Catherine folded the last silk blouse just like she had been doing this exact ritual for nine straight years. She could pack the Ashford Madam’s entire wardrobe in her sleep, blindfolded, and probably while solving quantum physics in the back of her mind.

The office bedroom was hushed, the kind of expensive quiet only billions could buy.

Late afternoon light slipped through the blinds in warm golden stripes, painting lazy patterns across the bed where three perfectly organized suitcases lay open like obedient soldiers. Each one categorized by occasion, by mood, by the invisible rules of a woman who never — ever — appeared in public looking anything less than devastating.

She was getting her ready for Hell’s Paradise Island.

The models had been confirmed. The shoot started in two days. They would arrive early to review and test everything, scouting locations, test lighting, get the last detailed plan for the shoot and make sure every frame would be flawless before the cameras even rolled.

Standard procedure.

Except nothing about this trip felt standard anymore.

Catherine smoothed an invisible crease from a cashmere cardigan and let her thoughts drift exactly where they had been drifting for weeks — straight into the beautiful, terrifying chaos that had quietly taken over her boss’s life.

It had started with the game.

She still remembered the sheer confusion of that afternoon. Watching the Ashford Madam cancel meetings, push back calls, and clear an entire high-value afternoon... for a high school basketball game.

Catherine had worked for this woman for nine years. She had watched her power through food poisoning that would drop a normal person into the ER, through migraines that felt like ice picks behind the eyes, through personal crises that would have sent lesser mortals screaming into therapy.

The Madam didn’t cancel shit. The Madam showed up anyways even when showing up required the kind of iron willpower that left ordinary humans crying in bathroom stalls.

And yet.

Basketball?

Catherine had tried to rationalize it. Paradise drama, maybe. The Madam finally dipping a toe into the social circus that devoured everyone else in this gilded cage. Or perhaps boredom. Or some hidden business angle Catherine simply couldn’t see yet.

Then he showed up one day.

Phei Ryujin Tiamat. In the flesh. Striding past her desk at seven o’clock at night like he owned the entire building, like the private elevator had been installed for the sole purpose of delivering him to this floor and the Ashford Madam was simply the next stop on his evening conquest list.

And the Madam had eaten dinner with him.

In her own office. On the floor. Laughing.

Catherine had heard it through the closed door — that rich, unguarded laughter that belonged to a schoolgirl with her crush not the most powerful woman in Paradise. She had stood at her desk pretending to work while the sound carved itself permanently into her memory like expensive ink.

She had brushed it off at first. Told herself it was nothing. Powerful people had dinner with other powerful people all the time. It didn’t mean anything.

But then she remembered the signing.

Catherine’s hand drifted unconsciously to her chest, right over the spot where his signature still lived on the shirt she had framed and hung in her bedroom like some kind of holy relic.

He had signed her. Right there. His hand steady, strokes deliberate, eyes focused only on the fabric, the marker, and the curve of each letter. She had felt every movement through her bra — the pressure of the tip, the drag of ink, the warmth of his knuckles brushing close but never quite touching.

And he hadn’t looked.

Not once.

Not a single flicker of male interest when she had leaned forward in that low-cut blouse, presenting her chest to him on a silver platter. Every other man on the planet would have stared. He hadn’t. His gaze had stayed locked on the task, finished it, capped the marker, and moved on like it was the most normal thing in the world.

She still didn’t know how to feel about that.

Offended that she wasn’t attractive enough to tempt him? She wasn’t ugly. Men looked. Men had always looked.

Or impressed by the terrifying self-control? That she could offer herself so blatantly and he still showed zero interest?

Not that she had been trying to seduce him. ...At least, she was pretty sure she hadn’t been.

Then it had clicked.

A person her boss could sit on the floor and eat dinner with while laughing like the weight of the world had vanished.

A person who could walk into this office uninvited and be welcomed like he belonged there and carried himself with the lazy confidence of someone who had already won a game Catherine didn’t even know was being played.

Why would he waste a single glance on the assistant when he already had a goddess?

She had tried denial first. Told herself they were just close. Business associates. Family friends. Something neat and explainable that fit into the tidy little boxes Catherine used to organize reality.

