Tycoon Actor C544 (Patreon)

Jack and Simon had their eyes fixed on the drone — but then it suddenly lost control and dropped, tumbling out of the sky and hitting the ground.

Brady startled. "What just happened?"

"That'll be Darren." Lucas said, not looking up.

Brady turned. 'Darren?' The name meant nothing to him.

Shawn was already smiling, shaking his head slowly. "The guy is incredible. He's nowhere near us, but he can still pull something like this off."

Brady caught the word nowhere. "He's not actually here?"

"No." Simon answered. "Darren's a white-hat hacker Boss Lucas hired. He works remotely — handles digital threats, cyber surveillance, that kind of thing."

"He can do all of that from a distance?"

"More than that." Shawn leaned forward. "He's the one who helped track down the assassination group that came after Boss Lucas."

"Hey." Jack's voice went flat. "We don't go telling that to just anyone."

Shawn pressed his lips together and looked away.

"It's fine," Lucas said. He was still watching where the drone had fallen. "Brady isn't just anyone. He's the director of the project I'll be working on."

Brady said nothing, but something settled quietly in his chest. He was glad Lucas trusted him. And beyond that — he wasn't someone who talked. Years of closed rehearsals and private editing rooms had made discretion second nature; what he heard in a place like this stayed there.

Just then, Jack's phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and let out a short laugh. "Speaking of the devil. It's Darren."

He answered, listened for a moment, then held the phone out toward Lucas. Darren was calling to apologize — the drone had gotten close enough that it may have captured footage before it went down.

Lucas took the phone. "It's fine. Even if they got something, it doesn't matter. I knew that was a possibility when I set this up." He paused, listening. "You did well out there. Taking that thing down from wherever you are isn't nothing."

Darren responded. Lucas listened, then gave a quiet sound of understanding. Apparently it hadn't been pure remote skill — the security team kept an anti-drone jammer in the SUV as standard precaution, and Darren had triggered it the moment the drone entered range.

Brady stood to the side, taking all of it in. 'Incredible. So this is what Lucas's security actually looks like — not just physical, but digital too. This probably surpassed even Michael Jackson. And this is definitely the kind of thing you'd only see in movies. Can't believe it's actually his reality.'

As the afternoon wore on, Brady's impression of Lucas only deepened. It wasn't just the security infrastructure. It was the man himself — measured, unguarded with the people around him, and nothing like the Hollywood archetype Brady had quietly braced for.

By four o'clock, after hours of easy conversation around a blanket, he felt he actually understood something about the person who would inhabit László on screen.

"Hng." Felicity stretched her arms overhead and let them fall with a satisfied exhale. "That felt good. Like being young again — the three of us, out here like this. This second picnic might be even better than the first."

Jennifer smiled. "Young again? We're still young."

Felicity cut her eyes sideways. "You and Lucas are young. I'm thirty-nine and turning forty this year."

"You don't look it. Honestly — you haven't changed much since 2011."

Felicity glanced at her, skeptical. "Now you're just being kind."

"I'm really not. Ask Lucas."

Lucas had caught his name from across the blanket, where he was repacking one of the baskets. He looked up. "Jennifer's right. You haven't aged much from when we first met, Jones."

Felicity's expression shifted — not quite embarrassed, but close enough. She straightened. "You two have gotten very good at this. Don't expect anything in return."

Jennifer laughed softly.

"We should do this again." Lucas latched the basket. "The permits weren't that hard to get."

Felicity pointed at him. "You are never allowed to say that with a straight face."

Brady watched the three of them and felt a quiet smile pull at the corner of his mouth.

"Not bad for an indoor person, huh?" Jack appeared at his shoulder and clapped him once on the back.

Brady considered it. "I got more out of this than I expected. Spent the afternoon with the actors who'll carry my project — that counts for something."

"Sure does, buddy." Simon said from somewhere just behind them.

They packed up what remained. Before long, Lucas and Jennifer were settled in the first SUV; Martha followed with Seraphina asleep against her shoulder and Daciana tucked in beside them. Felicity and Brady took the second.

The park fell quiet behind them.

---

Three hours after the SUVs pulled out of the park, the footage surfaced.

TMZ posted it first. The clip was shaky aerial footage — a drone's-eye view of a small group spread across a picnic blanket in Central Park, partially obscured by tree cover, the figures small and indistinct from that height. It lasted forty-three seconds before the drone visibly lurched, spun once, and dropped out of frame.

The headline read:

LUCAS KNIGHT PICNIC IN CENTRAL PARK? Mystery Group Spotted in Heavily Secured Permitted Zone — Drone Goes Down Mid-Shoot

The article was careful with its language. The figures weren't confirmed. From an aerial distance, faces were unreadable, and TMZ acknowledged as much — but noted that the cordoned area, the barriers, and the visible security presence had drawn the attention of nearby park-goers, several of whom were quoted.

"I thought they were filming something. There were barriers up and everything."

