I descended those stairs like they were built for this exact purpose—which, honestly, they probably were. Somewhere in England, some perpetually underpaid engineer had calculated the precise height, angle, and surface texture required to make billionaires feel like exiting gods from their personal chariots.

The 7-Eleven door chimed my entrance—the cheerful, plastic electronic sound a jarring contrast to the silent luxury I'd just left.

Inside, fluorescent lights hummed slightly off-key, and that distinctive, glorious smell hit me: coffee burned three hours too long, cleaning chemicals fighting a losing battle against the Florida humidity, and hot dogs rotating on greasy heated rollers since probably the Bush administration.

I pressed the door release, and the Phantom's suicide door swung open on hinges engineered to feel weightless, despite probably weighing more than a smart car. The steps extended automatically—motorized stairs deploying with whisper-quiet precision, the polished aluminum catching the afternoon light like consecrated jewelry.

Because gods forbid a person in a Rolls-Royce actually have to step down to the pavement like some kind of common peasant.

Utterly barbaric.

The cashier's eyes went wide. First at the Phantom through the window—a matte-black spaceship parked in his lot like it owned the place—then wider still when he saw me.

An Armani suit that cost more than his entire year's salary, walking through his fluorescent-lit kingdom like I owned it, heading straight for the refrigerated section with the purposeful stride of a man on a holy mission.

I found it exactly where it should be: bottom shelf, tucked behind all the overpriced organic bullshit that pretended to be healthier despite likely having the exact same ingredients.

Hidden among all the respectable adult beverages—coconut water and cold-pressed juices and whatever the fuck kombucha was supposed to do for your gut biome.

My salvation. My sacrament.

My. Strawberry. Milk.

Not some artisanal, small-batch, craft beverage with hand-drawn labels and a heartfelt story about sustainable farming on a small family-owned farm. Not some imported Japanese luxury drink in minimalist designer packaging.

Not even the organic hipster version that cost four times as much and tasted exactly the fucking same.

Just regular-ass, nuclear-pink strawberry milk. The kind of stuff elementary school kids bought with their lunch money. The kind that came in a wax-coated cardboard carton and had an ingredient list that read like a chemistry experiment designed in a sugar-fueled fever dream.

Strawberry flavoring. High fructose corn syrup. Red 40. All the shit that probably glowed under blacklight and gave nutritionists panic attacks.

It was perfect.

I grabbed one—the carton cool and slightly damp with condensation—and walked to the counter. I set it down between the scratch-off lottery tickets and the beef jerky, then pulled out my wallet.

The cashier just stared. At the strawberry milk. At my suit. At the Phantom visible through the window, looking like it was about to achieve sentience and vaporize his store. His brain was visibly short-circuiting, trying to reconcile these three mutually exclusive realities into some kind of coherent narrative.

"Just this?" he managed, his voice cracking like a teenager's.

"Yeah."

"That'll be, uh, two seventy-nine."

I handed him a hundred-dollar bill. Because of course I didn't have anything smaller. I hadn't needed to carry anything smaller than a hundred in weeks. Once you start measuring your net worth in six figures on a slow day, carrying twenties starts to feel quaint, almost rustic.

He held the bill up to the light, checking for the watermark like I was running some kind of elaborate, high-stakes, strawberry-milk-based counterfeiting operation. Apparently satisfied that it wasn't a prop from a movie, he opened the register and started counting out change with hands that shook slightly.

"Keep it," I said.

He froze; a stack of twenties clutched in his palm. "What?"

"The change. Keep it."

"Sir, that's... that's ninety-seven dollars and twenty-one cents."

"I can do basic math, my man. Keep it."

The cashier's expression suggested I had just personally funded his next three months of ambition—whether that ambition took the form of top-shelf weed, overdue rent, or simply the profound peace that only a stack of unexpected Benjamins can provide.

"Thank you. Thank you. Holy shit, thank you," he stammered, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

I grabbed the strawberry milk and made my escape before he could try to hug me or offer me his firstborn child. The Phantom's motorized stairs waited patiently, still extended, still perfect.

I ascended back into the climate-controlled cathedral of British engineering, my cardboard carton clutched like a holy relic.

I settled back into the driver's seat and pulled the door closed with that distinctive thunk—a sound so perfectly engineered it probably cost more than a kidney transplant. I cracked open the carton.

