Kai's POV
They say this house used to be quiet.
I wouldn't know. By the time I joined, she was already here — a whirlwind of ribbons and sparkles and the loudest laugh you've ever heard in your life.
Miss Ava Chen.
She calls me "Kai-Kai." Like she's known me forever. Like I'm not one of Austin Chen's top men. Like I'm not capable of dropping a grown man with a flick of my wrist.
No. To her, I'm just the guy who knows how to sneak her extra dessert after dinner. The guy she can bribe to do her math homework. The one who gets her phone back when Austin's taken it for "too many damn TikToks."
She came into our world like confetti in a gunfight.
And none of us knew how to handle her.
She danced barefoot in the marble hallways. Hugged the maids. Learned every guard's name. Drew little smiley faces on the mission board when she was bored.
She made the scariest men in the country carry her shopping bags like they were proud of it.
And Austin… God.
Austin changed.
The day she ran into his office crying about losing her favorite hoodie in the laundry, I watched him hang up on a billion-dollar call to help her look for it.
She tied a pink bow in his hair later that day. He wore it till midnight.
You want to know something funny?
I used to think we were the ones protecting her.
Turns out, she was saving us. All of us.
From the silence. From the cold. From the way our hearts had forgotten how to beat without fear.
Today, I found her asleep in the kitchen.
Wrapped in her dad's hoodie, head on the counter, face smushed against a bag of marshmallows. The guards were tiptoeing around like idiots, trying not to wake her. One of them tried to cover her with his jacket.
I just stood there and smiled.
She's light, that girl. Bright, annoying, brilliant light.
And if you asked any of us — me, the drivers, the kitchen staff, the men with more scars than years left to live — we'd all say the same thing:
We'd burn the world to keep that light alive.
Because she's not just our boss's daughter.
She's Ava.
She's home.