Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 217

Chapter 217: Escalation

The trouble wasn’t that they wanted blood. The trouble was that they were smart enough to plan it three moves ahead, like some meth-addicted Bobby Fischer. Anticipating their next strike and moving before they could execute—that was the real chess game here. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

They had their precious 20% of shares now. Cute. A nice little participation trophy. But twenty percent wasn’t nearly enough to topple Charlotte. Daddy Dead Thompson—God rest his strategic, capitalist soul—had locked 75% of the company in family hands. Which meant no amount of Wall Street rats with cocaine habits and overpriced Rolexes and Bugatti’s could just Venmo their way to control.

So, what the fuck could be their next move?

And no, I wasn’t asking the universe. I knew these people. These weren’t the type that file a lawsuit and pout in Forbes, types. With Helena Voss—the ex-CIA black ops bitch who probably waterboarded people for fun—running the death train aimed directly at Charlotte, we weren’t talking orthodox strategies.

Orthodox was dead. Orthodox was boring. Orthodox was what you do before brunch.

These assholes had already killed Bob Thompson. Like, the main character of Quantum Tech. Poof—gone. Game of Thrones’d right out of existence pretending to be his friend. And now his "little princess" Charlotte was left clutching the family crown. Which made the next step painfully obvious.

Wait.

"They’d eliminated Bob Thompson. That means—"

"Charlotte’s mother!" ARIA blurted, her holographic eyes faking the flaring widen like she just saw her favorite K-pop star get caught shoplifting.

Click.

The pieces slammed together in my head like some Ikea nightmare puzzle where you realize you’ve been using the wrong wrench for an hour. Margaret Thompson. The last five percent. The golden ticket. The shares they couldn’t just buy like a Birkin bag at auction.

And Margaret? Oh, Margaret wasn’t like the other boardroom lemmings they’d corrupted one by one. She was untouchable in that very smug, New England, pearls-at-the-country-club way. Which left only one option.

"Threaten or blackmail her!" ARIA finished again, her voice cracking with that sharp edge she always got when the digital gears in her head spun into nightmare territory.

"ARIA, run through everything—tell me what Margaret can be blackmailed with—"

"Already did, Master!" she cut in, way too eager, like an intern hopped up on Red Bull trying to impress Elon Musk. My screens exploded with streams of data, like a Vegas fireworks show but nerdier.

I leaned in, every muscle tight. This was it. The skeleton in Margaret’s diamond-encrusted closet. The affair, the secret cocaine yacht parties, the offshore bank accounts with names like "Definitely Not Bribes Ltd."

Except... nothing.

Margaret Thompson, the billionaire widow, was squeaky clean. Cleaner than a Disney star’s publicist’s statement after a DUI. While she hadn’t always adored her husband—because, newsflash, what billionaire couple does?—she’d never cheated. Never touched shady finances. No coke. No gambling. No shadowy Cayman bank accounts.

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