The second I stepped out of the elevator and onto the executive floor, I knew something was wrong. Westward loitered in the hallway nearby, his shoulders hunched as he wrung his hands nervously. Sweat beaded his brow, and he mumbled something under his breath, like he was rehearsing what he was going to tell me right up to the last minute. As it was, he looked a minute or two away from a nervous breakdown. I was glad that I hadn’t had my driver stop to get a coffee this morning—if I’d been any later, he might have made so much friction between his palms that he’d spontaneously combust.

“Good morning, Westward,” I said with as much heart as I could. “You look… stressed this morning. What’s going on?”

“Sir!” Westward snapped to attention. He flung his hands apart, then thought better of it and started to wring them all over again. Any second now, I was sure his fingers were going to catch fire. “Thank goodness you’re here, sir. There’s… there’s been an incident.”

The words left a bitter taste in my mouth. “The last time you said there was an incident, I ended up losing millions of dollars. What’s going on this time? Do we need to have a private talk in my office?”

“That’s the thing, sir,” Westward said desperately. He looked down the hall at the door leading to my office, then sighed and shook his head. “Lena called me in a panic this morning, sir.”

“Lena?” What did my secretary have to be worried about?

Westward nodded emphatically. “Yes, sir. Lena. She… she says that there’s someone in your office, sir. She’s tried to make him leave, but he refuses to move. He’s in your chair, sir. At your desk. She even tried to squirt him with a squirt bottle of water, sir, like she says she uses on her cats when they’re clawing the curtains… but he found one of your plastic paper protectors and he’s become quite adept at using it like a shield.”

I knew that for Westward and Lena, the situation was serious, but I couldn’t help but bust out laughing. “You’re using a spray bottle on him?”

“He won’t move!” Westward’s face had turned red. If he got any brighter, I’d be able to hang him from a Christmas tree like an ornament. “We threatened to call security on him, but he told us that if we did, you’d be upset. He had your personal phone number, sir! What was I supposed to do? I don’t know how he got up here, or got into your office, or got your number, but it’s not right.”

I sucked my stomach in and held back another round of laughter. I didn’t need to see who was at my desk to know who it was—it looked like Master had been sincere about what he’d said the day before. He was going to step in and take charge. While I had no idea if he knew what he was doing in terms of business decisions, I knew that having him there would help me pull myself back together. Yesterday, I’d felt like I was facing an insurmountable obstacle following Redding’s betrayal and the restructuring it necessitated, but with Master there to supervise me, everything would be okay. With him around, I could see through my panic. It didn’t matter how large the obstacles in my way were—I’d find a way around them just so I could see him smile again.

With him here, I’d find a way.

“Mr. Sullivan, sir!” Westward said impatiently. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you this morning. If you need to take a day to yourself after what happened yesterday, then please do so, but first, please authorize me to send in security and have him removed!”

“There’s no need, Westward.” I chuckled, then shook my head. “Mr. Mills is stepping in to act as my assistant while we work through the fallout from the Redding catastrophe. He’ll be here regularly, and is to be granted free access to my office.”

Westward squinted at me, his eyes so narrow, they looked like they were closed. “A-A-Assistant?”

“It happened late in the day yesterday, long after you’d gone home for the day.” I offered Westward an apologetic smile. “I should have notified you and Lena both, but it slipped my mind. There were a few other pressing things I was dealing with.”

Like Master’s ass on my lap, my cock lodged deep inside of him. The way he’d rocked and moaned on top of me, unashamed to take exactly what he wanted…

I bit down on my lip and snapped out of my daydreams. If Westward saw me getting hard, I was pretty sure he’d melt down.

“You haven’t even seen who it is, sir,” Westward argued. “He looks very young. Wouldn’t you be better off with a senior assistant? Someone who’s had more experience in the industry?”

“I’ll consider it.” I was in too good a mood to let Westward’s skepticism get me down. “Thank you for taking care of a potentially troublesome issue. When I see Lena on my way in, I’ll let her know that Mr. Mills is to be give admission into my office at will.”

“Well… okay, sir.” Westward sighed. “Please apologize to Mr. Mills for the squirt bottle incident. We were panicked and didn’t know what else to do.”

“You’re a good man, Westward. Thank you. I’ll look into getting squirt guns for the next time someone infiltrates the executive offices.” I clapped him on the shoulder while he gaped at me, then headed down the hall to the door that let into the small reception area Lena worked in. My office was accessible through it.

I opened the door to find her standing in the doorway to my office, both doors flung open, dual squirt bottles in hand. Her dark hair was twisted up in a tight bun, and she was in her stocking feet, her heels left haphazardly by her desk. The tight pencil skirt she’d worn in this morning was rolled up to scandalous levels to give her more mobility, and she used it to broaden her stance and take up as much of the doorway as she could.

