"—which the PheiCrush Simps Finance Team has recomnded be distributed as follows—"
The girl in the glasses pulled up a spreadsheet that looked like it had been designed by a sadistic accountant on bath salts. Colours. Charts. Projections. The kind of docunt Emily Hartwell birthed after three all-nighters and a blood oath.
"Mr. Ryujin Tiamat," the committee head continued in the sa bored, end-of-days voice, "the Academy’s share has been calculated at twenty percent of the gross—approximately two hundred and six million. The remaining eight hundred and twenty-four million is allocated to you and your designated group, teammates, pending your approval of the distribution structure."
Phei closed his mouth.
Opened it.
Closed it again.
"No," he said.
The entire room froze like soone had hit pause on reality.
"I’m not taking all of that."
Emily’s eye twitched. Just once. The tiny, dangerous twitch of a woman who had spent weeks engineering a financial fortress only to watch the primary beneficiary try to set it on fire in real ti.
"One hundred million," Phei said, voice steady even though his brain was still buffering. "I’ll take one hundred million. Transfer the rest to the PheiCrush Simps account."
The room shifted hard enough to make the air pressure change.
The Simps already had their own slice—earned, calculated and would deposited, so would Landon’s and Brian’s.
That money was theirs. This was different.
This was Phei taking the hundreds of millions earmarked specifically for him and pouring the excess straight into the group’s war chest like it was spare change. Not gifts. Not splits.
Just raw, stupid power funneled into the entity itself, turning a fan club into a financially nuclear organisation that could buy small countries and still have enough left for matching yachts.
Emily’s face ran through seven emotions in two seconds: shock, furious calculation, reluctant admiration, more calculation, grudging acceptance, and sothing that looked dangerously like pride.
lissa said nothing. She simply watched her boy with an expression too layered and too soft to na.
The transfer was made.
One hundred million dollars slid into lissa’s account—the sa account tied to the black card she’d handed him on their very first day.
The card he still carried in his wallet like it was nothing more than plastic and good intentions.
The card he’d been using for als, clothes, random shit, never once bothering to check the balance because checking felt like tempting the universe to laugh in his face.
On paper, the account was lissa’s.
In reality, the account was his. He didn’t care whose na sat on the paperwork. lissa was his woman.
He trusted her the way he trusted blood in his veins—without thought, without question, without needing a reason.
Handshakes were exchanged. Laptops snapped shut. Emily’s clipboard already looked pregnant with the thirty-page report she would undoubtedly finish by midnight.
Phei sat there staring at nothing.
One hundred million dollars.
He was seventeen.
His legs were shaking—actually, physically trembling—the way legs shook after surviving a car crash or being told your dick had been asured at twelve inches and the doctor wasn’t joking.
lissa walked beside him down the corridor, one hand on his arm, guiding him toward the exit with the patient care of a woman escorting a shell-shocked soldier through the aftermath of battle.
"Are you alright?" she asked, voice warm, teasing, the faintest smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
"My legs don’t work."
"They’re working fine. You’re just in shock."
"I’m in shock."
"You are."
"One hundred million dollars, lissa."
"Yes."
"One. Hundred. Million."
"I was there. I heard."
She steered him through the doors. The black car waited at the curb—Emily already sliding into the driver’s seat, Maya visible through the tinted rear window, silver hair catching the afternoon light like liquid starlight.
lissa guided him toward the open door. He made it three steps before his knees filed for divorce from the rest of his body.
"Is this too much for you?" lissa asked, still teasing, still warm, still holding his arm like he was a toddler learning to walk for the first ti. "Does the great Phei Ryujin Tiamat—the boy who walked on air, broke Legacy princes, and made a billion-dollar arena scream his na—does he really not know how to handle a little money?"
"A little—"
"Do you even know how much is on the card you’re carrying right now?"
He looked at her. Sothing in her tone had changed. Not teasing anymore. Sothing that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention.
"You told ," he said slowly, "when you gave it to . You said—"
"I said it was enough. For whatever you needed."
