Chapter 493: Michael Move
The internet in Lagos didn’t sleep. It just changed shape between midnight and dawn, morphing from gossip to speculation to outright hysteria before most people had finished their morning tea.
It started with a TikTok clip. Thirty seconds, shaky camera, filmed from a table two rows back at a restaurant in Ikoyi. The audio was restaurant noise clinking plates, generator hum, someone shouting about pepper soup. But the visual was clear enough. Blake, the American rapper, sitting at a long table with a group of young Nigerians. And not just any Nigerians — the same faces that had been popping up in skits for the past six weeks. The tall calm guy who always wore white. The girl with the serious eyes. The one with dreadlocks who moved too fast. The older man who looked like everyone’s uncle. And Sarah, the R&B singer, laughing at something the girl in orange said.
The caption was simple: "Who are these people and why are they eating with Blake and Sarah?????"
By 6 AM, the clip had four hundred thousand views. By 8 AM, the blogs had grabbed it. By 10 AM, Twitter Nigeria had done what it did best with push of Cash and pressure.
@LagosBlog: "So you’re telling me the boy from that shoe skit is sitting beside Blake??? The same Blake??? Make it make sense."
@Kelly: "Bro like I am seeing Sarah too something is fishy with this I mean its weird that they appear in Nigeria but to appear with this bunch of nobodies no offense to them something big is coming soon."
@NaijaMusicDaily: "Blake and Sarah spotted at Lagos restaurant with five unknown Nigerians who’ve been doing skits lately. This is either the biggest cosign of 2024 or the most elaborate PR stunt we’ve ever seen."
@RealTalkAbuja: "Frosh and Faye been in our faces for weeks doing small skits, acting like regular TikTok people. Now they’re dining with Sarah??? The game just changed."
@Samuel: "Me watching Frosh eat jollof with Blake after seeing him struggle to afford Uber in a skit last month. Life comes at you fast. Funny how I know this Frosh guy he lived at my area and was struggling as at the last time I saw him only for me to wake up and see him dinning with the huge star that many of our Nigerian artist haven’t talked with. Life no balance o."
@Grace: "Omo life is unpredictable I mean I noticed that the five of them seating on the same table as Sarah and Blake were not known till of recent I mean I still followed their account when it was still at about two thousand followers and now the same people are seating and dinning with two of the hottest American singers this past few years, from my small brain I can smell something big is coming out of this move cause this is way too fast man."
@RandomTweep: "Wait so that uncle in the brown shirt is actually sitting at the same table as Sarah??? I thought he was their manager!!! There’s hope for all of us."
Meanwhile the Nigeria internet was bubbling trying to find out who Frosh and the others were. Michael’s office in Century City was quiet when Clara walked in. She was twenty-six, efficient, and had learned early that her job wasn’t just to assist it was to feed Michael information before he knew he needed it. She carried a tablet and a printed stack of screenshots from Nigerian blogs.
"There’s something you should see," she said, setting the stack on his desk.
Michael glanced at the top page. A photo of Blake at a restaurant table, surrounded by young Nigerians he didn’t recognize. He barely looked at it before pushing it aside.
"Dayo’s US artists went to Lagos," he said. "So what? Maybe a vacation. Maybe a video shoot. I told you, the local scene is locked. No features. No co-signs. They can eat all the jollof they want, it doesn’t change the math."
Clara didn’t move. "It’s not just a dinner, Michael. Look closer."
Michael sighed and picked up the photo. Blake and Sarah. Five Nigerians around them. Three men, two women. He didn’t recognize any of the Nigerians. They looked young. Unknown. The kind of people you passed in a market without noticing.
"Who are they?" he asked.
"Nobody knows. The blogs are calling them skit creators. They’ve been in TikTok content for about six weeks. Small stuff. Nothing major."
I looked into it. And what’s strange is what I couldn’t find."
Michael looked up. "Explain."
"Frosh Adeyemi. Twenty-two. Lagos native. Used to record covers in a bathroom for TikTok. He’s been in skits for about six weeks. Faye Oluwaseun. Twenty-one. She’s been in the same content circuit. Kazeem Owolabi. Nineteen. Street rapper. Goes by KZ. Same skit timeline. Amara Eze. Twenty. Fast vocalist. Same pattern. Tunde Bakare. Twenty-one. Also appeared in content starting the same week as the others."
"So they’re content creators," Michael said. "TikTok people. Why is that strange?"
"Because that’s all they are, publicly. I checked every registry, every industry database, every public record. No label affiliations. No distribution deals. No manager credits. No studio bookings under any professional name. These five people don’t exist in the music business officially. They’re ghosts. But they were all doing the same thing, at the same time, with the same style, and now they’re sitting with Blake and Sarah like they belong there."
Michael set the photo down. He didn’t speak. He just looked at the five faces and let his mind turn over.
"Give me the timeline," he said quietly.
"Six weeks ago, all five of them pivoted to skits in the exact same week. Similar posting frequency. Similar humor style. Similar quality. Two weeks ago, they all disappeared from social media simultaneously — no posts, no stories, nothing. Then this week, they reappear at a restaurant with two of Dayo’s biggest American artists."
Michael stood up and walked to the window. He stared at the Century City traffic below, his brain working the way it had worked for twenty-three years — not faster, but deeper. Seeing the pattern behind the pattern.