When I entered, she looked over her shoulder, war in her eyes. The expression faded when she noticed it was me.

“Mr. Sullivan!” Lena squeaked. She hurriedly put one of the squirt bottles down and rolled down her skirt, but kept the other bottle in hand, ready for combat. I noticed that there was a rubber band stuck to the side of her head, caught in her hair. “I’m so glad you’re here. There is a delinquent in your office.”

“Westward told me,” I said with a nod.

“I’ve been trying to get him to leave, but he won’t move. He’s taken up station on your office chair. I wanted to call security, but he has—” She lowered her voice, “—personally revealing information about you, and he’s using it like a weapon.”

“My phone number?” I asked as flatly as I could, trying to hold back laughter.

“I don’t know how he got it, sir!” Lena insisted. “I never give out your personal number. If someone asks, I say that it’s not on file, and that you keep your life very private. Wherever he got it, it wasn’t from me!”

“It’s fine,” I said.

Lena furrowed her brow. “Fine? Did you get a new phone number?”

“No.” I finally gave in and laughed. “The young man in my office is Mr. Mills, and he’ll be here helping me while we navigate the situation with Redding.”

Much like Westward, Lena squinted at me. She opened her mouth and was about to speak when a sound like a guitar string being plucked interrupted us. A rubber band shot through the doorway and landed on the floor a few feet from her, having narrowly missed her shoulder. In a rage, Lena spun around and fired into my office with her squirt bottle. She held it with both hands like she was handling a gun. I heard, but didn’t see, water splatter against plastic.

When I did bring those squirt guns into the office, she was going to dominate the competition.

“Stand down, Lena,” I said with a chuckle. I came to stand at her side and set a hand on her shoulder. From there, I saw Master seated at my desk. His dark brown hair was combed back, and he was dressed in a finely fitted suit. The blue tie he wore brought out the color of his eyes, and I found myself having to make an effort not to lose myself to them. “Why don’t you go put your shoes back on and get back to business as usual? Mr. Mills won’t open fire on you anymore.”

Lena eyed my master suspiciously, then slowly shook her head and looked up at me. I took the chance to pluck the rubber band from her hair. “He’s a menace, that one.”

“I’m sure once he’s not being squirted at, he’ll fit in just fine.”

Lena’s eyes sharpened. “I hope you’re right.”

I hoped so, too.

By the time I got Lena settled back at her desk and made my way into the office, Master had put the protective plastic sheet aside. Papers were spread out across the desk, luckily undamaged by the squirt bottle incident. I recognized what they were instantly—reports from the last several years of board meetings, and structural documents containing our latest business practices and staffing goals. Master pored over them. When I closed the door, he looked up at me, unimpressed. “Really, Troy?”

I hesitated, unsure if I should speak, or if I should keep my silence. I decided to play it safe and wait to see what he had to say.

Master gestured at the paperwork in front of him. “Is this really how you run your business?”

I wanted to speak, but knew better. Instead, I stood near the door and waited for instruction. While I knew Master was smart and ambitious, running a business required certain skills and understanding I wasn’t sure he possessed. With time and practice, he’d be a pro, but as an uneducated outsider, he probably had very little clue what he was looking at. When he’d told me he’d teach me how to take care of myself, I’d assumed he meant emotionally, not professionally. How was I supposed to politely inform him that he had no clue what he was talking about?

“I knew that you were stubborn, but I didn’t realize it went this far.” Master sighed. He leaned back in my chair and twisted it from side to side. “This business model reads like it’s from the 1950s. We’re going to need to restructure completely. I think some parts can be salvaged, but the rest is going to need to go. If you want to succeed in a constantly evolving world, you’re going to have to get with the times and be willing to embrace change as it comes.”

I hesitated, surprised by the ease with which he spoke. For the last year and a half of our relationship, our conversations had been focused either on me, or on the things that Master had bought with my money. Who was he, behind the mask he wore? I realized that I only knew Master, not Robin Mills.

What was his story?

There was more to him than card counting and domination. What was he capable of?

“Mm, this is going to get complicated if you can’t talk.” Master crossed his arms on the edge of the desk, careful not to disturb the paperwork upon it. “While we’re in the office, you can speak freely, Troy. And, for discretion’s sake, you can call me Mr. Mills or Robin. We’re not going to be able to get to work if you’re constantly in your submissive state, are we?”

“No,” I agreed. I stepped forward, my gaze set on him. There was a strange rift inside me, tearing me apart. It was hard to think of him as anything but Master, but here, things were different. I had to figure out a way to get over the shift.