"You said thousands. Hundreds of thousands from your wine shop, sothing like that. I wasn’t really listening, I was—"
"That card," lissa said, voice perfectly calm, perfectly steady, eyes bright with sothing ancient and amused, "has one hundred and fifty billion dollars on it."
Phei’s legs surrendered completely.
One second he was vertical. The next he was sitting on his ass on the pavent beside the open car door, legs splayed like a broken doll, palms flat on warm concrete, staring up at lissa with the blank, thousand-yard stare of a man whose operating system had just bluescreened.
One hundred and fifty.
Billion.
"Phei!" Maya’s voice floated from inside the car—alard, amused, already reaching. Small hands grabbed his shirt, hauling him sideways with surprising strength.
He collapsed across the leather seat, head landing straight in her lap, eyes wide and fixed on the roof like it might explain the universe to him.
Maya looked down. Silver hair curtained around her face. Concerned. Trying—and failing—not to laugh.
"One hundred and fifty billion," he whispered to the ceiling. "She gave a seventeen-year-old a card with one hundred and fifty billion dollars on it."
"I know."
"That’s not money, Maya. That’s a number that shouldn’t exist outside of governnt black budgets and wet dreams."
"I know."
"Why is she so reckless?" He was talking to the roof now.
To whatever cruel god was running this simulation and clearly smoking sothing stronger than reality could handle.
"How can she just hand billions to a teenager like it’s lunch money? She said thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—I wasn’t paying attention because who the fuck pays attention when their aunt hands them a credit card after sex? You just say thank you and assu it’s enough for food and maybe new shoes and—"
Maya pressed one delicate finger to his lips.
Gentle. Firm. Exactly the right pressure to shut down a spiral before it achieved orbit.
"Relax," she murmured, smiling that quiet, knowing little smile that belonged to the version of Maya who saw everything and understood far more than she ever let on. "You’re spiralling. It’s just money."
Phei sat up so fast Maya had to lean back to avoid a forehead collision.
"Emily," he twisted toward the driver’s seat where Emily was adjusting the rear-view mirror with the careful nonchalance of soone trying desperately not to laugh out loud.
"Emily, did you hear her? Just money. She just called one hundred and fifty billion dollars just money. Emily, they just—"
Maya’s finger found his lips again.
She pressed him back down.
Gently. Inexorably.
Until his head was once more cradled in her lap and her fingers were sliding through his hair—slow, soothing strokes that started at his temples and worked back, nails scratching lightly against his scalp in that perfect way that turned his brain into warm pudding.
"You’re losing your grace," she whispered, still smiling. "So shush, love."
He shushed.
Not because the panic had vanished. Because Maya’s fingers in his hair were doing unholy things to his nervous system, making panic feel like a country he’d once visited on a bad vacation and never needed to return to.
In the driver’s seat, Emily started the engine. The million-dollar purr filled the cabin.
Emily herself wasn’t shocked—she’d grown up watching her father shuffle hundreds of billions of the Montgory the way other people shuffled playing cards. lissa’s number, in that context, wasn’t surprising.
It was Tuesday.
Maya and lissa exchanged a look in the rear-view mirror.
The kind of look won share when the man they both love is having a full financial existential crisis in the back seat and the only appropriate response is sowhere between sympathy and rciless amusent.
They chose amusent.
They snickered. Quietly. Elegantly. The snicker of won who adored him and would absolutely never, ever let him live this down.
The car pulled smoothly away from the curb.
lissa sighed—long, quiet, watching her beautiful, spiralling boy sprawled across another woman’s lap because the concept of money had literally knocked him on his ass.
This little boy of hers.
He knew—or he should know—how much the Ryujin Tiamat bloodline actually commanded.
The real family.
The legacy that had predated every Legacy in Paradise and would outlive them all.
The money she had placed on that card was a rounding error. A polite suggestion. A number so small compared to what actually bore his na that it bordered on insulting.
And he was surprised by this much?
Foolish, precious, leg-shaking boy. She looked out the window as Paradise blurred past in gold and glass.
She’d tell him eventually.
When he was ready.
When his legs could handle the truth without folding like cheap lawn furniture.
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