My Taboo Harem!

Before leaving the mansion, Phei had found Maria in the living room.

She was doing what she always did—polishing something that was already clean enough to perform open-heart surgery on, moving through the space with the quiet, practiced efficiency of a woman who had spent decades erasing rich people's sins from marble and mahogany.

Maria.

The single, glaring anomaly in the Maxton household's otherwise impeccable record of treating him like something unpleasant they'd scraped off their designer soles.

She was in her fifties now, silver threading through her dark hair like someone had decided to garnish her with starlight, hands weathered from years of service but still impossibly gentle. Always gentle.

The woman who had slipped him extra food when no one was looking—here, mijo, you're too skinny, eat this before it goes cold

—who had "accidentally" left the piano room unlocked whenever the family was out, who had stood guard at the door while he played, humming along softly like a co-conspirator in the sweetest, most illicit crime imaginable.

She had even paid for online lessons when he hit technical bottlenecks in his Piano Lessons. Thousands of dollars to world-class tutors, just so some charity case could coax beauty from ivory keys he wasn't technically allowed to touch.

Phei had never forgotten it.

Would have carved her name into his bones if bones took engravings.

"Maria."

She looked up, and her face did that thing—softened, warmed, lit from within like he was her long-lost son returning from some heroic war instead of the former resident who had escaped three weeks ago and now returned smelling faintly of expensive cologne, recent conquests, and quiet, satisfied sin.

"Phei." She set down her cloth, eyes shining. "Mijo, look at you. So handsome now. So tall. What are they feeding you out there—miracles and mischief?"

Something like that.

"Ms. Maria! I missed you so much..." They hugged before he let go.

He sat across from her, and they talked.

Really talked.

About nothing and everything—the house, the family, whether Harold was still being a weapons-grade bastard (affirmative, with extra shrapnel), whether Danton had graduated from garden-variety sociopath to full-blown operatic villain (also affirmative, possibly terminal), whether the new maids had yet realised that working for the Maxtons was essentially enlisting in psychological warfare with excellent dental.

And then Maria asked the question that stopped his heart like a sniper's bullet to the aorta.

"Are you eating well, mijo?"

Simple. Warm. The kind of question mothers asked in Hallmark movies right before the protagonist realised they'd been emotionally starved since birth.

"Who is doing your laundry now?" She pressed on, oblivious to the emotional landmine she'd just stepped on. "I know how you are—you hate dirty clothes. Won't wear anything twice, no matter how little you used to own. Even when you only had three shirts and two of them had holes the size of golf balls, you'd rather freeze than put on something that smelled lived-in."

She shook her head with fond exasperation. "Stubborn, stubborn boy."

Phei opened his mouth to answer—

"And your sleep," she barrelled on, clearly committed to performing a full emotional autopsy. "Who covers you at night? You always kick off the blankets, even in winter. Always have. Thrash around like you're wrestling ghosts. And when you have the bad nightmares—the ones where you cry out for your mother…"

She trailed off, something unbearably tender in her eyes.

"Who holds you now, Phei? Now that you're not living here anymore?"

He stared at her.

What the actual, ever-loving fuck kind of question was that?

"How? How did you even know that, Ms. Maria? What do you mean, 'now that I'm not here'?" he asked carefully, like he was defusing a bomb constructed entirely of feelings. "No one ever—I mean, you helped with the laundry sometimes, and the blankets, I assumed—"

"Me?" Maria laughed—actually laughed, a warm, rich sound that should have been comforting but currently felt like a velvet-gloved gut punch. "Oh, mijo. You thought that was me?"

The temperature in the room plummeted.

Or perhaps that was just Phei's blood flash-freezing in his veins.

"Maria." His voice had gone very, very flat. "What exactly are you saying?"

She looked at him like he'd asked whether water was wet.

"I'm saying what I'm saying, mijo. Wait! You thought I used to do that?" Phei nodded, who else had cared enough about his wellbeing in this house but her.

"Haha... all along... I never... All those little things you thought I did for you?" A gentle, almost pitying shake of her head. "That was Señora Melissa. Always. Every single time."

"I'm sorry, WHAT."

"Exactly what I said. She never let anyone else touch your laundry," Maria continued, clearly intent on finishing him off. "And even when we—or you yourself—did it anyway, when she was busy or away, she'd come back just to redo it herself. Every stitch. Every fold. Ironed your underwear, that woman. Underwear, Phei. Something she has never once done for her own husband in twenty years of marriage I have been with them. Not even his shirts."

Phei's brain emitted a high-pitched whine, like a kettle about to explode.

Melissa.

Melissa ironed my underwear.

MELISSA.

Maria laughed slightly, admiration for Melissa in her eyes. "She snuck into your room every night," Maria went on, merciless in her kindness. "To make sure you were covered. To check you were sleeping peacefully. When you had the bad nightmares—the ones where you'd cry out for your mother—she'd sit with you. Hold you. Stay until you settled, sometimes until dawn."

"That's—" His voice emerged like gravel poured through a broken speaker. "That's not—I would have known—"

"Would you?" Maria's smile was soft, but it carried the distinct energy of bless your naïve little heart. "Forget the hatred for her that has been consuming you this entire time... you sleep like the dead once you're truly under, Phei. Always have. She was very careful. Very quiet." A pause. "She didn't want you to know."

The room tilted.

Or perhaps that was just Phei's entire understanding of reality performing a slow, graceless somersault into the abyss.

"The piano lessons," he managed, clutching at the last thread of sanity. "The online tutors when I hit walls—that was you, right? You paid for those. Thousands of dollars to professionals just so I could—"

Maria laughed again.

It was a beautiful laugh.

Phei wanted to throttle it with affection and horror.

"Mijo, do you truly believe I have thousands of dollars lying around for private conservatory tutors?" She shook her head, still smiling, still apparently unaware she was currently eviscerating him with maternal tenderness.

"Señora Melissa was always listening. Always watching in cameras." She pointed at the Piano Room. "Whenever she heard you struggling—hitting ceilings you couldn't break through alone—she'd have me arrange the tutors. Pay with her money, under my name, so you would never suspect."

Phei sat there.

Just sat there.

A man who had recently orchestrated the systematic humiliation of seven legacies, dreaming about blackmailing Paradise's golden boys into submission, and collect a harem of the school's most untouchable women like they were particularly exquisite trading cards—

Rendered utterly, devastatingly speechless by a middle-aged housekeeper revealing that his step-mother had been secretly mothering him for a decade.

Melissa.

It was always Melissa.

Melissa all along.

All those nights he'd woken warm when he should have been freezing.

All those clothes that were always pristine, always folded with military precision despite his closet-sized hellhole he'd called a room.

All those musical breakthroughs that had felt like divine grace—suddenly explained by quiet, anonymous payments from the woman who had stood by while her family tormented him.

He'd always thought and felt grateful to Maria. Had even thought of her as the aunt Melissa wasn't.

For ten years.

"Why?" The word tore out of him like a wound. "Why would she—"

Maria reached across and patted his hand.

"That, mijo," she said with the gentle finality of a woman who knew she'd delivered quite enough emotional ordnance for one afternoon, "is something you'll have to ask her yourself."