“Good,” he said. “Then since we’re in agreement,” he gestured at the paperwork again, “I got here early this morning to go over all the documents I could find. I know that this isn’t everything, but what I was able to find gave me a pretty comprehensive look at how The Palisade is run at an executive level, especially when it comes to profits. Tell me… have you changed things at all since you took over from dear old dad? Because everything I’ve come across reeks of clinging to old practices, even when it means loss of profits.”

“Loss of profits?” I bristled. While I had a great deal of respect for Master, he was being unfair. I knew what I was doing. I’d been raised a Sullivan, and I’d learned what was best for our business. Running a hotel and casino wasn’t like running any other kind of business in the world. It required insider knowledge, advanced mathematics, understanding of—

“Yes, loss of profits.” Master narrowed his eyes. “Your focus is on bringing business into the casino right now, and while that wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you adjusted your house advantages correctly and updated your machines—we’ll get to that in a second—have you not been following outside business reports?”

The more he spoke, the less certain I became of myself. I’d thought that Master was an outsider to the industry, but he spoke with such confidence that I was beginning to feel like he wasn’t making it up. Who was he?

“I… well, no.”

Master covered his eyes with his hand. “Troy.”

“The Palisade earned over a billion dollars last year,” I defended. “The casino industry in Vegas generated almost twenty-five billion dollars in revenue. I think we’re right to focus on casino-earned revenue.”

Master parted his fingers in a V to look at me. “And that’s down almost a billion dollars from the year before. Every year, casino earnings have been plummeting. Gaming is lagging, Troy. If you’d followed the reports and studied the current trends, you’d have seen that. More money is being spent on restaurants and entertainment, while gambling is down. You’re not wrong to want to keep your casino healthy, but if you focused on other parts of your business—particularly your hotel and the restaurant in it—you’d be seeing a drastic surge in profits.”

All I could do was stand there, stunned. Master knew figures off the top of his head that I didn’t expect anyone to know.

“You look like I just slapped you across the face with a giant fish,” Master mused. “I know what I’m talking about, you know. I wouldn’t be here sitting in your executive office acting like I owned the place if I had no idea how to take care of it. I like my belongings more than that—I’d have enough humility to hire someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about if I didn’t have a clue what was going on.”

“Right.” I hesitated, astounded. At twenty-two years old, Master was barely eligible for an undergraduate degree. To an extent, business could be taught, just like my father had taught me, but if Master was so successful, what was he doing counting cards and working for Rent-a-Dom? There was a piece of the puzzle I was missing, and it bothered me.

“So.” Master sat back heavily. “All things considered, I’m going to need to see the most recent reports so I can get a handle on what’s really going on, and what needs to be done. That being said, I’ve already put together a rudimentary plan of action. When you’ve got time, we’ll sit down and discuss it. I’ve come up with suggestions on how to improve this quarter’s profits, how to restructure staff roles and staff benefits from the floor all the way to the ceiling, and what policies and practices will need to be changed in order to turn The Palisade from a decent casino on the Strip into the casino on the Strip.”

As I listened to him speak, it struck me all at once what was different about him. Master spoke in seductive, dark, and brooding tones, but the man who sat at my desk wasn’t him. Master was gone, and Robin had taken his place. When he wasn’t in his Dom headspace, he was quirky, snarky, and sharply intelligent. The contrast was stunning. For the first time, I was getting to know Master as a person instead of as a sexual object, and I found myself wanting to know more.

“Where did you learn all this?” I asked, mystified.

“Oh.” Robin laughed. “Family stuff. You know how it is. You go in with your brother on your own company, life comes and drops a nuclear bomb in your lap, you take off and do what you need to do while he stays behind to hold down the fort… basic stuff.”

I stared at him.

Robin rolled his eyes. “In other words, I have indirect business experience through helping my brother and listening to his troubles. I have insider knowledge about Vegas and casinos because—as you’re well aware—I used to be a professional gambler.”

“You used to count cards,” I said flatly. “There’s a difference.”

“And this is exactly why you need me.” He smirked. It was so full of mischief and life that it made me smirk, too. “You’re the stuffy suit from a long line of stuffy suits, and your perspective is narrowed to what’s happening on the inside of your business. Me? Not so much. I’m going to call it like it is, whether you like it or not.”

“I know you will. You’ve never been afraid to do it before.”

“And you know why that is?” He lifted a brow and didn’t wait for me to reply. “Because you can do better. You can do so much better. And, frankly, I don’t care if what I say hurts your feelings if it ends up helping you in the long run. I’m not going to stand by and let you drive your business into the ground when you should be soaring—that’s not how I operate.”

My heart clenched. No one had ever treated me that way before. Robin didn’t care that I was successful already like so many other people did. What he saw in me was potential, and he wanted to help me reach it. Support like that meant more to me than any pat on the back or words of praise.

If Robin wanted more, I would give it to him.

“So, when do we begin?” Robin asked.

I smiled. That was an easy one. “Right now.”