Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs Chapter 981: Thin Walls: Stepdaughter’s Confesion

The bedroom door had been closed for exactly forty-seven seconds before the first moan leaked through.

Genevieve and Maya sat on opposite ends of the living room couch—one woman who’d known Peter for less than twenty-four hours, and one who’d been living in the blast radius of his existence for much longer.

Between them: three cushions of neutral space, a glass coffee table with an untouched bowl of fruit that was rapidly becoming Maya’semotional support produce section, and the growing, unmistakable soundtrack of Isabella getting her soul rearranged with architectural precision.

A muffled thud hit the wall. Then another.

Then a rhythm of that sound.

Steady. Professional.

The cadence that suggested soone had consulted the Kama Sutra and then decided physics was negotiable.

Genevieve stared straight ahead like she was watching paint dry on soone else’s existential crisis.

Maya stared straight ahead like she’d already seen this particular shade of beige seventeen tis this month.

Neither acknowledged it.

"So," Genevieve said, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap like a woman waiting for her na to be called at the DMV. "This is a beautiful penthouse."

"Thank you," Maya said quietly, adjusting her glasses with the careful dignity of soone preserving the last shreds of plausible deniability. "The kitchen is nice too."

A loud, guttural moan—unmistakably Isabella—bled through the walls. It was the kind of sound that could get a noise complaint from the devil himself.

They both pretended it was distant construction.

Very enthusiastic construction.

"How long have you lived here?" Genevieve asked, voice pitched slightly higher than normal.

Casual. Completely casual.

Just two won having a conversation in a living room where absolutely nothing unusual was happening.

Except sothing was happening. Loudly. Repeatedly. With enthusiasm that bordered on athletic scholarship.

"A while," Maya said. She reached for the bowl of fruit, selected a grape, and ate it with the slow, deliberate focus of soone defusing a bomb one explosive bite at a ti. "Since Eros bought it for mom. Mom wanted closer after... everything. And I wasn’t close enough to my dad to go with him instead of my mom."

She said it flat. No emotion. The way you ntion a childhood trauma you’d long since converted into rent-free real estate inside your ribcage.

"Deeper—fuck—stretch this pussy—"

The words arrived through the drywall like they’d been FedExed priority overnight. Clear. Unmistakable. With footnotes.

Genevieve’s eyes widened a fraction. Her mouth opened. Closed. She smoothed an invisible wrinkle from Peter’s jacket—the one she’d been wearing since last night and still carried faint traces of whatever unholy cologne he wore—and cleared her throat.

"The acoustics in here are... really sothing."

"Yeah," Maya said, eating another grape. "The walls are thinner than you’d think for a place this expensive. You’d expect better soundproofing when you’re paying for guilt in square footage."

Slap. Slap. Slap.

The headboard had joined the conversation now. A rhythmic, percussive addition that turned the muffled moaning into sothing that had its own BPM.

If you closed your eyes and had no context, you might mistake it for soone aggressively testing IKEA structural integrity.

You would be wrong.

Maya ate another grape. She’d developed a system—one grape per moan, two per scream, the whole stem if sothing hit the wall hard enough to rattle.

The bowl was half empty. It was a big bowl.

She was going to need a second one soon.

Genevieve turned to Maya. Slowly. The way you turn to soone when you’ve just realized you’re trapped in a live-action porno parody of dostic realism and need imdiate confirmation that this is not, in fact, a fever dream.

Her expression said everything her mouth was too polite to form: Is this your life? Every day? Is this what you live with?

Maya t her eyes. And for the first ti since Genevieve had hugged her without permission in the hallway, sothing in Maya’s expression softened. Cracked open.

The mask of quiet awkwardness shifted into sothing rawer—relief. Deep, exhausted, bone-level relief.

The look said: Thank God. Soone finally sees it. Soone finally understands the absolute circus I am living in. No one can bla now that I have a thing for my stepdaddy.

"It’s worse in the mornings," Maya offered.

"Worse?"

"He sotis eats her out for breakfast when he sleeps over. Like... literally. Every morning. I have to put headphones on to make coffee."

