Chapter 461: Celebration Hazard

Chapter 458: Celebration Hazard

"I am officially awake, and I hold every single one of you responsible for this tragedy."

The room absorbed his bleak, monotonous declaration with profound, unapologetic amusement. Alex lay completely flat, his gaze locked onto the ceiling, acutely aware of the unwanted adrenaline still circulating through his bloodstream.

Salma, however, did not share his mourning. The realization that she had just conquered a major Hollywood studio without hiring a single lawyer was bubbling up inside her chest. The frantic panic had evolved into a wildly dangerous, high-octane euphoria.

She shot up from the floor, clapping her hands together with a sharp, echoing smack that made Alex flinch internally.

"Well, if you are awake," Salma beamed, her voice ringing with vibrant, undeniable energy, "we cannot just waste the adrenaline! We just won a war! In my culture, when you survive a crisis, you do not lie around like a piece of forgotten luggage. You celebrate! We need music! We need to dance! We need tequila!"

"Salma," Alex groaned, his voice heavy with suffering. "Please sit back down. You are vibrating at a frequency that is deeply offensive to my nervous system."

"No!" Salma laughed, stepping closer and grabbing his ankle, giving it a playful, aggressive shake. "You saved my career! I want to throw a fiesta! Right here! Right now! Jennifer, where is the stereo? We need a salsa beat. Something with brass instruments to get his blood flowing!"

"Brass instruments are acoustic weapons," Alex countered instantly, refusing to move his leg. "They demand a violent, aggressive expulsion of air from the lungs of the musician. I will not be complicit in someone else’s respiratory exhaustion just so you can hop around the room."

Gillian leaned forward, resting her chin in her hands, her eyes sparkling with malicious joy. "She has a point, Alex. You are already conscious. Your eyes are open. You might as well do something productive with this rare biological state."

"Consciousness is a biological burden, Gillian, not an invitation to perform cardio," Alex lectured flatly. "And celebrating is a redundant exertion of energy. Why would I punish my body with rapid movements simply because something good happened? Joy should not require sweat."

"It’s just a little dance!" Salma argued, stepping back and doing a quick, fluid salsa step to demonstrate. "Look! It is entirely natural! Your hips want to move!"

"My hips want to fuse with the cushions," Alex corrected seamlessly. "Dancing is essentially a localized cardiovascular seizure disguised as socialization. It is a desperate, unchoreographed flailing of the limbs. If I stand up and swing my arms, I am actively mocking gravity. Gravity is a relentless force, Salma. I respect it too much to fight it."

Angelina collapsed against Mariah, wheezing with laughter. "He just called dancing a cardiovascular seizure! Salma, you can’t win. He views rhythm as a medical emergency."

"I refuse to accept this!" Salma declared, planting her hands on her hips. She looked around at the incredibly beautiful, incredibly lazy women surrounding her. "Are you all just going to let him dictate this? Look at yourselves! You are the most powerful women in the industry, and you are acting like senior citizens at a retirement home!"

"We prefer the term ’leisure experts,’" Monica purred smoothly, entirely unoffended. She didn’t even bother lifting her head. "And honestly, Salma, once you experience the absolute superiority of a victory nap, you will never want to go to a party again."

"But he is awake!" Salma pointed out frantically, gesturing toward Alex’s open eyes. "He is looking right at us! He is breathing! He is alive!"

"Breathing is an involuntary autonomic function," Alex stated calmly. "I do not actively participate in it. If I had to consciously remember to command my lungs to expand and contract, I would have opted out of the process years ago."

Courteney practically choked on her own saliva, coughing wildly as Jennifer patted her back. "You would stop breathing out of sheer laziness?!"

"I am a firm believer in outsourcing labor," Alex reasoned without a hint of irony. "Fortunately, the brain stem handles it for me."

Salma stared at him, her mouth slightly open. The sheer, impenetrable density of his apathy was staggering. She walked back over and crouched down beside him, peering intensely into his face.

"Okay. Fine. No dancing. No salsa," Salma negotiated, lowering her voice but maintaining an intense, fiery pitch. "But we have to acknowledge the victory. Give me a high-five."

She raised her hand, holding it suspended in the air, waiting for him to meet her halfway.

Alex looked at her hand. He did not move his arm.

"Absolutely not," Alex murmured.

"It is a high-five!" Salma yelled, her frustration boiling over again. "It takes literally two seconds!"