The denial lasted roughly just that long.

Because after that dinner, the Madam stopped hiding it.

She would call Phei right in front of Catherine. No stepping away or lowering her voice without the pretense of discretion. She would simply pick up her phone, dial, and let her entire face transform into something Catherine had never seen before.

Soft. Girlish. Utterly smitten.

She would talk to him in that low, warm, intimate voice full of things Catherine pretended not to hear. She would blush. Actually fucking blush. The Ashford Madam — whose composure could survive nuclear winters and boardroom bloodbaths — turning pink because a teenage boy said something on the other end of the line.

And the emojis.

Gods, the emojis.

"Kiss emoji," the Madam would announce aloud while typing. "Kiss emoji. Heart. Heart. Kiss emoji."

As if saying them out loud somehow made the feelings more real. As if a woman worth billion needed to narrate her lovesick texts like a teenager live-streaming her first crush.

Catherine always stood there, listening to her iron-willed boss coo over digital hearts, and felt the last pillars of her denial crumble into glittering dust.

Then came the sad days.

The days when Phei was busy doing whatever godly, dangerous teenagers did when they weren’t busy stealing goddesses from Legacy families.

The Madam would sit alone in her office, curled up on that obscenely expensive white couch with her knees drawn to her chest and her chin resting on them, looking smaller and more fragile than Catherine had ever witnessed.

The massive TV would play on silent — a slideshow of photos Catherine hadn’t even known existed. Candid shots. Laughing shots. The kind of intimate, unguarded pictures people took when they were desperately trying to bottle a moment they never wanted to end.

In some of them the Madam was laughing with her face turned away, one hand half-raised as if to block the camera while clearly begging him not to stop... some were them kissing, hugging and other things she’d rather not say.

She’d watch those slideshows for hours. Silent. Motionless. Missing him with an intensity so raw it made the air in the office feel thick and heavy, like the weight of unspoken sin had taken physical form.

Nah.

This wasn’t just affection.

It was love. Raw, obsessive, all-consuming love that made billionaires cancel empires for high school basketball games and blush like schoolgirls over text messages.

Things had only escalated from there. Gotten more intense, obvious. More dangerously public. Until Catherine had stopped being surprised and simply surrendered to quiet, exhausted resignation.

If her life were a webnovel, the readers would already be screaming the obvious from the comments section.

But today... today had been something else entirely.

Today the Madam had called her with that soft, slightly breathless voice and asked her to come drive "them." As in both of them. As in: please come pick us up from this hotel where I just spent the night getting thoroughly rearranged by a seventeen-year-old, and I no longer care if you know.

Catherine had driven to the hotel in silence and she had watched them emerge together — the Madam walking with a noticeably different gait, something looser and more satisfied in her hips, a quiet glow of sexual contentment radiating from her usually impenetrable composure.

Catherine had said nothing.

What was there even left to say at this point?

And now the models for the Hell’s Paradise Island shoot were Phei and his teammates.

His boys who had stood beside him during that legendary basketball challenge, flipped Paradise upside down and caused every teenage girl within fifty miles to lose her damn mind.

Catherine was going to have to stare at him for three full days straight. Watch her boss watch him. Exist in the same charged space as whatever this dangerous, beautiful thing was and pretend she didn’t notice how the Madam’s eyes would track his every movement across every room, every set, every single frame.

In nine years, the Madam had never once attended a shoot.

Not once.

They produced new campaigns almost three times a week — endless content for the insatiable cosmetics empire — and the Madam always reviewed, approved, and critiqued everything from the safety of her desk. From a distance and behind layers of delegation and control.

She didn’t go to shoots.

Yet here she was, personally flying to Hell’s Paradise Island for three days.

Catherine zipped the final suitcase shut with a decisive click.

She stood up, smoothed her skirt, and took a slow breath.

Her boss was in the office, no doubt thinking about him again. Already counting down the hours until departure. Already planning outfits specifically designed to make his jaw drop and his legendary control fracture.

"She’s got an excuse to be away with him for days," Catherine murmured to herself, a faint, wry smile touching her lips.

And really... what else was there left to say?