My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 222 - 222: The Price of Hugs: The Spoiled Solution
A small, wicked smile curved her lips.
“Harold believes he’s shielding family honor.” She tilted her head, savoring the absurdity. “How quaint. How touching.”
The smile sharpened.
“Almost makes me want to send him a thank-you note. With a little bow on top.”
Her face remained hidden.
Dramatic? Absolutely. But when you were this wealthy, theatrical mystery wasn’t vanity—it was brand management. You didn’t owe the room your expression until you decided the lighting was flattering enough.
“He’ll be here,” she said softly, voice suddenly warm where it had been liquid nitrogen with Harold. Because Harold was a useful idiot, and useful idiots got the ice-queen special: frostbite delivery, no cream, no sugar. “Tomorrow. My sweet child.”
A movement behind her.
Then—
“Really?!”
Elena Ashford burst across the room like a twelve-year-old on Christmas morning—if that twelve-year-old had a wardrobe that could bankrupt a small nation, a trust fund larger than most countries’ GDPs.
And the emotional regulation of a particularly spoiled golden retriever who’d just discovered the treat jar was bottomless.
Blonde hair whipping like a victory flag, she threw her arms around her mother from behind in a tackle-hug that would have sent lesser women staggering.
The woman actually laughed—sharp, startled, like someone had unexpectedly tickled her spleen—as Elena’s arms clamped around her waist with the desperate strength of someone who’d waited seven years to do it.
“Elena—”
“He’s coming! He’s actually coming! Tomorrow! You did it, Mama, you actually—”
“I made phone calls, darling. Bullied a pathetic man into compliance. It wasn’t difficult.” Nothing involving Harold Maxton ever was. The man folded faster than a cheap lawn chair in a windstorm.
“He practically begged me to hang up so he could go cry into his mid-shelf whiskey.”
“But you did it.” Elena squeezed tighter, pressing her cheek into her mother’s back like she was five again and Mommy had just promised the moon on a silver platter—and meant it. “Thank you thank you thank you—”
The woman’s hands rose slowly, almost hesitantly, and wrapped around her daughter’s forearms.
Something soft and unfamiliar moved through her chest.
Oh.
Oh, this is… this is nice.
How long had it been?
Seven years.
Seven goddamn years since Elena had hugged her like this. Seven years since her daughter had offered anything warmer than the perfunctory cheek-peck at holiday dinners—the kind of kiss that whispered, I’m only doing this because the photographer is watching and social murder is bad for the Ashford portfolio.
Seven years of icy silences, slammed doors, eye-rolls so practiced they deserved their own SAG award, and that special brand of teenage contempt Elena had turned into a lifestyle choice because why fix perfection?
And now?
Now her daughter was clinging like a limpet, giggling—giggling—all because some boy was coming over.
A boy.
My daughter is acting human again because of a boy.
I should be offended. I’m not. I’m just pathetically grateful.
Gods, parenting is the world’s most expensive humiliation fetish.
“Is he that handsome?” she asked, amusement leaking through despite her best efforts. “This Phei? To have you acting like a functional person for the first time since middle school?”
Elena giggled again—actually giggled, a sound the woman hadn’t heard since her daughter decided giggling was “basic” and traded it in for a rotating selection of disdainful snorts—and nodded vigorously against her mother’s back.
“You have no idea, Mama. You have no idea.”
She released her mother and literally skipped—skipped, like a Disney princess who’d just discovered caffeine—toward the door, practically vibrating with glee.
“I have to get ready! I have to plan everything! Tomorrow, Mama! Tomorrow!”
The door swung shut behind her with a cheerful little click, leaving the study suddenly quiet again.
The woman sighed.
Still didn’t turn around.
A boy.
All it took was a boy.
Seven years of therapists (expensive), family dinners (awkward), carefully scripted conversations that ended in slammed doors (predictable), and apparently the miracle cure was just… cheekbones sharp enough to open mail and a face that made teenage girls forget how to use sarcasm.
Wonderful. My daughter’s affection can be purchased with good bone structure and a tragic backstory. That’s not concerning at all. That’s just capitalism with better lighting.
She’d never actually met this so-called Maxton charity case. Never bothered with Paradise’s endless parade of galas, garden parties, and networking events where people with too much money pretended interesting conversation was a renewable resource.
Her empire didn’t run on small talk; it ran on reports, contracts, and the occasional polite threat delivered over encrypted lines.
After office, she stayed here, in the estate, in this study, watching the world through screens and summaries instead of faces. Healthier that way.
People in person were almost always disappointing.
