Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs Chapter 858: The Princess and Her Thorns

I could tell she was pressed by sothing today.

The Aurelia call.

I’d heard about it from ARIA on the drive over. Charlotte Thompson—the sweetest soul I’d ever t, the woman who’d paid bail for employees who’d betrayed her, who’d given severance to assistants who’d sabotaged her—had told soone to go to hell.

And it was eating her alive.

"Hey, princess."

Her head ca up. Those soft brown eyes found mine, and sothing in them cracked. Not broke—Charlotte was stronger than that. But cracked, like ice under pressure, like glass that had taken one hit too many.

"Peter." She tried to smile. Failed. Tried again.

"Co on. We’re going to dinner."

"Peter, I can’t just—"

"You can. You’re the CEO. You can do whatever the hell you want." I wiggled my fingers. "Co on, Thompson. Don’t make carry you."

She looked at my hand for a long mont. Then at my face. Then back at my hand.

She took it.

****

Charlotte drove.

Not because I couldn’t—but because she needed sothing to focus on. Sothing to occupy her hands while her mind processed whatever storm was raging behind those gentle eyes.

Her car was a rcedes S-Class. Black. Understated. Very Charlotte.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she pulled out of Quantum Tech’s underground parking.

"La Maison. That French place in Beverly Hills."

"Peter, that place has a three-month waiting list."

"Had." I smiled. "Amazing what a few phone calls can accomplish when you’re technically a billionaire."

She glanced at . "You’re not technically a billionaire. You are a billionaire."

"Semantics."

"Math."

"Sa thing."

She laughed again. Still small. But less broken this ti.

We drove in comfortable silence for a few blocks. LA traffic was being LA traffic—aggressive, impatient, a constant symphony of honking and brake lights. Charlotte navigated it with the absent competence of soone who’d grown up in this city, hands steady on the wheel, eyes forward.

But I could see her jaw tightening. Could see the way her fingers gripped the leather a little too hard.

"You want to talk about it?" I asked.

"No."

"Okay."

More silence.

Then: "She called an incompetent heiress."

I waited.

"On Bloomberg. A year ago. When I’d just inherited Dad’s company and everyone had opinions about whether I deserved it." Charlotte’s voice was flat. Controlled. The voice of soone reciting facts rather than reliving pain. "She said I was nepotism dressed up as succession planning. That even my panties were daddy money."

"Aurelia Royce."

"You know her?"

"Know of her now. Kingsley Private Equity princess."

Charlotte’s lips twitched. Almost a smile. "She wanted a eting. Wanted to discuss ’investnt opportunities.’ Like she didn’t spend an entire television interview explaining why I was going to fail."

"And?"

"I told her to go to hell." Charlotte’s hands tightened on the wheel. "I told Amanda to tell her she could take her investnt opportunities and shove them directly up her—" She stopped. Breathed. "I don’t talk like that. I don’t think like that. I’ve forgiven people who’ve done so much worse to ."

"But not her?"

"Not her." Charlotte shook her head slowly. "And I don’t know why. The board mbers who tried to sell my company? Forgiven. The executives who leaked strategies to competitors? Forgiven. My assistant who literally betrayed for money? I paid her legal fees. Made sure she had resources to rebuild."

"So why is Aurelia different?"

Charlotte was quiet for a long mont. The rcedes purred through an intersection, joined the flow of traffic heading toward Beverly Hills.

"Because she didn’t betray ," Charlotte said finally. "She just... dismissed . Before she even knew . She looked at my na and my inheritance and decided I was nothing. That I would always be nothing. And she announced it to the world like it was fact. Peter, do you imagine being humiliated before the entire world when all you ever did was takeover your father’s business. No choice, by a person who you’ve never even t or wronged. Yes, she was wright about most of everything. But why humiliate like that. It hurt. I am human too!"

I reached over. Covered her hand on the gear shift with mine.

"You know what she is now?" I asked.

"What?"

"Wrong." I squeezed her fingers. "Spectacularly, historically, embarrassingly wrong. And Aurelia Royce is sitting in her daddy’s office watching you change the world while she shuffles other people’s money around."

Charlotte’s eyes were bright. Too bright. She blinked rapidly, focused on the road.

"I still shouldn’t have said what I said."

"Why not?"

"Because it’s not... it’s not . I don’t tell people to go to hell. I don’t hold grudges. I’m supposed to be better than that."

I laughed. Couldn’t help it.

Charlotte shot a wounded look. "What’s funny?"

"Charlotte." I shifted in my seat to face her properly. "Being a good person doesn’t an being a doormat. It doesn’t an forgiving everyone who hurts you and letting them back into your life to do it again.

"Sotis being a good person ans protecting yourself. Setting boundaries. Telling toxic people to fuck off so you can keep being good to the people who actually deserve it."

She was quiet.

"You know what I see when I look at you?" I continued. "I see soone who has given and given and given to people who never gave back. Who’s been kind to a world that treated her kindness like weakness. Who keeps showing up with an open heart even though that heart has been stomped on more tis than I can count."

"Peter—"

I squeezed her hand again. "You told Aurelia Royce to go to hell. Good. She deserved it. You’re not a bad person for protecting yourself, Charlotte. You’re just a good person who’s finally learning that she doesn’t have to take shit from everyone to stay good."

The rcedes slowed. Stopped at a red light.

Charlotte turned to look at . Really look. Her eyes were wet now, tears threatening to spill, but she was smiling. A real smile. The kind that reached her eyes and made her whole face glow.

"When did you get so wise?" she asked softly.

"I’m not just wise. I’m just really good at stating the obvious."

She laughed. Wet. Broken. Beautiful.

"Thank you, Peter."

"Don’t thank yet. Dinner’s going to be expensive and I expect you to be impressed."

La Maison was everything a Beverly Hills French restaurant should be.

Intimate lighting. Crisp white tablecloths. Waitstaff who moved like shadows and spoke in hushed, reverent tones. The kind of place where a single entrée cost more than most people’s car paynts and the wine list was thicker than a doctoral thesis.

They’d given us the best table—a private corner booth with views of the garden courtyard, screened by strategically placed plants that created an illusion of isolation. The maître d’ had practically genuflected when we walked in.

Being a billionaire had its perks.

Charlotte paused at the entrance, taking it all in. The crystal chandeliers. The fresh flowers on every table. The soft piano music drifting from sowhere unseen. Her expression wasn’t the polished appreciation of soone used to luxury—it was sothing rawer. More vulnerable.

"This is..." She trailed off, still looking around.

Here’s the thing about Charlotte Thompson that most people didn’t understand: she’d grown up with money. Obscene amounts of it. She’d spent her father’s fortune freely in her younger years—designer clothes, exotic vacations, penthouse parties. She knew luxury the way most people knew breathing.

But she’d never been on a date.

Never had a boyfriend. Never experienced soone planning an evening specifically for her, choosing a restaurant because they wanted to see her smile, making reservations because her happiness was the goal rather than a business objective.

Twenty-six years old. CEO of the most valuable company on Earth.

And this was her first real date.

I could sll the anticipation and the implications of this, on her, too. Not just the inexperience—though that was there, a subtle nervousness in her pulse, a flutter in her breathing. No, I could actually sll her virginity. That particular scent of untouched innocence, sweet and clean and impossibly rare in a woman her age.

Okay, that was so unnecessary, but I can’t help it.