Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs Chapter 1043: What We’re Now!

"She used to tuck in, you know? When I was five or six, my parents would disappear on business trips and I’d stay at her penthouse. She’d read to sleep, brush the hair out of my face, call Maddie-bear, and I’d fall asleep against her shoulder because she slled like perfu and safety. I cried in her arms every ti I fought with mom.

"She gave my first real makeup set. She was the cool aunt. The one every little girl needs so growing up doesn’t feel like walking into a horror movie."

Her voice cracked—not with sadness, just with the sheer weight of what ca next.

"And now? She calls Empress. She calls you Emperor. She bowsperformatively—though yes, it’s Catherine, and she does live for the drama—but the performance isn’t mocking. There’s sothing real underneath it. She looks at across a room and there’s this tiny mont, this silent Your Majesty that doesn’t need words.

"My aunt. The woman who taught how to put on eyeliner. Now she’s asking if the dress I’m wearing ets Peter’s fuck--right-now standards because apparently her opinion cos second. Mine is law."

I held her closer. Pressed my lips against her temple. Let her breathe through the absurdity of her own ascension.

"And Rebecca," she said, almost laughing at the sheer ridiculousness. "Rebecca. Peter, do you even know what Rebecca actually does?"

"Yep. I do."

"Of course you do... I just found out two weeks ago she’s a VP at an aerospace firm. She literally runs their entire West Coast operation. We’re talking defense contracts, satellite launches, projects so classified most of her own staff doesn’t know what the hell they’re building. She manages eight hundred people. Two kids in college."

Madison laughed rembering what Rebecca had told them.

"Do you know her ex-husband was a senator until the day she found out he was cheating—and she personally, single-handedly, without telling a soul, orchestrated the financial investigation that ended both his career and their marriage in the sa week. Ruthless. Brilliant. Terrifying."

Madison shook her head, still half in disbelief.

"And she looks at like I’m her Queen. Not like I’m so girl in her boyfriend’s harem. Not like I’m the youngest with the most leverage. Like I’m her Queen. Like so ancient part of her soul recognized the title before her brain could file a complaint. Last week she asked my advice on a promotion decision.

"A woman who’s been making executive calls longer than I’ve been alive asked a nineteen-year-old whether she should bump soone from director to VP. And she took my answer seriously. Implented it the next day. Ca back and thanked because her superiors were overwheld by her decision."

She laughed again—soft, helpless, a little overwheld by the sheer scale of her own life.

"It’s absurd. All of it. It should terrify . It wouldterrify if I let myself really sit in it. But instead... it just fits. Sohow it fits perfectly. And not only because it makes feel powerful—though yes, there’s a delicious little hit of that, I’m not going to pretend I’m above it.

"It’s because it makes realize there is no better life I could possibly live that would even reach one percent of what it ans to be your woman. To be your Queen. The responsibility of it goes so far beyond being the heiress to a five-hundred-billion-dollar generational empire that Torres Developnts now feels like a cute little side project by comparison.

"My father built skyscrapers. I get to help build whatever you are. And whatever you are is going to outlast everything my bloodline has ever created."

Silence settled between us.

I didn’t answer her with words. I stroked her hair. Pressed another kiss to her temple. Let the stable and Nyxire and the warm amber light hold her while she sat in the weight of what she’d just confessed out loud.

Because Madison didn’t know—couldn’t know, would probably never fully believe if I told her—how much of all of this had been her. Not a side effect of her or just as a supporting pillar. Her as a foundation.

The first stone.

The day she’d invited to her house was the day the whole future had started bending toward what it was now, and every woman who’d joined after had joined into an architecture Madison had built the first floor of.

She brought from so far in such a short ti!

I could still rember that day. Sixteen-year-old frantically googling how to shave without killing myself. Sneaking into my sisters’ room to steal body spray with nas like Midnight Seduction because I thought too much perfu was better than not enough.

Shaving off patchy facial hair while watching a YouTube tutorial from a bearded lumberjack who probably thought of razors as religious instrunts. Scrubbing myself in the shower hard enough to take off a layer of skin because I thought if I slled like a Bath & Body Works had a baby with heaven I might have a chance.

Pulling up banking and finding forty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents and knowing it wouldn’t cover a sock at the stores where Madison shopped.

Researching how to seduce a hot girl when you’re a nerd with the desperation of soone who’d just realized they had no map for the territory they were about to enter. Texting fucking ChatGPT for last-minute advice like it was a hostage negotiator and I was the hostage.

Madison didn’t know any of that. Didn’t know about the YouTube tutorials or the stolen body spray or the nervous breakdown in front of the mirror or the fact that I’d walked out of that house convinced I was going to ruin my life inside the next sixty minutes.

She’d sat in the passenger seat of the BMW later and told I’d looked really good. And I’d told her she looked insane. And she’d laughed and put her hand on my thigh and told we were going studying, and the word studying had detonated sothing in my sixteen-year-old chest that was still, in so quiet way, echoing.

That’s how far she brought from!

All of this—the mansion, the harem, the empire, the Friesian mare watching us from her stall, the Ghost Mansion that existed outside of geography, the thirty won scattered through rooms I hadn’t built and couldn’t fully explain—all of it traced back to a girl who’d gestured to across a cafeteria and made one decision.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

She looked up at . "For what?"

"For being my Queen. For being the first. For everything that exists because of a choice you made when you didn’t have to make it." I kissed her forehead. Then her nose. Then her lips—soft, unhurried, the kiss of a man saying sothing his mouth couldn’t put into sentences.

"You’re the reason all of this started. You know that, right?"

"Peter—"

"No. I an it. Every woman in my life, every dollar in every account, every room in every mansion, every empire I’m building and every enemy I’ve crushed—all of it started the day you waved over to your lunch table. For all we know without you, I’d probably be still Peter Carter from Lincoln Heights and a crush on girls who weren’t going to look at . You changed the whole trajectory. Everything that’s happened since has been downstream of that one day."

Her eyes filled. Didn’t spill. Just filled—gold flecks catching the amber light of the stable like sothing her body was producing on purpose because the rest of her couldn’t find the words.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you more."

"Impossible."

"Demonstrably true. I have data."

"What data?"

"Proprietary."

She laughed—wet, soft, happy. Pressed her face into my chest and just breathed there for a while, and I held her and stroked her hair.

After a while she shifted in my arms. Lifted her head. Looked at with an expression that had recalibrated into sothing playful.

"I have a surprise for you."

I raised an eyebrow.

"A surprise?"

"Mm-hm."

"What kind of surprise?"

"The kind that’s a surprise, Peter. That’s how surprises work."

"That’s a terrible definition. Can you narrow it down?"

"No."

"Big? Small? Illegal?"

"Secret."

"You’re being difficult on purpose."

"I’m being romantic on purpose."

I narrowed my eyes at her. She smiled the specific Madison smile she wore when she’d been sitting on sothing for a while and was now enjoying watching realize she’d been sitting on it.

"When do I find out?"

"Soon."

"How soon?"

"Soon enough that you’ll forgive for making you wait. Not so soon that you’ll forget I said the word surprise and rember it was worth waiting for."

I stared at her. She stared back. Her eyes were bright. Her cheek was pink. Her hair was a ss of hay and my fingers. And she was keeping a secret from with the satisfied expression of a woman who’d been planning sothing she was very, very pleased with herself about.

I kissed her because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.