My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 508: Ashford Madam’s Problems

A/N:Guys… this was a bit long arc for Ashford Madam… I wanted to step a bit into her world before we dive into who she really is.

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She settled deeper into his chest, scrolling through whatever had buzzed on her tablet. Her body was warm against his.

Relaxed.

The closest to unguarded he’d ever seen her.

Then her expression changed.

The warmth drained. Her jaw tightened. Her scrolling stopped.

“Oh, for—seriously?”

She read further. Her nostrils flared.

“Why does no one ever do their jobs anymore? Is basic professionalism dead? Did it die and no one told me?”

She threw the tablet.

Not gently. Threw it—across the couch, onto the cushion at the far end, with the particular violence of a woman who had just received news that offended her on a cellular level.

Then she burrowed deeper into his chest like the solution to whatever she’d just read was located somewhere between his collarbones and a stiff drink.

“What’s wrong?” Phei asked.

“Nothing serious.” Muffled against his turtleneck. “We were supposed to shoot an ad for our new men’s cosmetics line. Three different modelling agencies booked. Five male models. Two actors. The whole production planned for weeks.” She breathed. “And now—suddenly, conveniently—all three agencies are pulling out.”

“Is that common?”

“It’s common if your competitors are messing with you.”

She said it flatly. The tone of a woman who’d been in this game long enough to recognise sabotage when it wore a business suit and smiled politely while stabbing you in the back.

Because while she was called the Ashford Madam—while she managed and oversaw forty percent of the entire Ashford business empire and wielded the family name like a weapon forged from old money and older grudges—she also had something that was hers alone.

Her cosmetics company. Built before she married Damien. Carried through the marriage, the pregnancies, the politics, the slow suffocation of being a Legacy wife, and never let go.

It had grown alongside her—quietly, steadily, fed by her own intelligence and her own hands—until nine years later it was estimated in the billions and employed thousands and bore her stamp on every product.

It was part of her. The way the Ashford name was part of her but could be taken.

This couldn’t.

And the competition knew it. Knew she was expanding into the men’s line. Knew the shoot was coming.

And had reached into the agencies and yanked the talent out from under her like the petty, backstabbing bitchesthey were.

“Male cosmetics line?” Phei said.

“Mm. Five models for the shoot and two of them are those Model-turned-actor. All confirmed. All suddenly unavailable.”

He asked a few more questions—the schedule, the scope, the locations. It turned out the shoot was planned for three days on Hell Paradise Island. Easier there—iconic backdrops, private locations, the kind of scenery that made products sell themselves.

But now it was messed up.

Phei thought for a moment.

Got his phone.

Texted for two minutes—thumbs moving fast, the focused intensity of a boy who’d decided something and was already building the scaffolding.

Then he turned to her.

“What if I and my boys were offering to help?”

She blinked.

“If you’re okay with using the most popular teenagers in Paradise right now—and if the price is right.”

He knew she wouldn’t agree to free. He didn’t want to use Landon and Brian for free either—they deserved proper compensation, proper contracts, the dignity of being hired rather than volunteered like charity cases.

He could pay them himself but she wouldn’t accept that arrangement. He wasn’t even sure if she’d—

“Really?”

She sat up. Pulled away from his chest.

Stared at him with an expression caught between surprise and something sharper—the calculation of a businesswoman whose problem had just been solved by the boy she was lying on.

“Your teammates will?”

Her assistant Catherine had asked her just days ago why she hadn’t expressed interest in using Phei and the two basketball boys in at least one of the planned 10 shoots.

Catherine had done the research—pulled numbers on social media reach, brand affinity, engagement metrics. She’d seen the queue of companies already lined up for them and the presence the two boys had now on their following after the game unlike Phei he wasn’t officially on any socials.

Yet now that he’d replaced the Prince of Earth… his name was known everywhere.

Ashford Madam wasn’t naive. She knew how much influence and popularity the three carried.

But the line was long. And she’d needed this shoot done soon. So, she hadn’t pursued it. Hadn’t wanted to add herself to the list and wait like some desperate groupie.

Proud but yes… that’s her and she wasn’t comfortable with asking him directly.

Didn’t want to abuse my power as his woma— as a woman he slept with and use it to call in favors.

And now here he was. Offering the help himself.

Phei smiled. Pulled up Emily’s contact on his phone and showed it to her.

“I don’t have control of my schedule for the next few days when it comes to me and boys doing these shoots or whatever—Emily runs that. But if you call her, she can work something out with you.” He met her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind you being my first.”

Beat.

“Business,” he added. “I mean my first business.”

She narrowed her eyes. Lips twitching.

“After all,” he said, “you’re mine.”

He kissed her.

She didn’t resist. Her mouth opened against his—warm, soft, sweet—and for a moment the office disappeared and the tablet was forgotten and the sabotaged shoot was someone else’s problem.

He pulled away.

She pouted. The full, devastating, absurdly undignified pout of a woman who ran a billion-dollar company and an empire’s worth of business and was currently sulking because a seventeen-year-old had stopped kissing her.

“Who said I was yours?” she asked. Quiet. “Yet.”

He smiled. “You will be. Soon.”

The silence that followed was warm.

The particular silence that happens when two people have said enough and are resting in the space between sentences, breathing each other in.

There was one more thing.

Phei had been aware of it all evening—the shape of it sitting between them like a guest neither had acknowledged. The thing she hadn’t asked. The question she’d chosen not to raise.

She hadn’t asked what happened at the Ashford Estate.

Melissa had called her. He knew that. Had told the Ashford Madam to take responsibility for whatever had occurred under her roof—the coded, furious demand of a woman who’d discovered that the boy under her protection had nearly been killed in a building that bore the Ashford name.

But the Ashford Madam hadn’t asked Phei about it.

Not once. Not tonight.

Not in the weeks since.

She hadn’t pressed him for details. Hadn’t demanded an explanation.

Hadn’t pulled rank or authority or motherly concern and insisted he tell her what had happened in her estate that required Melissa’s intervention.

She’d simply… let it sit.

Phei appreciated that more than he could say.

Because honestly—he didn’t know what to tell her. The truth was a minefield. Consort was watching even right now. The One Above was listening.

Those two—whatever they were, wherever they existed in the hierarchy of powers that operated above and beyond the Legacy families—were capable of things Phei couldn’t predict or defend against.

He didn’t know what they could do to ensure silence of their existence.

He didn’t know what they would do if the Ashford Madam learned things they didn’t want her to know.

He didn’t know the boundaries of their surveillance, their influence, their willingness to intervene.

Telling her the truth might put her in danger.

Telling her nothing was its own protection.

And she seemed to understand that. Without being told. Without explanation. The particular intuition of a woman who had spent decades navigating rooms full of secrets and had learned that sometimes the kindest thing you could do was not ask the question whose answer might destroy you.

“Thank you,” he said.

She looked up. “For what?”

“For not asking.”

He said it himself to let her know even more he wasn’t ready to answer that. That she won’t think he was keeping her in the dark or blindsiding her or whatever.

She held his gaze for a long moment. Something moved behind her eyes—not hurt, not frustration, but the steady, quiet patience of a woman who trusted that the answers would come when they were safe to give.

“When you’re ready,” she said.

He nodded.

“When I’m ready.”

She settled back into his chest. His arms tightened around her. The city glowed blue beyond the glass. The office hummed its deep, mechanical lullaby.

And for a while—just a while—the Ashford Madam and her young dragon held each other in silence, and the silence was enough.