Chapter 248: [4.66] The Harem Plotline
I didn’t sleep.
Not even close.
I spent the entire night staring at my ceiling like it held the answers to my life’s biggest questions, which it didn’t, because ceilings are famously terrible at providing relationship advice. Especially when the relationship in question involves four identical billionaire sisters who want to share me like I’m some kind of romantic time-share property.
My phone sat on the nightstand, silenced but still glowing with the weight of unanswered messages. The group chat had gone nuclear around two in the morning when Cassidy sent a photo of herself in bed with the caption "can’t sleep, thinking about my future pet." Harlow had responded with seventeen heart emojis. Vivienne had simply written "inappropriate" but stayed in the chat instead of leaving. Sabrina sent a rose emoji at 2:47 AM, which somehow felt more threatening than Cassidy’s entire message.
I’d turned my phone face down after that.
The water stain on the guest room ceiling had mocked me for the remaining hours until dawn crept through the windows. My brain kept replaying the Archive scene on loop: Vivienne’s tears, her burgundy lipstick smeared across both our mouths, the way she’d looked at me like I was something precious instead of just the help.
Then there was Sabrina’s kiss in the cafeteria freezer, casual as ordering coffee but intense enough to scramble my thoughts for the rest of the evening.
And Cassidy’s body on mine in her bedroom, the heat of her making promises she probably shouldn’t keep.
And Harlow’s teeth on my neck, marking me like I belonged to her already.
Four girls. Four identical faces with purple eyes that saw through every lie I tried to tell myself. Four completely different disasters wrapped in the same perfect packaging.
My sister Iris was right. I was living in a harem plotline and the protagonist was an absolute moron who kept making the wrong choices for the right reasons.
Or maybe the right choices for the wrong reasons.
Hell if I knew anymore.
I rolled out of the cloud-disguised-as-a-bed and shuffled toward the bathroom, my body protesting every movement. The shower helped marginally, though the fifteen settings and built-in speakers felt like overkill when all I wanted was hot water and five minutes of peace.
The mirror showed a stranger wearing my face. Dark circles that could qualify as luggage. Hair that Vivienne would absolutely judge. A fading hickey on my neck that Harlow’s vampire enthusiasm had gifted me, now yellowing at the edges but still visible enough to be problematic.
I dressed in yesterday’s clothes because I hadn’t packed for an extended stay, just a quick festival setup that somehow turned into another emotional hostage situation. The hallway stretched empty and quiet, all the portraits sleeping or dead or whatever expensive paintings did at seven in the morning.
Voices drifted up from downstairs. Female voices, plural, layered over each other in conversation that sounded simultaneously combative and affectionate.
My stomach dropped.
Because I recognized that particular chaos signature. The specific frequency of the Valentine sisters mid-bicker, punctuated by someone’s laughter that could only be Iris.
I took the stairs two at a time, my feet barely making sound on the plush carpet.
The informal dining room came into view first, sunshine pouring through the windows in sheets of gold that made everything look like a painting. The sisters sat around the table in various states of morning dishevelment, still wearing their pajamas like they’d rolled directly from bed to breakfast without bothering with the performance of getting dressed.
And there, right in the middle of the chaos, sat my fourteen-year-old sister.
Laughing.
Actually laughing, her head thrown back and her eyes crinkled at the corners while Harlow gestured wildly about something, her twin tails bouncing with the movement of her hands. Cassidy was smirking into her coffee cup. Vivienne looked exasperated but fond. Sabrina watched the whole scene with that small smile that meant she was cataloging every detail for future use.
The tableau should have been reassuring. My sister, safe and happy and surrounded by people who were treating her like she mattered.
Instead, my brain immediately went to threat assessment mode.
Because these four girls had already turned my entire life upside down in less than a month. They’d kissed me, propositioned me, offered me a relationship structure that sounded like it required a legal team and a therapist to navigate properly. And now they had access to the one person who actually mattered more than any of them combined.
Iris spotted me first. Her laughter cut off mid-gasp, her expression shifting from joy to something like guilt before landing on determined cheerfulness.
"Morning, Zay!" Way too bright. Completely fake. "We were just talking about you!"
Every sister’s head swiveled toward the doorway in perfect synchronized horror.
"Iris," Harlow hissed. "We said we weren’t gonna—"
"It’s fine!" Iris grinned wider, her smile sharp enough to cut glass. "I was just telling them about that time you cried watching Coco."
My eye twitched. "I did not cry."
"Your eyes were leaking water while you made weird choking sounds."
