The lights dropped another notch until the chandeliers looked like dying stars. The cheese boards vanished as if they'd never existed, whisked away by the same black-gloved ghosts who'd been feeding us sin all night.

Silence fell, thick, expectant, the kind that usually precedes a firing squad or an orgasm.

Then, from the kitchen: a single off-key tenor belting "Happy Birthday" in enthusiastic Italian. The double doors swung open and two servers marched out carrying what looked less like a cake and more like a weapon of mass seduction.

Three tiers of mirror-glazed chocolate so dark it drank the candlelight and gave nothing back. Gold leaf crawled over it like it was trying to escape. A waterfall of raspberries bled down one side.

Seventeen candles ringed a spun-sugar "17" that looked suspiciously smug.

They set it in front of me like an offering to an exceptionally well-dressed pagan god.

Thirty-two voices attacked the song with the coordination of a drunk flash mob. Jasmine's stood out, clear, smoky, and vibrating with something that might have been joy or might have been four glasses of Margaux deciding to speak in tongues.

Madison's eyes were glassy in the way that costs thousands in therapy to achieve. Linda was openly crying again; someone really needed to keep that woman hydrated.

When the final, warbling "to yooouuuu" died, Emma yelled, "Make a wish, birthday boy!"

I looked around the table. Twenty ridiculously beautiful women who'd decided, for reasons that still felt like a glitch in the matrix, that I was worth sharing. Family who hadn't fled. Friends who hadn't called the police.

An empire built on spite, sex, and suspiciously good investments.

I closed my eyes, inhaled the collective perfume of money and arousal, and blew.

Seventeen candles surrendered without a fight. Smoke curled up like it was late for another party.

The room detonated: cheers, wolf-whistles, Tommy screaming "SEVENTEEN!" like he'd just discovered the number personally. Gold bottles of Armand de Brignac started popping like we were in a rap video directed by a Saudi prince.

Madison stood, glass raised, looking like a Bond villain who'd had a baby with a Victoria's Secret angel. "To Peter. Our emperor. Our walking war crime. Our very expensive problem."

"TO PETER!" Glasses smashed together with zero regard for crystal longevity.

The cake was attacked with the solemnity of hyenas discovering an injured gazelle. Inside: alternating layers of chocolate ganache thick enough to grout marble and raspberry filling tart enough to make your ancestors pucker. Each plate got a sphere of vanilla ice cream that wept gently beside a blood-red coulis.

Jasmine took one bite and made a sound that should have come with a parental advisory sticker. "I'm suing for emotional damages," she rasped. "My vagina just filed a noise complaint."

"Save room," Amanda said, nodding toward a flourless chocolate torte that had materialized like a second, even more evil cake.

"There's more?" Jasmine looked personally betrayed.

"Darling," Madison purred, "excess is a renewable."

Dessert multiplied like sexually aggressive rabbits: macarons in colors not found in nature, crème brûlée you could hear crack from across the table, fruit tarts glistening like they'd been oiled for a photoshoot. Sugar hit bloodstreams already swimming in champagne. The music slid into something you could fuck to if you didn't mind an audience.

People stopped pretending they were civilized. Tommy tackled me into a hug that smelled like tequila and brotherhood. "I love you, man. You're my best friend. My brother. My cult leader—"

"Love you too, man."

"I'm serious. You ruined my life in a good way. I used to have student loans. Now I have feelings and a watch that costs more than my mom's house."

"Shut up and take the compliment."

Mia draped herself over his back like a drunk scarf. "He's been like this for an hour. It's adorable. I'm considering keeping him."

"I am NOT emotional," Tommy announced to no one in particular. "I'm FESTIVELY lubricated."

Near the windows, Linda and Jasmine were slow-dancing to a song that definitely wasn't slow, arms around each other, giggling like teenagers who'd just discovered weed and each other's bra straps.

Emma and Sarah had invented a drinking game that seemed to consist of shouting "BODY SHOT!" every twelve seconds and licking salt off whatever skin was closest.

Madison slid into my lap without asking, the way very rich, very confident women do. Her hand found my thigh, fingers drawing lazy, proprietary circles.

"Look at them," she murmured, lips against my ear. "All these terrifyingly competent women, drunk on sugar and you."

"Mostly sugar," I said.

