Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs Chapter 927: A Certain Someone

Here’s what happened.

After I finally cut Lila loose from the Dex family’s gilded chokehold—agency contract shredded, freedom papers signed in soone else’s blood—I had a eting to attend. But let’s rewind, because I know you’re all sitting there blinking like "wait, the Dex people just... let her go?"

Yeah.

Anticlimactic as a heart attack in a hospice, right?

Usually sothing of this scope — powerful family heir, dirty laundry, contractual warfare — goes really bad. Like news-cycle-for-weeks bad. Like lawyers-stabbing-each-other-in-parking-lots bad. Or at least one awkward viral deposition where soone cries about "family legacy" while their stock tanks.

Instead? Crickets. Polite nods. A signature so fast it left ink skid marks.

The secret sauce? Leverage. The kind that turns apex predators into suddenly enlightened cooperators who discover the true aning of "mutual benefit" when their own entrails are on the table.

ARIA—my Goddess grim reaper—had vivisected the Dex Family internals more than we already knew with the glee of a kid unwrapping Christmas presents made of corporate entrails.

We didn’t even need to leak them to create an enemy Lila didn’t want to fight... and trust I like fighting old money rich asshole but with her request tis back I just played a good boy.

So, I just slid the folder across the table like a polite suicide note.

Their head of legal—Pratt,a woman who probably breakfasts on the still-beating hearts of sumr associates—read it, reviewed the files and went corpse-quiet, and said sothing like "we don’t see the value in prolonging this discussion."

Which is corporate for "please leave before you ruin our lives and I have to explain to my therapist why I suddenly identify with the villains in my childhood bedti stories."

Ten minutes. Wet signatures. Done.

The Dex patriarchs and figureheads decided Lila wasn’t worth the apocalypse we’d rain down... didn’t think Lila as worth the trouble. They didn’t think one talent was worth what we could do to them if they refused.

They were dead wrong about her—she was worth every scorched-earth tactic I had queued up—but mathematically correct about the rest.

Why burn the empire over one artist when the cleanup costs more than her projected lifeti royalties?

Classic Hollywood math: souls are cheap, liability is expensive.

So, smooth exit. Lila cried in the backseat, face buried in her hands like she was trying to hide from the miracle. I pretended not to notice because sotis grief needs privacy more than comfort.

Reyna fake-scrolled her watch up front like a pro. Luna rubbed Lila’s back in slow, steady circles.

Rory climbed onto my lap and asked zero questions about the adult carnage—smartest kid in the car, hands down. Soo-Jin drove. Palm trees and broken dreams blurred past the tinted windows.

"Thank you," Lila finally whispered, voice muffled by fingers.

"Don’t thank yet. I’m about to work you harder than they ever did—only this ti the chains are velvet coupled with a few orgasms and orgies and the beatings are taphorical."

She laughed. Wet, shattered, gorgeous. "Good. I want to."

First talent signed to Carter Entertainnt. Unofficially — we weren’t fully operational yet, because why rush when you can savor the chaos? But she was ours. And the Dex family could choke on the NDA we made them sign on the way out — preferably with their morning kale smoothie.

Now.

Rember when I said there was a certain soone I needed to et?

It was Eziel. Eziel Ashworth.

And her father’s whole board. To sell her work.

How did this happen?

Like usual. It was ARIA.

Two days before this eting, my goddess had been doing what she does — consuming the entire entertainnt industry’s data infrastructure like a whale eating krill, or like a particularly efficient serial killer hoovering up evidence.

She was building profiles.

Mapping talent.

Finding the undervalued, the underrated, the overlooked.

All the artists and creators sitting on gold that nobody around them had the vision to see — or the decency to pay for.

Carter Entertainnt’s first year was going to be built on these people.

The ones Hollywood threw away like yesterday’s coffee grounds. The ones whose agents stopped returning calls. The ones told "maybe next year" so many tis that next year beca a punchline delivered by a therapist.

She found dozens. Actors working day jobs. Writers with scripts in drawers gathering dust like forgotten suicide notes. Directors who made one incredible indie and then vanished into the ether of "developnt hell," which is Hollywood for "we’ll call you when pigs fly and executives grow consciences."