"Allergies."
"To EMOTIONS," Iris announced proudly.
Cassidy actually laughed, the sound startled out of her before she could stop it. Her purple eyes met mine across the table, something dancing in them that looked suspiciously like delight.
"Your sister’s a menace," she said, but the words carried warmth instead of actual criticism.
"Yeah, I’m aware." I stepped into the room properly, my survival instincts screaming that I was walking into an ambush but my feet moving forward anyway. "She’s been practicing since she could talk."
"It’s called being charming," Iris corrected primly. "You should try it sometime."
Vivienne’s lips twitched. Actually twitched, like she was fighting a smile and losing. She cleared her throat and gestured to the empty seat between her and Sabrina with her usual efficiency.
"Sit. Chef Laurent made French toast. You need to eat."
Not a request. Never a request with Vivienne.
I sat because arguing before caffeine felt like suicide.
Harlow immediately shoved a plate in front of me, the French toast arranged in a perfect stack with strawberries and powdered sugar creating what looked like deliberate artistic composition. My stomach growled traitorously loud.
"See?" Harlow bounced in her seat. "Your body knows what it wants even if your brain is being stubborn!"
I picked up my fork instead of responding, because responding to that statement would lead nowhere good.
The French toast was obscenely good. Like, offensively good. The kind of good that made my usual breakfast of black coffee and whatever hadn’t expired yet feel like a personal attack on my taste buds.
"This is ridiculous," I said after the second bite.
"Thank you?" Harlow looked confused.
"Not a compliment. A statement of fact." I gestured at the table, at the elaborate spread that probably cost more than my weekly grocery budget. "This is too much food for six people."
"Chef Laurent has very strong feelings about breakfast," Vivienne explained, her tone suggesting she’d given up fighting this particular battle years ago.
"He tried to make us protein smoothies once," Cassidy added, her nose wrinkling. "Vivienne banned him from the blender for six months."
"They were nutritionally optimized—"
"They tasted like grass clippings mixed with sadness."
"That’s not—"
"Harlow cried."
"I did NOT cry, I just had a strong emotional reaction to the texture—"
"You literally said ’why would anyone do this to innocent fruit’—"
"BECAUSE IT’S TRUE!"
I ate my French toast and watched them bicker, the familiar rhythm of their argument suggesting they’d had this exact fight multiple times before. Iris caught my eye across the table and grinned, clearly enjoying herself way too much.
Sabrina slid a cup of coffee toward me without comment. Black, two sugars, exactly how I liked it despite never telling her my preferences.
I took a sip. Perfect temperature. Perfect ratio.
"How’d you know—"
"I pay attention," Sabrina said simply, already returning to her book.
Right. Because nothing happened in this house without Sabrina noticing and cataloging it for later deployment at maximum strategic impact.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Probably Felix asking where I disappeared to yesterday. Or Dr. Reyes wondering why I missed our check-in meeting. Or my mom trying to text me again from whatever number she’d switched to after I blocked the first three.
I left it alone.
"So," Cassidy said, her voice cutting through the comfortable breakfast chaos. "We gonna talk about last night or we gonna keep pretending everything’s normal?"
Harlow made a strangled sound. Vivienne’s hand froze halfway to her tablet. Sabrina turned a page like Cassidy hadn’t just detonated a conversational grenade in the middle of French toast.
"Cassidy," Vivienne said, her voice tight. "Perhaps we should discuss this privately—"
"Nah. I’m good." Cassidy leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed and her purple eyes locked on mine with sniper focus. "Isaiah. You’ve had twelve hours to think. What’s your answer?"
"Cassidy," Harlow whispered. "We said we’d give him TIME—"
"Time for what? Time to overthink until he talks himself out of what he actually wants?" Cassidy’s jaw set. "I’m done waiting. I’m done playing games. I’m done pretending this is anything other than what it is."
She stood, her chair scraping loud against the marble.
"You like us. All four of us. And we like you. And yeah, it’s complicated and yeah, Mom’s gonna lose her mind and yeah, maybe it’s the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas." She walked around the table, stopping directly in front of where I sat. "But I spent seventeen years being told I’m broken and stupid and not good enough. And then you showed up and looked at me like I was worth fixing. Like I was worth the time."
Her voice cracked on the last word.
"So I’m asking. Right now. In front of everyone because I’m sick of secrets and games and pretending." She grabbed my shirt, her fingers twisting in the fabric. "Do you want this? Want US? Or were we just convenient distractions while you figured your life out?"
