Kill Clause, or rather Cassandra Selfmore, woke to her phone buzzing with calls from her assistants. She didn’t answer any of them. She only checked who had called, made a few ntal notes, then looked over her calendar before slowly getting out of bed.
With her footsteps softened by the plush carpet, Cassandra crossed the penthouse in a loose silk nightshirt that skimd her waist and hips whenever she moved.
The coffee maker clicked on almost by instinct, as if even the apartnt had learned her schedule. Sleek glass, clean lines, and expensive restraint shaped the space, but family photos in plain wooden fras softened the sharpness of it.
Her younger brother, a woodworker, had made every fra by hand. The pictures showed her huge family: six younger siblings and a single father, since Cassandra’s mother had died in an accident when they were still young. The youngest Selfmore didn’t even rember her face.
Cassandra kept one day of every month blocked out in her calendar under a label no assistant was allowed to touch: Family.
etings could move, investors could wait, and guild matters could survive without her for a few hours. Her siblings never asked her for more than that, which only made the quiet weight of providing for all of them settle a little deeper in her chest.
She stood with her coffee in hand, one hip resting lightly against the counter while the city remained quiet beyond the glass. Her siblings smiled back at her from birthdays, school events, and small family dinners she had barely managed to attend before rushing off again. One day every month.
That was what she had carved out for them, protected as fiercely as any business deal. It was enough to keep the family together, enough to keep everyone moving forward, and sohow still not enough to make this penthouse feel any less empty in the mornings.
Monts like this were rare for Cassandra, quiet enough for warmth and vulnerability to slip through.
It might have seed like only her penthouse ever got to see her this way, but her new friends in the ga had already caught glimpses of it too.
While Mom was still alive, I had a lot of fun with archery... those three managed to bring that out of again. I only got into the ga because of you and your silly schedule, Martin. I should thank him eventually.
Cassandra rarely stayed ho for long. She took her private elevator downstairs and left the suite behind. At the bottom, her private driver was already waiting.
By the ti she stepped outside, the day already felt full of decisions waiting to be made.
A few hours later, Cassandra received a ssage from Martin on social dia.
Normally, she would have left it for later. The ga was far from the top of her priorities. Still, sothing in her made her open Martin’s report and read through his ideas right away.
A warm smile slowly spread across her face as she read, startling her assistants.
—
Chaosgraphy, or rather Alexandra, spent her morning watching her calories, keeping her body in shape, and maintaining her beauty at its peak.
She was in the middle of yoga now, folded into a stretch so deep and elegant that she looked almost boneless, one leg extended and the other bent beneath her in a line that would have looked indecent on anyone less perfectly in control. Her fitted workout clothes clung to every shift of muscle, especially along the full, shapely curve of her thighs, and the private gym around her was at least three tis the size of Martin’s entire apartnt.
The three-story house belonged to her alone, and Alexandra had never denied herself comfort. She had built it on a celebrity-lined street protected twenty-four seven, a place where privacy was expensive and any uninvited trespasser would regret stepping too far.
Then soone unlocked the front door. The sound was faint, but Alexandra still caught it from the other side of the house. She wasn’t worried, though she loosened and readied her muscles just in case a stranger had sohow gotten inside.
A mont later, a woman with the sa orange eyes as hers, but with long red hair ending in elegant drill curls, stepped into the gym. She leaned against the doorfra and crossed her arms with cool ease, watching Alexandra, who had already gone back to stretching after confirming who had entered. Alexandra barely seed to mind being seen.
She held the pose with the easy confidence of soone long accustod to beauty, attention, and eyes on her body. In the mirrored wall, the line of her posture looked too polished, too alluring, as if exercise were only an excuse for elegance.
Her breathing stayed even, but her gaze lingered on that reflection for a second too long. The lifted chin, the amused curve of her lips, the cold spark in her eyes, sotis it was getting harder to tell where the role ended and where she began.
There was sothing dangerously thrilling in not having to soften herself. Chaosgraphy let her be sharper, aner, more shaless, and the worst part was how natural it had started to feel.
"You could have called back, Alexandra. I don’t like being left in the dark," the red-haired woman said.
"Sorry, Kate. I was having far too much fun in the ga," Alexandra replied. "I shut the rest of the world out for a while."
Kate, or rather Katherina, was Alexandra’s older sister, and even standing in the doorway, she carried the sa composed presence that had made her famous on screen. She had built a career out of entering a story quietly and still pulling its emotional center toward herself. Next to Alexandra’s sharper glamour, Katherina’s appeal was mature, controlled, and impossible to dismiss.
"In that Monster Hunter Academy Online? I heard so directors wanted to shoot films inside it and asked for imrsive tools and creator access, but the developers refused. They told them to enter the ga themselves, claim land if they wanted to film, and beco part of the setting. Honestly, it’s absurd."
Alexandra tipped her head back and looked at her older sister. "I rather like that idea. It gives even more reason to play and leave my mark on the world."
"Wasn’t the whole point for you to imrse yourself in that villainess role you’re so obsessed with?" Katherina asked.
"Yes... and I’m enjoying it so much that I want to push that villainous art even further. I want to see how far I can go, and how much I can get away with, before Martin finally stops . Haha!" Alexandra laughed, genuinely amused, then stretched even farther.
Katherina, however, was stunned.
Martin? Who?
"And who, exactly, is Martin?" Katherina asked.
"He’s the tank in our party, and the best rival I could have asked for," Alexandra replied.
"A rival? Hm. Is he from our world?"
"No, not really. He’s just an ordinary man working at a normal company."
That’s what he wants you to think. n always sounded harmless when they wanted to get close. No, Alex. I’ll find out who this Martin really is before he gets the chance to charm you. We are ant to break hearts, not hand ours away.
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