Peerless Perverted Actor Has a Celebrity Harem?!

"And the Skybridge?" Park asked.

"Restaurants, private clubs, gardens, event halls, hotels, and a few members-only spaces nobody talks about."

His interest sharpened at once, Park looked up at the golden display.

"So all the business stops at eighty-nine?"

"Yes and no."

He sighed. "That answer has never once led anywhere affordable."

Emmeline smiled. "Public business ends on the eighty-eighth floor. Eighty-nine through ninety-eight still have shops, offices, and private services, but access is restricted to members."

"What does restricted shopping involve? Armed guards protecting handbags from the poor?"

"Fewer customers. Private appointments. Closed galleries. Discreet services. Staff trained well enough not to stare, gossip, or make a performance out of pretending they haven’t recognised somebody."

Park considered that.

There was something impressive about creating an entire professional class whose main qualification was seeing scandal and responding with the emotional range of polished furniture.

"And from ninety-nine upward?"

"Residences."

Park turned from the display. "People live above all this?"

"Of course. What else do you think those floor so high in the air are for?"

She said it as if living above several dozen floors of private banks, jewellery galleries, luxury dealerships, and discreet financial crime was the most natural housing arrangement in the world.

Park had grown up believing an apartment above a convenience store was excellent urban planning. These people had simply taken that idea, added ninety floors blow it and removed every product that cost less than a human organ.

"Ninety-nine and upward," Emmeline continued. "Penthouses, duplexes, private floors, corporate suites, and temporary residences for visiting foreign royals. That kind of thing."

"Temporary residences," Park repeated. "Because calling it a hotel would sound too middle class."

"Pretty much."

Then her smile changed.

"And if you’re ever looking for Father’s mistress," she said, "or the mistress of almost any powerful man in Aurora, start with the highest floors of the Left Tower. You’ll usually find her in silk nightie, drinking champagne, and insisting the apartment technically belongs to an investment company."

Park looked straight ahead at the doors.

He had not heard that:

More importantly, if he had not heard it, then he had no obligation to react. The lift music had become unusually loud. Perhaps it had always been that loud, perhaps the ventilation system had whispered something about adultery or a dead aristocrat with unresolved marital problems had entered around floor ninety and decided to share family gossip.

It could have been anything.

Anything except Emmeline casually providing directions to their father’s mistress while four members of staff stood in the same glass box.

Quinn was two feet to Park’s left, hands folded neatly before her, gaze resting on the middle distance, her expression had not shifted so much as a millimeter.

One of the other staff members adjusted the cuff of her jacket with unnecessary care. Another studied the lift display as though floor numbers had suddenly developed a plot. Nobody spoke.

The silence had united them all.

"So," Park said, calling upon reserves of discipline that should have earned him military honours, "public retail ends at eighty-eight."

Emmeline burst out laughing.

She knew exactly what he was doing, she enjoyed watching him do it.

"Yes."

"And restricted shopping occupies eighty-nine through ninety-eight."

"Correct."

"Then residences."

"Correct again."

Park nodded with the grave concentration as if reviewing evacuation routes.

"Excellent. Very clear. Thank you."

He returned his attention to the city beyond the glass. He almost made it cleanly.

His gaze passed over Emmeline on the way.

She remained stretched against the curved wall, the whole of Aurora burning behind her in the afternoon light.

Park moved his eyes back to the skyline with weary efficiency.

The arrangement inside the tower was obscene when he considered it properly.

Why shop beside ordinary people when a person could live above the clouds and send a private lift down to nine enormous floors reserved for the correct bloodline, bank balance, or political usefulness? Why tolerate crowds, queues, curious stares, or the unspeakable horror of seeing somebody else wearing the same jacket?

The tower could close an entire boutique.

Staff could bring out collections the public would never know existed. One rich idiot could spend the annual salary of a small town in perfect peace while trained professionals nodded as if buying twelve nearly identical coats was an act of statesmanship.