Genevieve blinked. Then blinked again. "Headphones."

"Noise-canceling. The expensive kind." Maya ate another grape. "They don’t cancel enough. I think Bose is secretly judging ."

"Yes—fuck—pinch it—hurt —"

Both won flinched. It was involuntary. A shared, full-body flinch that bonded them more effectively than any therapy session ever could.

"Jesus Christ," Genevieve whispered.

"Yeah." Maya nodded slowly, like a war veteran greeting a new recruit who just stepped on their first landmine. "Welco to my life."

A silence stretched between them—if you could call it silence.

The moans had graduated from muffled to aggressive.

The headboard was now keeping ti like a trono operated by soone who hated drywall and personal boundaries in equal asure. Sothing fell over in the bedroom. Glass shattered. Neither of them investigated.

"That was the lamp," Maya said without looking. "She’s replaced it three tis."

"Three?"

"He keeps buying the sa one. I think he finds it funny. Like a running gag only he and the drywall get."

Genevieve leaned back into the couch and exhaled through her nose. Long. Controlled. The exhale of a woman recalibrating her entire understanding of her current circumstances while ntally filing a noise complaint against reality itself.

"Can I ask you sothing?" she said.

"Sure."

"How do you... deal with this? Like, on a daily basis. How do you just—" She gestured vaguely at the bedroom wall, at the sounds, at the entire concept of Eros existing in close proximity like so kind of walking, talking natural disaster with abs. "—function?"

Maya was quiet for a mont. She set the grape stem down on the coffee table. Folded her hands in her lap.

Looked at the floor.

Before she could answer, another crash ca from the bedroom—sothing heavier this ti. A dresser, maybe. Or dignity.

The question sat between them and Maya felt it land sowhere deep—past the cody, past the coping chanisms, past the grapes and the headphones and the three replacent lamps. Down where the real thing lived.

The thing she’d only ever half-told Cazzie about, in fragnts, in jokes that weren’t really jokes, in late-night whispers that she’d walk back the next morning.

She opened her mouth.

Maya sighed.

Then she looked up, and there it was—the thing she’d been sitting on for so long it had practically carved grooves into her spine. The honest, unvarnished truth she’d never said out loud because who the hell would understand?

Who could possibly understand that your stepfather was basically a walking, talking sex god that promised apocalypse and you’d been listening to him rearrange your mother’s entire nervous system through the walls for months on end—

—and the worst part, the part that made her want to crawl under the couch and live there forever, wasn’t the noise or the awkwardness or the fact that she now owned three different pairs of noise-canceling headphones just to survive breakfast?

Cazzie had taught her how to share so things.

How to let the words out without choking on them. And this stranger—this beautiful, sharp-edged woman still wearing Peter’s jacket like war paint—seed like the safest place to land.

No history. No baggage. No pre-baked opinions about what Maya was "supposed" to feel.

She’d walked into this penthouse less than twenty-four hours ago and already looked like soone who’d stopped apologizing for desire.

"Can I be honest with you?" Maya asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"Please."

"You can’t judge ."

Genevieve let out a small, tired laugh. "Sweetie, I had sex with a stranger in a n’s bathroom, ran out on my husband in nothing but that stranger’s jacket and zero underwear, and drove away in a Lamborghini that wasn’t mine. My judgnt license got revoked sowhere around mile marker twelve. You’re safe."

Maya almost smiled. Almost...

"Harder—fuck—slap this ass—mark it—"

The slap that followed cracked through the wall like a gunshot in a library. Genevieve flinched hard enough to slosh imaginary coffee.

Maya didn’t even twitch. Slaps were Tuesday. Slaps were background music.

"The thing is," Maya said, picking each word like it might explode, "I don’t just... deal with it. It’s not background noise I’ve learned to ignore. It’s—"

She stopped. Swallowed. Pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose again—the nervous tic that had started in middle school and never really left.

"I hear them," she said. "Every ti. Every sound. Every word. And I don’t—" Her cheeks went pink, then deeper. Not embarrassnt. Sothing hotter. Hungrier. "I don’t hate it."