We were going to recruit them over the next few months.

Building a roster that the industry wouldn’t take seriously until it was way too late — and by then, we’d have already cashed the checks and bought the beach house next to theirs.

But then ARIA found Eziel’s screenplay.

And this one needed imdiate attention.

"Master, she’d said that night, with that specific excitent she gets when she’s found sothing everyone else missed — the digital equivalent of spotting a wallet on the sidewalk and realizing it’s stuffed with unmarked bills.

"The Celestial Widow. Cosmic revenge saga. Goddess whose husband is murdered by the pantheon, descends, hunts the gods who betrayed him. Seven studios have seen it. All passed because the character mirrors surface elents of a Marvel property. They’re scared of the lawsuit."

"And?"

"And they’re idiots. I have seen it myself... the surface similarities are costic. Underneath, it’s sothing Marvel has never touched — a grief narrative disguised as a superhero film. The emotional architecture is extraordinary. If produced correctly — right director, right cast, right marketing that positions it as anti-Marvel rather than Marvel-adjacent — the franchise potential exceeds $500 million across three films, rchandise, streaming, international distribution. Conservative estimate."

Half a billion. From a screenplay seven studios threw in the trash like an unwanted family heirloom at a yard sale run by sociopaths.

So yeah. That’s what we saw. That was us looking into the future and seeing Carter Entertainnt’s first real project. Our entry into the film industry.

It wasn’t going to happen fast — these things take ti, planning, patience, and the occasional strategic nervous breakdown — but it would happen.

And we had a plan.

ARIA reached out to Ashworth-ad. They responded within hours. Practically fell over themselves to schedule a eting.

See, they’d been sitting on this IP with no idea what to do with it, ready to let it go for pennies or a heartfelt "thanks for the mories," and here cos so company offering $85 million?

They thought Christmas ca early — or at least that their accountant had finally stopped drinking on the job.

And that’s how we ended up in their boardroom. . Reyna. Lila. Luna and Soo-Jin outside with Rory, probably teaching her how to hot-wire the espresso machine for fun.

Facing Gerald Ashworth, his son-in-law Dominic, three board mbers, their legal team, their CFO who kept checking his phone to track the wire transfer like a junkie waiting for the next hit.

And Eziel. Sitting at the far end of the table. Away from her father. Away from her husband.

Placed there the way you place furniture you’ve stopped noticing — or the way you seat the family disappointnt at Thanksgiving so the silverware stays shiny.

Let tell you about Eziel.

She wasn’t trying to be noticed. Dark blouse. Hair pulled back. Minimal makeup. The look of a woman who’d stopped dressing for the room because the room had stopped looking at her a long ti ago — probably around the ti soone decided her genius was better as background noise.

But my Eyes don’t miss shit. The second I sat down, her desire architecture lit up like a city grid at dusk — or like a Christmas tree soone forgot to unplug before leaving for a three-year vacation.

Loneliness — deep, structural, the kind that lives in the foundation and occasionally sends up damp spots on the ceiling.

Sexual frustration layered under professional composure like a bad foundation garnt.

But more than all that was a creative mind that had been dismissed so many tis it started believing the dismissals — classic Stockholm syndro for talent. And underneath everything — anger. Quiet. Patient. Compressed. Building for years with nowhere to go, like a pressure cooker soone forgot to turn off before the in-laws arrived.

She was stunning that it punishes you for not looking — sharp jaw, auburn hair fighting the clip like it was personally offended, eyes pretending to be bored while tracking everything, including the exits in case she needed to fake her own death mid-pitch.

I let the Taboo Aura hit her before I said a word. I watched her posture shift. Watched her fingers tighten on her pen like it owed her money. Watched her cross her legs under the table in a motion nobody else caught — subtle, but screaming.

I caught it.

And then I did sothing petty. Sothing deliberate. Sothing that Dominic and Gerald and the lawyers and the CFO would never detect.

I wrapped her in my Pheromones.

Not the passive stuff — but focused.