"A high-five is a biomechanical and hygienic disaster," Alex lectured smoothly, dissecting the gesture with surgical precision. "First, it requires me to elevate my arm against the pull of the earth. Second, it demands active hand-eye coordination to ensure our palms meet at the correct trajectory. If we miss, we look foolish, which induces social anxiety."

"We won’t miss!" Salma promised, keeping her hand raised.

"Third, and most importantly," Alex continued, entirely ignoring her promise, "it is the aggressive, high-velocity slapping of two epidermis layers together. It transfers oils, dead skin cells, and kinetic shock. It is a violent, unsanitary collision. I will not assault my own palm to validate your excitement."

"You are infuriating!" Salma groaned, dropping her hand and lightly smacking his shoulder instead.

Alex let out a slow, dramatic sigh. "You have now resorted to physical battery. My safety is severely compromised."

"Oh, stop whining," Jennifer giggled, shifting closer and resting her head near his chest. "You love the attention. You’re wide awake, you’re arguing, and you haven’t tried to close your eyes in ten minutes. Salma actually broke your stasis."

"She did not break my stasis. She is currently holding it hostage," Alex grumbled, his eyes darting to Jennifer before locking back onto the ceiling. "I am simply engaged in a defensive verbal maneuver. If I ignore her, she will start pacing again. Pacing generates drafts."

"I am not going to pace," Salma sighed, finally sitting fully on the floor and crossing her legs. The manic energy was slowly beginning to ebb, replaced by a lingering, exasperated fondness. "But I still think you are crazy. How can you have all this power, all this money, and just... lie there?"

"Because power is not defined by how much you move, Salma," Alex answered, his tone shifting into something dangerously sharp and quietly authoritative. "Power is defined by how much you can force the rest of the world to stop moving for you. The studio head who drove up to my gate was sweating. The director was chained to a fence. They expended thousands of calories today. I expended zero. Who is currently in control?"

Salma opened her mouth to argue, then slowly closed it. She looked at the door, then back to the billionaire perfectly molded into the cushions.

"That makes an incredibly frustrating amount of sense," she whispered.

"Logic usually does," Alex murmured. "Now. We have successfully avoided an international flight, terminated an unwanted cinematic climax, and eradicated your desire to high-five me. Can we finally agree to a cessation of all human activity?"

"Not a chance, darling," Gillian purred, her husky voice dripping with mischief. She lazily draped her arm across his stomach. "Because your adrenaline is up, your brain is working, and we are not letting you slip away that easily. You owe us entertainment."

"I am a Chief Executive, Gillian, not a court jester," Alex warned.

"You’re a captive audience," Angelina corrected, grinning fiercely. She propped herself up on her elbows. "Salma, since he refuses to celebrate your victory, we are going to interrogate him. He has to stay awake, which means he has to answer our questions."

Alex groaned, realizing the tactical error he had made. By staying awake to prevent Salma from pacing, he had inadvertently signaled to the entire Harem Council that his cognitive defenses were currently online.

"I invoke my right to remain silent," Alex stated.

"Denied," Mariah laughed cheerfully. "Okay, I’ll start. Alex, if the house caught on fire right now, and you were the only one awake, what is your mathematically optimized survival plan?"

"A fire is a severe failure of architectural thermal regulation," Alex replied instantly, not missing a beat. "Evacuation requires running. Running requires cardio. I would simply refuse to acknowledge the flames. Vanguard is paid exorbitantly to monitor the smoke detectors. Elias Thorne would physically carry me out of the building. I would not assist him in the lifting process."

"You would make Elias carry you while you played dead?!" Courteney shrieked, burying her face in her hands.

"I am a heavy, uncooperative asset," Alex confirmed. "It would be an excellent test of his core strength."

Salma stared at him, a wide, disbelieving smile breaking across her face. The sheer absurdity of the room was finally fully setting in. She had walked in ready to fight a Hollywood war, and she was now sitting on the floor, listening to a billionaire explain why he was too lazy to run from a burning building.

"You know what," Salma chuckled softly, shaking her head. "I think I am actually going to like it here."

"Welcome to the void, Salma," Jennifer smiled warmly. "Just remember, if you want anything done, you have to convince him that doing it takes less effort than arguing about it."

Alex glared at the ceiling, fully alert, actively surrounded by six highly entertained women who had formed a unified front against his silence. The afternoon stretched out before him, entirely devoid of sleep, completely hijacked by human interaction and witty banter. He had won the battle against the studio, but he had catastrophically lost the war for his nap.