"Emily."

"Yes?"

"Breathe."

She breathed.

Hell’s Paradise Island was enormous.

He had known it academically — every Legacy child grew up with the geography drilled into them the way American children memorized the shape of Florida — but knowing a thing on a map was nothing compared to watching it slide past the tinted window like a living, breathing beast awakening in the dark.

Buildings towered higher than he had expected, arrogant spires of glass and steel that stabbed the night sky with imperial confidence. Avenues stretched broader than he had imagined, wide enough for entire processions of empire.

The skyline carried itself with the unapologetic weight of something that had never once needed to ask permission to exist.

And only a quarter of the island was city.

The rest was forest.

It was as they say... Endless, deep, a mythic forest pressing right up against the city’s far edge — trees so ancient they swallowed satellite signals whole, brewed their own weather systems, and, according to half the cautionary tales whispered in Ashford Elite hallways, birthed their own things that walked when no one was looking.

Seventy-five percent of the island remained shrouded in primordial green that had been growing long before the Legacy families had claimed a continent, let alone a name for themselves.

This place isn’t just big, Phei thought, watching another row of glass towers glide past like silent sentinels. It’s old. Older than any money on Paradise. Older than bloodlines. And it knows it.

The city itself was already ridiculous.

This is bigger than... what’s-its-name, he thought vaguely as yet another glittering district slid by. That place. American. Coastline. Movies.

"Los Angeles, Master," Eira murmured drily beside him. "The city you’re failing to remember is called Los Angeles."

Right. LA.

Yes, the Hell’s Paradise Island city was bigger than LA.

Eira continued, helpful as ever. "Sixty percent of everything visible from this window is owned — openly or through quiet, meticulous layers — by the Legacy families of Main Paradise. The businesses you’re passing are merely extensions of holdings you’ve already encountered. Same banks. Same hotels. Same distribution webs. Different awnings."

"And the other forty?"

"Twenty percent is independent. Local money. Families who have been here long enough that even the Legacies let them keep their corners. The remaining twenty..."

Yes?

"...belongs, through six meticulous layers of corporate misdirection, to your grandmother." Eira answered.

Phei’s mouth twitched.

Of course it does, he thought, dark amusement curling through him like smoke from a slow-burning fuse. Of course, one-fifth of an entire island is secretly owned by the woman whose name no one dares speak aloud at Legacy dinners. The Maxtons are probably paying her rent every quarter without realizing their quarterly statements are going straight into Chaos’s offshore accounts. Beautiful. Terrifying. Peak Ryujin Tiamat. I’d be impressed if I weren’t mildly terrified.

Whatever.

He turned back to Emily. She had moved on to the final Petsi merchandising clause. He nodded sagely as though he had been listening the entire time.

Melissa, seated to his left, gave him the smallest sideways glance — she could read his feigned attention like an open book — and mercifully said nothing.

The drive lasted thirty minutes that felt like fifteen. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The road from the airport to the hotel district was obscenely wide — eight flawless lanes of black asphalt lit by golden street lamps spaced with geometric perfection — and at this hour, with an entire convoy of nineteen cars moving under whatever permissions Emily had quietly arranged, traffic simply ceased to exist.

The Phantom glided. The convoy glided. The city slid past in long, luxurious strokes of light and shadow.

They had chosen the hotel deliberately.

Eira had informed him somewhere over in the sky that the property Emily had originally bookmarked was — surprise, surprise — owned through three subsidiaries by one of Chaos’s holding firms. Not the only option, but the most discreet.

Phei had read the paperwork and had nodded in approval anyway.

Not because it was free just bacasue it was Chaos’s— the bills would arrive in Emily’s inbox at full rate by morning — but because peace of mind was the rarest currency of all, and a building owned by his grandmother was a building no Maxton employee could quietly bug.

Security through blood.

He would take it.

The Phantom swept into a long, curving arrival drive and came to a silent stop before the building.

Phei looked up.

Then he looked up some more.

Then he tilted his head all the way back and kept looking, because the structure rising before him did not merely stand — it imposed. A long, gently curved tower of dark glass and gold filigree, hundreds of stories tall, its façade sweeping outward in a wide arc that embraced the lakefront behind it like a possessive lover.

Each floor glowed softly along its lower edge with recessed amber lighting, giving the entire edifice the warm, deep gleam of old wealth resting confidently in the dark.

The base spread outward in layered plazas, restaurants, and lobbies that wrapped the artificial lake in a curve so vast it took the eye a full second to follow. Lights from the lower terraces danced across water that had not existed until architects decided it should.

The whole thing glittered — soft, confident, endless.

Above the main entrance, in a font someone had clearly approved at the highest possible level of divine arrogance, the name of the hotel shimmered in liquid gold:

INFINITY CHAOS

Phei stared at the words for a long moment, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face.

He rolled his eyes at the star-pricked night sky, a low, rueful chuckle escaping before he could stop it.

Of course she branded the entire building with her personal chaos manifesto, he thought. Why be a quiet trillionaire when you can be a loud one with naming rights and a font that probably cost more than most small nations? Grandmother, you magnificent show-off.

The driver glided forward and opened the Phantom’s door with the silent reverence reserved for royalty or loaded firearms.

Phei stepped out first, Melissa at his right like a queen who had simply decided the throne was wherever she stood, and Emily a precise half-step behind, tablet clutched to her chest like a sacred shield.