But she’d heard the whispers.
Everyone had.
Three weeks ago he’d been nobody: the Maxtons’ little charity experiment gone wrong. Background noise. A walking PSA about why you shouldn’t adopt strays—they grow up, get ungrateful, and smash your ice sculptures at black-tie events. Don’t rescue, ladies. Look what happened to the Maxtons. Their pet project ruined the centerpiece. How gauche.
Then the talk shifted.
The tone changed from amused contempt to something hungrier.
Speculative.
Interested.
The kind of interest that made old-money mothers suddenly remember they had eligible daughters and start asking very pointed questions about the boy’s “prospects.”
She lifted her glass again, took a slow sip.
Tomorrow he’d walk through her front doors carrying a letter, a cheque, and—whether he knew it or not—every single one of Elena’s dormant emotions on a silver platter.
A boy.
Her daughter’s happiness, apparently, came gift-wrapped in someone else’s tragedy.
How poetic.
How utterly fucked up.
She smiled into the reflection of the gardens.
She did not know what the deal was with this young boy.
From the charity case dragged into the Maxton household after his parents died in a very suspicious accident—suspicious enough that even Paradise’s finest gossips had lowered their voices when they said “car crash”—ten long years had passed.
Ten years of him being furniture with feelings. Ten years of polite tolerance, background noise, the occasional “poor thing” murmured over champagne flutes.
Until he ruined her daughter’s ice sculpture on her birthday.
One shattered centerpiece later, and suddenly the narrative flipped like a bad poker hand.
He wasn’t the charity case anymore.
He was the most handsome man in Paradise.
More beautiful than Marcus, they said—and Marcus had been the undisputed gold standard for a decade, the face that had launched a thousand wet dreams.
Rumors swirled faster than the champagne at the next gala: transformations, mysteries, women staring at him like he was a god who’d deigned to walk among mortals.
Something dangerous. Something primal. Something that made ovaries long retired from active service suddenly sit up, dust themselves off, and whisper, Hello, stranger.
And then Elena had come to her.
Bring him to the estate, Mama. No matter what. I need to meet him.
The desperation in her daughter’s voice had been… unusual.
Elena didn’t need things. Elena acquired things. Experiences, people, yachts, small islands—whatever caught her magpie eye that week. She didn’t beg.
She demanded with the casual cruelty of someone who’d never heard the word “no” without it being immediately followed by an apology.
But for this Phei?
She’d begged.
Is she head over heels? Genuinely smitten with the mysterious boy who’d hijacked Paradise’s collective libido?
Or is this just another Elena game—another shiny toy to acquire, break in, and discard once the novelty dulled? Another conquest for her little coven to share, humiliate, and leave weeping in group chat screenshots?
The woman didn’t know.
Didn’t particularly care, if she was brutally honest with herself.
Elena was showing her affection for the first time in seven years. Actual hugs. Actual giggles. Actual human emotion that didn’t come with a side of sarcasm sharp enough to draw blood.
If the price of those hugs was delivering one pretty, possibly sociopathic boy to the estate like DoorDash with better cheekbones, she’d pay it gladly.
She’d do worse things for less.
Whatever happened to Phei Maxton after he crossed the threshold…
Well.
That was his problem.
She was a mother, not a saint.
Saints didn’t survive old money.
****
Elena Ashford lay sprawled across her bed like a blonde starfish who’d been gifted the entire ocean and decided to claim the king-size mattress instead.
Designer loungewear—silk so soft it probably violated several labor laws—clung to her like expensive regret. Phone held above her face, screen glowing with grainy glory.
The video was security footage. From a gym. Late at night. Obtained through channels that would make privacy advocates weep and private investigators retire rich.
This was Sovereign Tower after all, no one got footage from there.
The subjects were unmistakable.
A woman on her knees.
And Phei.
God, even in shitty resolution he was obscene. Shoulders carved like they’d been quarried from marble and then apologized to for the inconvenience.
Jawline that could cut diamonds or open letters—either seemed plausible. The way he stood: absolute ownership of every inch of space in his line of sight, polite enough not to announce it out loud, but everyone knew anyway.
The woman on her knees was his trainer, apparently. Some fitness-model warrior with a body that screamed discipline and a face that screamed please notice me.
Elena watched her worship his cock like it was the last sacrament on earth—which, judging by the sheer girth and length on display even in potato-quality footage, might not have been far off the mark.
“So… he’s getting his trainer too,” Elena murmured, eyes glittering somewhere between raw hunger and cold calculation. “Naughty, naughty boy.”