"I asked one of the park staff and they said it was a permitted private event. That's all they'd say."

The clip spread quickly. Within the first hour, it had been picked up by a dozen outlets. Most ran with the angle TMZ had opened:

Why Does a Billionaire Need a Permit Just to Have a Picnic?

Lucas Knight's Central Park Outing: A Simple Family Day — or Another Example of the Ultra-Rich Buying Public Space?

"It's a Public Park." New Yorkers React to Barriers Erected for Lucas Knight's Alleged Picnic

By the second hour, someone had run image enhancement on the clearest frames. The zoomed stills were grainy but workable — and workable was enough. Lucas's build and jawline, Jennifer's hair and posture: both were effectively confirmed without anyone having to say so directly. The outlets updated their articles without changing the headlines.

Then someone spotted the third figure.

It took less than twenty minutes after that for a Reddit thread to identify her. A side profile, one clear frame where she'd turned toward the others — enough. Felicity Jones. And once her name entered the conversation, someone surfaced the photo.

It was old. Grainy, shot from a distance — a paparazzo who'd caught Lucas early, before the name meant anything, and hadn't thought much of the frame at the time. Lucas, Jennifer, and Felicity on a blanket in what was unmistakably the same park, years younger, nobody else paying them any attention.

The thread exploded.

"This is actually so wholesome?? They had a picnic there when they were nobodies and came back and did it again. I'm not okay."

"Felicity Jones too?? The Like Crazy trio reunion we didn't know we needed."

"Wait why is Felicity Jones there though? Are they working on something together?"

"Okay but the permit thing is still weird to me. That's a public park. You can't just rope it off because you're famous."

"He literally needed security. People were already flying drones over them. This is exactly why."

"The drone going down mid-footage is sending me. Someone on Lucas's side does NOT play."

"I think it's kind of beautiful honestly. They went back to the same spot. That means something."

"Beautiful or not, regular people don't get to do that. That's the point."

"Regular people also don't have strangers sending drones over their family outings, so."

The debate ran for hours. Most landed on the side of understanding — the permits, the barriers, the downed drone all made sense given who Lucas was.

A handful remained unmoved, unconvinced that any level of fame justified the privatization of shared public space, however temporarily.

Nobody had the full picture. But then, nobody ever did.

---

Knight Residences. Early morning.

Felicity had the news on while she had her coffee. Within ten minutes, the drone footage was playing on screen — the picnic, the aerial shot, the drone losing control and dropping. The chyron named Lucas and Jennifer. A second one named her.

"What the heck?" She stared at it. "They actually got all of that from a few seconds of blurry footage? They enhanced it enough to confirm faces?"

Enhanced stills, confirmed identities, the old paparazzi photo dug up from years back. She was somewhat known, but this was a different world entirely — one where someone would sharpen a grainy aerial image just to confirm you were eating a sandwich in a park.

"Lucas's level of fame is simply unhinged," she muttered, and turned it off.

It was already past seven. 'I need to give him a piece of my mind about dragging me into this,' she thought, making her way to the private suite. She stopped in the doorway.

Lucas was at the table with a sketchpad. Whatever she'd been about to say dissolved. She moved closer. Architectural sketches — detailed, deliberate, the lines clean in a way that didn't look like an actor killing time.

'Wait. Why is he sketching?'

Then it hit her. 'Don't tell me he's going after László's actual skills. Did he actually learn architecture?'

The pages were beautiful. Genuinely like art.

Lucas glanced up. "Oh. You're here."

"Yeah." She pulled out the chair across from him, eyes still on the sketchpad. "Are those architectural sketches? Is that for the project?"

"For the role." He set the pencil down. "László's whole identity is built around what he makes. I figured if I'm going to play him, I should at least know what it feels like to actually do it — even badly. Turns out I'm not that bad."

Felicity looked at the pages a moment longer. "Incredible." Then she straightened. "Right. So. I watched the news this morning. My name was in the chyron. They confirmed my face from a blurry aerial shot of a picnic I went to yesterday. The drone that took the footage then fell out of the sky, which apparently also made the news."

Lucas looked at her steadily. Said nothing. The corner of his mouth moved.

"You're smiling."

"I'm listening."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive, and that's the problem."

He let her finish. Sat there with that same expression all the way through. By the end, she didn't have much left to be irritated about.

They talked it through, then moved into rehearsals.

Later, Lucas brought the sketchpad to Brady and the film's illustrators. He set it on the table without comment. Brady picked up a page and studied it. The illustrators passed others between them. Nobody spoke for a moment.

They hadn't expected this — Lucas already this deep into the role, producing work that could sit alongside what László himself might have drawn.

Rehearsals carried through March. The role took shape gradually, the accent settling, the character accumulating weight.

And as March wound down, the calendar surfaced something else: the Oscars. Lucas had his own nomination, but there was a second reason he needed to be in that room. K-Pop Demon Hunters was nominated too, and he'd made a promise to Maggie and Kobe.

LA was next.