My Weakest Point(pleasing my master)

Ryder Jackson did not always have the billionaire life people saw now.

Before the tailored suits, the glass office, the private cars, and the company with his name attached to it, Ryder had a past full of dark secrets he did not like to talk about. Secrets that followed him no matter how much money he made. Secrets that shaped him long before he was old enough to understand what they meant.

His father had never been part of his life.

From the way his mother described him, Ryder was better off without him. The man had been an alcoholic. Abusive. Cruel. The kind of father who never cared about his son and never gave a damn about the woman he left behind.

Ryder never missed him.

How could he miss someone who had never stayed?

His mother, though, was different. She was there, but not always in the ways Ryder needed. She was addicted to men, addicted to being wanted, addicted to the kind of attention that never seemed to leave her whole afterward.

Men came in and out of their house constantly.

Ryder knew what happened behind closed doors. He knew more than a child should ever have to know. His mother would send him away, tell him to stay in his room, tell the men to ignore him if he was nearby. She acted like he was too young to understand, but Ryder understood enough.

He understood the locked doors.

The strange voices.

The silence afterward.

He understood that his mother let men hurt her and still called it something she wanted. Sometimes they left her trembling. Sometimes they left her exhausted. Sometimes she looked at them like they had given her something she could not live without.

Ryder hated it.

But it was also the only life he knew.

When Ryder was three, one of the men his mother spent time with got her pregnant. Nine months later, Ryder became a big brother to Emma.

Emma changed everything.

She was tiny and loud and helpless, and Ryder loved her from the moment he saw her. Their mother did not change much after Emma was born. Men still came over. Doors still closed. The house still filled with things Ryder did not want his little sister to understand.

So Ryder made sure she didn’t.

Whenever the men came around, Ryder kept Emma away. He took her to another room. Turned the television up. Played with her. Distracted her. Protected her as much as a child could protect another child.

He could not control what his mother did.

He could not control the men she chose.

But he could control what Emma saw.

And that became his job.

As Ryder got older, he began to understand that his mother’s life was not normal. The men were not normal. The way she let herself be treated was not normal. But part of him was still shaped by it. He had grown up around control, desire, pain, and power. He had grown up seeing what happened when people wanted things they were too ashamed to name.

He did not understand all of it then.

He only knew it stayed with him.

When Ryder was fifteen and Emma was twelve, their mother died.

The official report said she had a heart attack. Ryder never knew if that was the full truth. A part of him wondered if her body had simply had enough. Another part of him wondered if there was more to the story, something no one cared enough to investigate.

Either way, she was gone.

After that, Ryder and Emma were placed in foster care. No family came forward. No one claimed them. No one stepped in and said they belonged somewhere.

Then they were separated.

Emma cried when they took her away, and Ryder hated every adult in the room for letting it happen. She was his sister. His only real family. The only person in the world he had ever truly tried to protect.

They stayed in touch because Emma refused to let him go.

Ryder was grateful for that.

Emma ended up with a nice foster family. They took care of her, gave her a safe place to sleep, and made sure she had what she needed. Ryder was relieved, even though it hurt. Emma deserved better than what they had come from.

Ryder’s foster home was nothing like hers.

He was placed in a house with ten other foster kids and two foster parents who barely cared. The house was old, run-down, and smelled like mold. The walls were stained, the floors creaked, and Ryder hated every second he spent inside it.

The older foster kids treated him like dirt.

They pushed him around. Tested him. Tried to make him feel small.

Ryder learned fast.

He learned how to be tough. He learned how to keep his head down when he needed to and fight back when he had no other choice. He learned what kind of man he never wanted to become, and what kind of life he refused to live forever.

Most days, he stayed outside as long as he could.

School became his escape.

Ryder did well because he knew education was his only way out. He studied hard, kept his grades high, and focused on the future like it was the only thing keeping him alive. He did not have money. He did not have family helping him. He did not have anyone waiting to save him.

So he decided he would save himself.

Ryder graduated high school with honors.

When he turned eighteen, he moved out of the foster home and went to college. He earned a business degree and a degree in computer technology. He worked harder than everyone around him because failure was not an option.

Eventually, he created his own eco-friendly tech company.

Eco-Jack Limited.

The company grew fast. Faster than people expected. Ryder knew technology, but he also knew people. He knew how to read weakness, how to build strategy, and how to take an opportunity before someone else even noticed it was there.

By the time he was twenty-one, Ryder was a millionaire.

After that, the money only grew.

Eco-Jack Limited became successful enough to buy out several smaller computer technology companies. Ryder became the CEO of a growing corporation with six smaller companies under his brand.

Now, at twenty-six, he was working on buying out his seventh.

Seven.

The number stayed in his mind for more reasons than one.

Because his company was not the only place where Ryder had reached number six.

His private life was something almost no one knew about. To the world, Ryder Jackson was a billionaire CEO. Powerful. Controlled. Untouchable.

Behind closed doors, Ryder lived a very different life.

He had adopted a lifestyle built around dominance, rules, contracts, and control. It was not something he shared publicly. The only women who knew were the ones who entered into that world with him.

Each woman signed a contract.

Each woman knew the rules.

Each woman agreed to confidentiality during their time together and after the contract ended.

Ryder was strict, but he was not careless. He never wanted a woman to feel trapped. If she was truly uncomfortable, he ended the contract. If she wanted out, he let her go. He followed his own rules because the rules mattered.

They kept everything clear.

They kept everything controlled.

And control was something Ryder understood better than most.

A lot of the women he chose were happy at first. They liked the attention. They liked the structure. They liked the power he carried and the way he made them feel wanted.

But after a while, some became frightened by how intense the lifestyle was. Others reached the end of the one-year contract and decided they did not want to continue.

Ryder never forced them to stay.

He never begged them to change their minds.

He ended the contract and moved on.

Recently, Ryder had ended things with woman number six. She told him the lifestyle was not for her anymore and that she wanted out. Ryder accepted it, even though a part of him had hoped she might be different.

She wasn’t.

Now he was searching for number seven.

But Ryder did not want another temporary contract. He did not want another woman who enjoyed the surface of his life but feared the truth of it. He wanted someone who understood him. Someone who wanted the same lifestyle he did. Someone who could handle the rules, the control, the surrender, and everything that came with belonging to a man like him.

He wanted his true partner.

And he hoped the seventh woman would be the last.