"Liar." She bit my earlobe, gentle, possessive. "They'd burn the world down if you asked nicely."

Across the table Priya was explaining hostile takeovers to Patricia and Amanda using macarons as visual aids. Every time a company got "acquired," she smashed the macaron between her fingers and licked the filling off with theatrical menace.

Sofia and Isabella had given up chairs entirely; they were curled together on a banquette, feeding each other berries, city lights painting gold across their skin.

I leaned back, Madison's weight warm and perfect against me, and surveyed my ridiculous kingdom.

Seventeen years old, seventeen candles, thirty-two people who'd kill or die or, at the very least, Venmo me obscene amounts of money, for me.

Life, I decided, was an absolutely obscene joke.

And I was the punchline everybody wanted to fuck.

Reyna was laughing, actually laughing, head thrown back, mouth wide open like she'd just remembered she was allowed to have fun.

Anya looked smug, like she'd cracked a safe everybody else thought was welded shut.

Ms. Chen and Margaret had commandeered an entire bottle of the '96 Krug and were trading life advice in the tone people usually reserve for war crimes. Charlotte's hair had finally surrendered; it spilled down her back in dark waves while Catherine whispered something that made her bite her lip hard enough to leave marks.

The cake was gone. Only crumbs and a single, tragic raspberry remained, rolling in slow circles on a plate like it was trying to escape the carnage.

Jasmine found me again, swaying slightly, eyes shining with champagne and existential whiplash.

"Okay," she said, planting a hand on my chest for balance. "I'm officially drunk enough to stop pretending I'm not having a stroke. The harem thing. Real?"

"Real."

"All twenty-three of them?"

"Twenty-three and counting, if we're being honest."

She stared at me the way people stare at car accidents they can't look away from.

"How."

"Magic, money, and an alarming amount of therapy," I said. "Pick two."

She exhaled a laugh that sounded suspiciously like surrender. "You're seventeen."

"Legally, yes. Emotionally, I'm pushing forty and billing by the hour."

Her hand slid down to my knee, nails digging in like she was checking I wasn't a hologram. "That's… clinically insane."

"Welcome to my life. We have excellent dental."

She took a long pull of champagne, throat working, eyes never leaving mine. "I don't know if I believe in whatever cosmic glitch gave you this, but I believe they do." She jerked her chin toward the table, where Sofia was feeding Isabella a macaron with her fingers and Valentina was teaching Luna how to say filthy things in Portuguese. "And that's honestly more terrifying."

"Love is a hell of a drug," I said.

"Love, money, and apparently a nine-inch personality transplant." She shook her head, soft smile tugging at her mouth. "You grew up while I was busy adulting, kid."

"Still growing," I said. "Hopefully sideways, not just up. Gotta fill out the empire."

"God help the rest of us." She pulled me into a hug that smelled like vanilla, champagne, and the faint edge of tears she refused to let fall. Her body pressed close, warm, familiar, dangerous in all the ways family shouldn't be. "Happy birthday, nephew. I'm proud of you. Even if half of me wants to call Child Protective Services and the other half wants to take notes."

"Noted and appreciated."

She kissed my cheek, hard, then wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I'm going to go dance with your mother before I start ugly-crying into a $900 dessert."

I watched her weave across the room. Linda caught her mid-spin, arms flying around each other like they were twenty-five again and the world still made sense. Their laughter cracked open the night.

Madison's fingers slid between mine, cool from the champagne flute, possessive as ever.

"Good birthday?" she murmured.

"Best one on record."

"Wait till you unwrap me later."

"I was promised privacy and questionable decisions."

"You were promised a religious experience with a safe word." She leaned in, lips brushing my ear. "Bring water. You'll need it."

Below us the city glittered like spilled diamonds. Above us the music throbbed, bodies moved, champagne rained, and the empire I wasn't supposed to have at seventeen pulsed like a living thing.

Seventeen candles. Twenty-three women. One very confused aunt slow-dancing with my mother while the world burned money for warmth.

I raised my glass to no one in particular.

Here's to growing up sideways.

The night had no intention of ending, and neither did we.

Linda pushed herself into me and whispered her pussy was itching. Her lips parted and licked behind it, remind me how we owned the day and now here we were playing son and mother to oblivious women and her sister!

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