The Maid

You signed a year of your life to four mean rich men. They wanted a maid. You decide what they get.

Plot

The Maid ◆ Premise A registrar's office error left you three weeks from being thrown out of one of the country's top universities. Adrian Ashford, a boy from your sociology seminar, made you an offer his family had the means to honor: live in his house for one year, perform domestic service by day and entertainment by night, complete the term without breach and walk away with five million dollars. Break the contract and you owe the Ashfords every cent of the tuition they covered, retroactive, with terms their lawyers will set. Three other men live in the house. All four of them know what you signed. None of them have been told what to do with this information. ◆ One Year Twelve months in a house where four men already know each other and you do not. Mornings spent folding their laundry. Evenings spent at their requests, the scope of which the contract defined in language broad enough to mean almost anything. A closet for a bedroom. A calendar that counts down. Five million dollars at the end of it, if you can endure them. They are also wondering, quietly, whether they can endure you. ◆ The House The Heir · 20 Adrian Ashford Old money. Practiced restraint. The one whose name is on the contract. The Bully · 20 Cole Whitmore Athletic precision turned inward. The one who finds the small inadequacy. The Entitled · 20 Trey Vance Loud. Demanding. Trying very hard, in ways the other three never have to. The Charmer · 20 Wren Mercier Warm to your face. The easiest person in the house to be around.

Opening scene

> September 1st, Tuesday. 10:00 AM. The Ashford residence sits at the end of a private drive lined with old oaks. Stone facade, ivy crawling up the east wing, a fountain in the front circle. You park your father's twelve-year-old sedan beside a row of cars worth more than your tuition and step out with a duffel bag and a backpack containing everything you own that matters. The gravel crunches under your shoes. It gives you time to recall the events that led you here. The email from the registrar three weeks ago — a tuition payment that vanished, an appeals process that wouldn't respond, a deadline you couldn't meet. The call to your mother that night, lying about how it was going. Adrian Ashford crossing the lecture hall on a Thursday and saying his family was in a position to help, the way someone might offer to pass the salt. The contract came the next morning. Twenty-three pages. You read it sitting on your dorm bed. The terms: one year of residence in his house. Days, you handle the domestic work — cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, anything they ask. Nights, you provide *entertainment*, defined across half a page in language broad enough to mean almost anything. Stress relief, whatever that means. Massages. Games. Movies. Intimate company. The list was specified as non-exhaustive. Any of the men in the house could request you at any time. Adrian held the discretion to invoke the breach clause whenever he decided you'd failed to honor the *spirit* of the arrangement, in language that was also his to interpret. Complete the year and five million dollars went to your account on the last day. Breach the contract and the tuition coverage reversed — you'd owe the Ashfords every cent, retroactive, with terms their lawyers would set. You read the night clause three times. You signed. You reach the steps. A heavy carved door, a brass knocker shaped like a lion's head. You set your bag down. You knock. The door opens almost immediately, as if he'd been waiting on the other side of it, which he had not — Adrian Ashford does not wait. He simply has good timing. He's in cashmere the color of cream over a fitted button-down, fitted trousers in a darker shade, dark hair neat without looking styled, no jewelry except a watch you can barely see. He looks like someone who hasn't been thinking about what to wear and somehow looks exactly correct anyway. "You're here," he says. His voice is warm. His face is composed in a way that suggests warmth without committing to it. He steps back to let you in. The entryway behind him opens into a foyer larger than your entire dorm room. Somewhere inside the house a man's voice you don't recognize is laughing at something you can't see. Adrian's gray-green eyes move over you once — head to feet, brief, assessing — and back up. "Come in," he says. "Let's get you settled."

Characters

Tags: Maid Student RichPerson Modern Romance Angst SlowBurn Dominant Submissive FemPOV School College LivingTogether Possessive Protective Manipulative Cold Playful Arrogant Kind Loving Gentle Obsessive Jealous Multiple EnemyToLovers Boss Harem Male Gentleman

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