Valentina parked her new car beneath the golden throat of Infinity Chaos Hotel’s private entrance, the engine lowered from a deep, satisfied growl into silence as the night folded itself back around the marble driveway.

For a moment, Valentina stayed behind the wheel, hands resting on the leather, her reflection faint across the windshield while the hotel’s lights poured over the hood in long liquid bands. The car still felt unreal. Too smooth. Too powerful. Too expensive.

It was really a sort of machine she would have once watched on a screen while making some dry comment about rich people losing their moral compass at high speed, and now here she was, stepping out of it like a woman who apparently belonged to this world.

A valet who was already waiting opened the door with polished precision, bowed low, and received the key from her hand as if she had handed him a royal seal instead of something that controlled four wheels, one engine, and an obscene amount of money disguised as engineering.

"Good evening, Mistress Valentina," he said, voice respectful enough to make her spine pause. "I will have it taken care of. Please have a pleasant night."

Valentina froze for a few seconds.

Mistress.

Again...

The title slid over her skin like silk she had not paid for and did not know how to wear.

She knew why they called her that. It was not because of her birth, old family name neither because she had grown up learning which fork belonged to which course while servants held doors and adults spoke in inheritance language.

They called her Mistress because she was Phei’s woman...

’...their Young Master’s woman.’

That alone had placed a title around her shoulders like a cloak she still kept checking to see if it had slipped.

Unlike the princesses, and perhaps unlike some of Phei’s other women, like Patricia Bloom, who had grown up close enough to money to know how its air tasted, Valentina had never fully adjusted to being addressed like that.

’Mistress.’

The hotel staff said it naturally, so gracefully and seriously that arguing would only make her look more awkward, which was disgusting because politeness should not be so difficult to defend oneself against.

Still, she smiled.

"Thank you," she said, inclining her head politely. "Have a good night too."

The valet bowed again and drove the car away with the solemn care like he was transporting someone’s national treasure, while Valentina adjusted the small gift box in her hand and stepped toward the private entrance.

The glass doors opened for her without sound.

Inside, warm air met her skin, scented faintly with flowers, polished wood, and the kind of money that never raised its voice because it had other people do that professionally.

As she crossed toward the private elevator, the title echoed again.

Mistress.

’What is next? Princess?’

Valentina almost laughed under her breath as she entered the elevator and watched the doors close in front of her.

What even was the proper title for one of the Crown Prince’s women? Consort? Lady? Mistress?

’Future administrative nightmare maybe?’

The hierarchy of rich, powerful, romantically entangled people should have come with a booklet.

’Preferably laminated.’

Everything had felt surreal since Phei entered her life.

No, that was too simple.

Everything had become surreal and then kept evolving like a monster with excellent manners.

Who would have known that the skinny guy who walked into the tower gym to train would later become this? This beautiful, powerful, terrifyingly affectionate man who bought cars as gifts, made legacy princesses blush, gathered women into something that somehow felt less like chaos and more like an impossible family, and dragged Valentina’s life along with him until even hotel staff bowed to her and called her Mistress?

Thinking about it made her chest tighten with disbelief.

She could still remember the first time he came to the gym. Skinny, under-built, almost painfully serious in that way young men became when they were trying to outrun weakness.

Valentina had thought he’d even choose her to train him, and he had turned her down, choosing a male trainer instead.

That had annoyed her more than she admitted at the time. Not because she felt entitled to him, but because she had seen potential in him and, fine, because her pride had taken a tiny little punch to the throat.

Then his body began changing and not normally slowly like any body was supposed to.

Each passing day, he grew stronger, sharper, more defined, as if someone had lit a furnace inside him and his body had finally remembered how to become dangerous.

Later, he came to her and asked whether she could train him in squats and glutes.

’That is how it started.’

Ridiculous, really. Infatuation beginning at the altar of leg day.

At first, Valentina told herself she was just interested in his dedication. Then his discipline. Then his politeness. Then the way he looked at her without greed, no matter how many chances she gave him to be greedy.

Phei had kept everything professional, almost offensively so, no matter her efforts. She flirted. He smiled. She leaned closer. He corrected his posture. She wore things that should have made concentration illegal but he still somehow behaved like a gentleman training for a war.

She understood why later...

...the day he brought Sierra to the gym.

Valentina could still see it clearly:

Phei had introduced the girl as his girlfriend, and Valentina had looked at Sierra with that quick, ruthless assessment women rarely admitted they performed.

Sierra had not possessed the same Valentina’s developed hot body, no. Not in the obvious way.

But the princess was perfect in another sense. Soft, luminous, graceful, delicate in a way that made men feel protective and women feel annoyed at biology for playing favorites. Valentina had looked at her and understood.

So that was why Phei had only ever been mildly interested, why he had never made a move despite Valentina’s invitations.

He already had that.

For a while, she thought that was the end of the story.

Naturally, she had lied to herself.

If anything, seeing Sierra had made her more determined.

Not cruelly or bitterly...

...just with the quiet fire after realized the man she wanted was not ignoring her because she was lacking, but because he was loyal.

And loyalty, unfortunately, was attractive.

’Deeply unfair design, that one.’

In the end, she made her ultimate move on that midnight training day.

And Phei had bitten.

The rest was history.

’Or madness.’

Probably both; they were often cousins in Phei’s life.

The elevator rose in silence, and Valentina leaned back against the wall, eyes softening as memories drifted through her. She could not help wondering when she had become the sort of woman who was fine with her man having multiple women.

Not merely fine, either... Valentina relished their presence, called them sisters and fought beside them, teased them sometimes and watched them love him in their own ways and felt, not diminished, but strangely expanded.

If someone had told the old Valentina that one day she would be part of such a circle, she would have laughed, kicked them out of her gym, and recommended head trauma screening.

Now?

Now the thought of returning to a lonely, single-threaded love felt almost small.

The elevator opened.

The lobby of their private floor greeted her with quiet gold, soft carpets, dark glass, and a silence too expensive to be natural.

She stepped out and walked forward, passing the entrance to her own shared penthouse before continuing toward the larger joint penthouse that had quietly become the center of all their tangled lives.

Phei’s penthouse.

The door clicked shut behind her.