Chapter 455: Hypothermic Florist

Chapter 452: Hypothermic Florist

"Now, please lower your voices. The beat drop on that pizza song distracted me, and I owe a golden retriever five minutes of telepathic affection. Do not interrupt my philanthropy."

The heavy double doors at the far end of the hallway did not slide open with their usual, polite hiss. They were violently, explosively thrown apart. The resounding crash echoed through the entire room, entirely shattering the meticulously curated acoustic peace.

Elias Thorne stood in the doorway. The head of Vanguard Security looked completely hollowed out, his shoulders slumped in a posture of profound, existential defeat.

"I apologize, sir," Thorne whispered brokenly, staring at a spot on the wall rather than making eye contact. "I lost my perimeter focus. The artificial intelligence... it made me question my relationship with the courtyard topiary. I was emotionally compromised."

Before anyone could process Thorne’s botanical depression, a hurricane of pure, unadulterated human chaos blew past him.

Salma Hayek stormed into the room. She was breathing heavily, her hands waving wildly in the air, radiating an aura of frantic, high-decibel panic. She didn’t walk; she paced aggressively back and forth, her heels clicking sharply against the floor in a rapid, chaotic rhythm.

"Alexander!" Salma yelled, her voice echoing off the walls. "I am in a crisis of biblical proportions! You have to fix this right now! Get up!"

Alex did not flinch. He did not move his head. He simply stared blankly at the ceiling, his expression entirely devoid of urgency.

"Salma," Alex murmured, his voice a flat, unyielding drone. "Your current decibel level is threatening the structural integrity of my eardrums. Furthermore, your aggressive pacing is generating a disruptive, localized breeze. Please cease your kinetic flailing. You are creating unauthorized weather."

"I don’t care about your weather!" Salma practically shrieked, marching right up to the edge of the cushions. "Do you know what the studio just told me? My new director—this absolute madman who claims he is a ’visionary’—just handed me the revised shooting schedule for my romantic comedy!"

Jennifer leaned forward, her blue eyes sparkling with absolute, malicious delight. "A visionary director in a rom-com? Oh, this is going to be spectacular. Please tell me he wants you to do your own stunts."

"Worse!" Salma groaned dramatically, throwing her hands up to the ceiling. "The climax of the movie is supposed to be a simple kissing scene. But this maniac wants ’authentic environmental stakes.’ He is demanding that we fly to Iceland, take a helicopter to the top of an active glacier, and shoot the kiss in the middle of a literal blizzard!"

Gillian burst into a husky, breathless laugh. "A blizzard? For a romantic comedy? Who are you playing, a geologist?"

"I am playing a florist!" Salma yelled, completely losing her mind. "A florist who works in Miami! There is absolutely no logical reason for me to be freezing to death on a block of ice!"

Alex let out a long, heavy exhale.

"A glacier is a catastrophic failure of thermal management, Salma," Alex reasoned seamlessly, his tone perfectly reasonable. "It is essentially a mountain that forgot how to regulate its own temperature. Furthermore, romantic chemistry requires a baseline environment of at least seventy-two degrees. Anything less is not romance; it is just shared hypothermia."

"Exactly!" Salma cheered, pointing at him. "So get up! Call the studio head! Threaten to buy the production company! Make them build a fake glacier in Burbank so I don’t have to freeze my toes off!"

Alex didn’t blink. "Standing up to issue a threat fundamentally undermines the authority of the threat itself. If I stand up, I am expending kinetic energy. That signals to the studio that I care about their blizzard. I do not care. I refuse to authorize the caloric expenditure required to be angry."

"You are impossible!" Salma growled. She lunged forward, grabbing Alex by the forearm, and planted her feet firmly on the floor. She pulled with all her might, desperately trying to drag him into a seated position.

Alex instantly went completely, utterly limp. He turned himself into a dead weight of absolute inertia.

"I am utilizing gravitational defiance, Salma," Alex whispered softly, entirely unbothered as she strained and grunted against his arm. "I am a boulder. You cannot move a boulder through sheer panic."

Angelina propped her chin on her hand, watching the struggle with a wicked smirk. "You’re lifting with your back, Salma. You have to bend your knees and use your core. He’s weaponizing his own laziness against you."

"She’s right," Courteney chimed in, highly entertained. "He hasn’t engaged a single muscle in three hours. He is practically glued to the floor. You might as well try to lift a parked car."

Salma let go of his arm, panting heavily. She glared down at him, her chest heaving. "If I don’t get on that plane to Iceland tomorrow, they will sue me for breach of contract! They will replace me!"

"A lawsuit requires them to physically locate you," Alex countered smoothly. "And replacing you requires casting another actress willing to freeze on a mountain. If you simply sit down right now and refuse to acknowledge the concept of Iceland, the director will eventually experience an administrative breakdown. He will realize that practical effects are an exhausting, logistical nightmare, and he will surrender to a green screen."

"I can’t just ignore them!" Salma argued, though her voice wavered slightly as the absolute certainty of his logic began to chip away at her panic. "They are a multi-million-dollar production company!"

"A production company is just a group of people who are overly enthusiastic about scheduling," Alex lectured, his eyes locking onto hers with apex-predator clarity. "Inertia is the ultimate legal defense. If you do not move, they have nothing to film. By doing absolutely nothing, you are actively saving the studio from its own stupid decisions. You are a hero, Salma."

Mariah giggled, tossing a grape into the air and catching it. "He’s going to logic you into taking a nap, Salma. Just give up. We all did."

"Sit down," Alex commanded softly, leaving absolutely no room for debate. "Your heart rate is entirely too high for this room. If you take one more panicked step, I will personally instruct Vanguard to lock the front gates, and you will be legally trapped here until the director gives up."

Salma stared at him, her fierce, passionate energy crashing headfirst into the impenetrable wall of his apathy. She looked at the smirking faces of the women around her, all completely relaxed and unbothered by the supposed crisis.

She let out a long, dramatic groan, dramatically collapsing onto the floor right next to Alex.

"Fine," Salma muttered, crossing her arms defensively. "I am sitting. I am not going to Iceland. But if they sue me, you are paying my legal fees."

"I will gladly pay them, provided the lawyers do not ask me to read the paperwork," Alex agreed, a faint, victorious smile touching his lips.

"You did it," Monica praised smoothly. "You neutralized the hurricane."

"I am a master of atmospheric control," Alex noted.

He didn’t close his eyes. He couldn’t. Salma was still radiating a faint, residual nervous energy beside him, and he knew that if he dropped his focus for even a second, she would start pacing again. He was officially forced to remain awake, actively supervising her forced relaxation.

"Now," Alex murmured, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the group, fully alert and deeply annoyed by the requirement to stay conscious. "Since I am now being held hostage by my own supervisory duties, someone needs to explain to Salma why screaming in a living room is an aesthetic tragedy. Jen, take the floor."

Jennifer laughed brightly, leaning in to begin the lecture, while Alex remained completely stationary, successfully turning a Hollywood crisis into an excuse to enforce a mandatory group rest session.