It was absurd.

’Arguably disgusting; a glittering monument to inequality, vanity, and humanity’s ancient urge to build one more floor above everyone else, then hire security to make sure they stayed there.’

Park had rarely been so fond of anything in his life, he understood that this reflected poorly on his character, fortunately, he had never claimed to possess much character.

Principles were beautiful things but he only admired them in the same way he admired endangered animals: from a safe distance, with no intention of bringing one home.

The lift began to slow.

Emmeline pushed herself away from the glass and adjusted the purse on her shoulder.

"Ready?"

Park looked at his reflection in the polished panel beside the doors.

The shirt he wore was painfully affordable. It was clean, fitted reasonably well, and had survived several wash cycles without becoming transparent:

Four days ago, those qualities had made it a good shirt.

’Now it looks like something a hostage might be allowed to keep.’

He straightened the collar anyway.

The old Park had spent nineteen years surrounded by wealth so vast that numbers stopped being useful, yet he had behaved as if every purchase required a written apology submitted in triplicate.

He had worn old clothes, avoided asking for anything, and treated the family accounts like a sacred lake that would curse him if he took a drink.

Park respected restraint.

Sincerely.

It was a beautiful virtue, and he intended to recommend it warmly to anyone spending their own money.

’I, however, have the Bennett family’s unlimited card.’

That changed the moral landscape considerably.

After two lifetimes of dressing as if rent were personally hunting him through the streets, Park was finally about to experience the sacred pleasure of buying something without checking the price. No looking at the tag, putting it down, picking it back up, checking the tag again in case the numbers had become kinder, then quietly converting the cost into groceries before returning the item to the rack.

The conversion had always been fatal:

A jacket became three weeks of food, a decent pair of shoes became electricity and water, a bottle of cologne became instant noodles, bus fare, and two days of pretending hunger was a personality trait.

Every object came with the ghost of a more responsible purchase standing behind it.

Today, there would be no ghosts.

Only receipts.

’Possibly very long receipts.’

’Four days ago,’ Park thought, studying himself in the polished metal, ’I had eleven things in a basket at a discount shop. I put six back.’

He remembered that trip too clearly:

The harsh white lights. The plastic basket cutting into his fingers, the thin shirt he had wanted because it actually fit his shoulders, the black jeans without a tear in the knee and socks that had not yet lost the will to live.

He had stood beside the changing rooms and performed arithmetic until wanting anything felt embarrassing.

Then he had gone home with tow items: a lighter wallet, and the dull pride of a man who had successfully denied himself joy.

$140.63 remained in his account.

That was the final balance of his old life.

Now a glass lift was carrying him toward a private shopping floor where stores closed their doors so nobody important had to be seen holding a jacket before deciding whether it suited them.

Life had a sense of humour.

It was not a kind one, but Park could respect commitment to the joke.

’I died poor enough to debate buying socks,’ he thought. ’Now people are going to bring me champagne while I reject clothing worth more than Trump’s funeral.’

The lift gave a soft chime.

The golden display settled on ninety-eight.

Warm light spilled into the lift first.

Beyond it waited a corridor broader than the lobby of most hotels. Cream stone ran beneath soft gold lighting. Dark columns rose between enormous windows overlooking the city. There were no crowds, no raised voices, advertisements fighting for attention. Even the air smelled expensive, carrying faint notes of cedar, leather, and some floral scent Park suspected had a name requiring French pronunciation and generational wealth.

A woman in a fitted black suit stood near the entrance with her hands folded. Two attendants waited several steps behind her. All three wore the restrained smiles of people trained to welcome billionaires, royalty, and whichever species lived above both.

Farther down the corridor, boutique doors stood open beneath small signs carved from metal or dark stone.

Park’s grin appeared before he could stop it, and widened with every inch the doors opened.

’Dear rich people,’ he thought, taking in the silent marble, private salons, and staff waiting to help him commit financial atrocities. ’Your newest whore has arrived.’

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