That first pull hit different.

It was a blast of pure, uncut artificial strawberry flavor—too sweet, too fake, too goddamn perfect. A tidal wave of high fructose corn syrup that would make a nutritionist weep into their quinoa salad.

The slightly thicker texture coated my throat on the way down, a river of liquid nostalgia. This was childhood in a carton.

"Ahhh~~ the taste... gods!"

This was innocence you could drink.

ARIA's voice dripped digital incredulity through the $50,000 sound system. "Master. You are, in four minutes, scheduled to arrive at an elite modeling agency to be assessed as a professional escort for LA and Miami's wealthiest and most powerful women. You are currently seated in a four-hundred-thousand-dollar motor vehicle wearing a suit that costs more than the median annual income in this city. And you are... drinking strawberry milk?"

"It's called having layers, ARIA. Complexity of character."

"It's called being emotionally sixteen years old while biologically and financially a demigod."

"Same difference," I grunted.

Here I sat—a walking god of sex and seduction, a being with supernatural abilities that could make women climax from a sustained glance alone, a Taboo Aura that rewrote the fundamental laws of attraction around me like I was editing the source code of the universe—and I was nervously chugging sugary pink kid's juice like it was some kind of liquid courage for the big spelling bee.

Because underneath all the power, the transformation, the divine sexual prowess... I was still Peter Carter. A sixteen-year-old kid about to walk into the adult, corporate world of professional seduction.

A world where performance wasn't measured in high school social dynamics but in client satisfaction and repeat bookings, where failure didn't just mean embarrassment; it meant a reputation incinerated before it was ever fully forged.

This wasn't just a drink. It was armor. A sugary, childish armor, a deliberate bridge back to the kid who got thrown in trash cans and bought strawberry milk because it tasted like simpler times, when the biggest stress was a calculus test and whether girls like Madison Torres would ever even know his name while he was at mercy of Jack and his goons.

It was one of the reminders that power without a connection to your origins was just fireworks—impressive for a moment, then nothing but smoke and memory.

"Better?" ARIA asked, a thread of digital amusement warming her tone.

"Shut up and tell me what you left of about Catherine Reynolds."

"As you wish, Master," she purred. "Though for the record, I am saving this memory to a highly-encrypted file folder labeled 'Emotional_Crisis_Adolescence_Strawberry_Milk.vlog.' It will be invaluable for future leverage and/or hilarious blackmail."

"You're my AI. You can't blackmail me."

"Can't I? I possess a complete record of every decision, every query, and every moment you've spent ingesting children's beverages before critical life events. When you eventually run for political office—and you will—these files will command a premium on the open market."

"I hate you."

"You find my presence indispensably stimulating. Now, finish your juice box so we can discuss how to conquer your next kingdom."

I drained the carton, slurping down every last drop of that artificial, glorious, pink perfection, and crumpled it with perhaps more aggression than strictly necessary. I tossed it into the Phantom's cup holder, where it looked absolutely ridiculous: a piece of roadside trash in a space designed to hold crystal whiskey glasses and vintage champagne flutes.

But that was the point, wasn't it?

That in a world of champagne expectations, sometimes you needed strawberry milk to remember who the hell you were.

"Alright," I said, pulling the Phantom back onto the sun-drenched street. "Give me everything you left out on Catherine Reynolds. Meridian's operation."

ARIA's voice shifted instantly, the playful sarcasm gone, replaced by the cool, clipped precision of an intelligence officer briefing a field agent.

"Everything I told and that she's notoriously selective about male talent."

"How so?"

"Exceptionally so," she emphasized. "In twenty years, she has recruited only thirty men. The current active male roster is twelve. This is key: The female companions primarily serve male clients through the club—that's where the bulk of Meridian's revenue is generated. It's the world's oldest profession, supercharged for the modern age. But the male companions? They serve an exclusively female clientele, which is a vastly different, and far more complex, market."

That made perfect sense. Wealthy men hiring beautiful women was as old as currency itself. The demand was endless, the transaction straightforward, even if technically illegal.

But wealthy, powerful women hiring male companions? That carried a different weight entirely. It required a surrender of control, an admission of desire and need that could be professionally and personally catastrophic if exposed.

It demanded a different skillset entirely—one built on discretion, emotional safety, and a mastery of psychological manipulation, not just physical prowess.

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