way.

She didn’t sit on the sofa. Instead, she claimed the armchair, a move that forced Mike into the lower expanse of the sofa.

It was a subtle play for the high ground, a positioning that placed her slightly above his eye line, a silent assertion of dominance that felt as instinctive as it was deliberate.

Mike sat, his presence heavy and grounded in the soft fabric.

"How was your week?" she asked, and her eyes were sharp, scanning him for any sign of the week’s toll.

"Interesting," Mike replied. His voice was a calm, flat surface.

"’Interesting’ is a very unspecific answer, Mike," she said. It’s a conversational shield."

"Then let’s drop the shields," Mike countered, tilting his head slightly. "How was your week?"

She stared at him for a long beat, the silence stretching until it felt brittle. "You’re going to do that, aren’t you?"

"You’re going to answer my question with my own question, and you’re going to make me work for the data."

"It was a good question," Mike said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "You should get the benefit of it."

She exhaled a short, sharp burst of air through her nose. It was the sound of a woman standing on the precipice of deciding whether to be amused by his audacity or insulted by his deflection.

"Frustrating," she said finally, the word landing like a heavy stone. "If you want specific..."

"I had a callback for a project I actually wanted..."

"A director I respect, someone who knows the difference between talent and noise. But apparently, someone on his producing team decided the ’tabloid attention’ surrounding my personal life made me a liability."

"So, the callback came back as a ’we’re going in a different direction.’"

"A ’different direction’ means someone without a forum thread," Mike translated.

"Someone without a forum thread," she confirmed, her jaw tightening. "By the way, that thread has grown to twenty-three pages and has a dedicated moderator who clearly has no other hobbies besides dissecting my existence."

"What was the project?" Mike asked.

She leveled a look at him. "Why does that matter?"

"It doesn’t," Mike said, leaning forward just enough to bridge the gap between the armchair and the sofa. "But you said you actually wanted it."

"That’s a rare distinction for you. You don’t use that word for work you just tolerate."

She went quiet. It wasn’t the silence of someone who had nothing to say but the silence of a strategist deciding whether to engage with the accuracy of his observation or let it slide past.

"Legal drama," she said eventually. "Not the sweeping, episodic kind like Carver."

"More contained. The kind of prestige television made to be excellent rather than just to be renewed."

"The director does one every three years, and they’re always worth the watch."

"And they cut you because of a thread," Mike pressed.

"They cut me because I couldn’t prove the thread was wrong," she snapped, her composure fraying just enough to show the heat beneath. "That is the specific nightmare of managing a truth."

"The cover story is solid."

"The cover story is also a cover... Anyone who looks at it long enough can feel the seams, even if they can’t find the thread to pull them."

"Have they gotten any closer to the right answer?"

"To Kyle?" She said his name with a sudden, jarring intimacy.

She didn’t use a buffer; she didn’t soften the syllables. She said it the way people say the names of things they’ve been obsessing over in the dark.

"No... They’re getting closer to theories that aren’t right, which is somehow infinitely more irritating."

"Why is a wrong theory worse than no theory?"

"Because wrong theories generate wrong questions," she said, her hands tightening on the arms of the chair. "And wrong questions generate the wrong kind of attention."

"And the wrong kind of attention has a way of drifting, eventually, toward the right place."

"You’ve been managing this carefully," Mike observed.

"For eight months," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "Yes."