"Clara," he said slowly. "Five strangers. Different backgrounds. Different parts of Lagos. Different ages. They all start creating content in the same week, with the same quality, and vanish at the same time. You telling me they found each other by accident?"
"What else could it be?"
"Organization." Michael turned back to face her. "Someone found them. Someone organized them. Someone paid for the content, the style, the timing, the coordination. And now two established American artists are sitting with them in Lagos like they’re colleagues."
"But there’s no financial trail," Clara said. "No label name. No company registration. Nothing on paper."
"Of course there isn’t. Because whoever built this didn’t want it on paper. Not yet." Michael walked back to his desk and picked up the photo again. He looked at Blake’s face, turned toward the tall calm kid in white. He looked at Sarah laughing with the girl in orange. They didn’t look like celebrities doing a favor to fans. They looked comfortable. Familiar. Like people who had spent real time together.
Michael felt something shift in his chest. Cold. Familiar. The sensation of realizing he had been looking at the wrong thing entirely.
"Few weeks before Six weeks ago," Michael said. "That’s when I was in Lagos. Meeting with the top labels. Offering them the deal. Building the blockade. I was so focused on cutting off Dayo’s access to local features that I never looked at what he was building underneath."
"What was he building?"
Michael sat down. His voice was quiet, almost to himself. "Dayo doesn’t fly Blake and Sarah twelve hours to have dinner with random skit creators. He doesn’t waste his biggest American assets on nobodies. Unless they’re not nobodies. Unless they’re investments."
He looked at the photo one more time, then set it down with deliberate care.
"I forced his hand. I went to every top label in Lagos and told them to stay away from JD Records. I thought I was blocking features. But I was actually doing his work for him. I pushed him to bring American talent instead of local. And while I was patting myself on the back for locking the door, he was building an entire roster behind it."
Clara blinked. "A label? In Nigeria?"
"A shadow label. Nothing on paper. Nothing public. Just five artists he found, trained, promoted through content, and now he’s pairing with international features." Michael laughed. It was a bitter, hollow sound. "JD Records Nigeria. Or whatever he’s calling it. It doesn’t exist officially. But it’s real. I can feel it."
"How do you know?"
"Because this is exactly how he built JD Asia. Small content drops first. Familiarity building. Silence before the drop he made use of a friend that time i think his name was Min-Jae. Then the music hits with features that seem too big for unknowns, and by the time anyone understands what he built, it’s too late to stop." Michael shook his head. "I missed it with Asia. Now I’m watching it happen again, and I almost missed it because I was staring at the blockade instead of the bridge."
He picked up the secure line and dialed Silas. Four rings. Then voicemail. He dialed again. Same result. The third time, the number didn’t even connect just a dead tone that told him everything he needed to know.
Silas had cut him off. The four bosses were handling this their own way, or not handling it at all, and Michael was on the outside.
He set the phone down carefully. He didn’t panic. Panic was for amateurs. He was a strategist had been for twenty-three years, not just because Silas paid him, but because he had built a career on seeing three moves ahead.
He couldn’t attack the business directly. Silas had forbidden contact with Dayo. The corporate angle was closed. The Nigerian blockade was ash. If he made a dramatic move flying somewhere, making a direct call, leaking something traceable the bosses would know, and they would bury him.
But if information surfaced naturally? If a journalist happened to dig in the right place? If a story emerged that had nothing to do with Michael Stern and everything to do with Jason Dayo’s personal life?
Michael opened his laptop. He didn’t book flights. He didn’t pack bags. He didn’t make any move that could be traced back to his office or his accounts. Instead, he composed an email to a contact at a Los Angeles tabloid not a direct order, not even a suggestion. Just a forwarding of a public records search, attached without comment, showing that Luna had been seen near Dayo’s properties multiple times over the past year. Enough breadcrumbs for a hungry reporter to follow. Enough to plant a question.
He read the email twice. It contained no instructions. No payment. Nothing that could connect back to him. Just information, sent from an anonymous account, landing in the inbox of someone who made a living connecting dots.
Michael clicked send. Then he deleted the draft, cleared his history, and closed the laptop.
He wouldn’t abandon his post. He wouldn’t go rogue. He would stay exactly where he was, doing exactly what Silas expected him to do nothing. While somewhere else, a seed he had planted took root in soil he didn’t have to touch.
Dayo was building a Nigerian empire with American features. Michael was building a distraction with a single email. Because he knew something that Blake and Sarah and all the studio time in Lagos couldn’t change:
An empire built on secrets collapses when the secrets breathe.
Michael poured coffee and sat back at his desk. He had done what he could. The rest would move on its own. And when it moved, Dayo would have to choose Nigeria or family. You couldn’t focus on both when the ground was cracking beneath your feet.
He smiled. It wasn’t a warm expression. It was the look of a man who had just remembered that the best attacks don’t look like attacks at all. They look like coincidence. Like bad luck. Like the natural unfolding of truth.
Outside his window, the Los Angeles afternoon was bright and indifferent. Somewhere across the city, Dayo was probably celebrating five finished EPs and a release schedule that looked perfect on paper.
Michael took a sip of his coffee and waited for the paper to catch fire.
(A/N: Shameless author asking for Golden Ticket 🎟 it doubles during this period so if I get up to ten one extra Chapter )