Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 245

Chapter 245: The Stray’s Bargain

I touched down softly on the cracked sidewalk, the jacket’s systems diffusing the last of my momentum until it felt like stepping off a curb instead of plummeting forty floors. The Miami night wrapped around me, thick and wet—humid air reeking of exhaust, sweat, and fried food from a late-night vendor half a block away.

Distant sirens wailed, bass-heavy music throbbed from some rooftop club, and beneath it all pulsed the restless hum of a city that refused to sleep.

That’s when I saw her.

A lone figure, curled against a chain-link fence like a discarded secret. She looked up as I landed, and for a split second my brain blue-screened.

Eighteen, maybe nineteen. Asian features sharpened by hunger and fear, intelligent dark eyes reflecting the streetlight like polished obsidian. Her long black hair was a mess, strands clinging to her damp skin, but even disheveled it framed her face like art. Her clothes told the story—ripped and smeared with city grime.

A girl from God knows where, thrown into a night she wasn’t built for.

And then her expression shifted.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She recognized me. Or at least, she recognized the thing I was. Her gaze traveled over my jacket, my features, my very presence, and what I saw there wasn’t just awe—it was reverence, like she was staring at a myth she’d been told as a child and suddenly realized was real.

"You..." she whispered in accented English, her finger trembling as she pointed at me. Then, as if words weren’t enough, she stood, spread her arms wide, and tilted her head back toward the towering Setai behind me.

"You fall from..."

She gestured upward, both hands tracing a long, swooping arc down through the night sky, punctuated by a soft whistling sound that somehow captured exactly how my near-death looked from the ground.

"...very high," she said, eyes wide, her breath catching. "Like bird with broken wing."

Then she crouched, fingertips brushing the cracked concrete with a kind of ceremonial grace, before she looked up at me again, movements oddly theatrical but strangely sincere.

"But you land like... like feather. Soft." She mimed it—arms drifting down slow, hair falling over her face as she floated her palms toward the sidewalk. Despite her exhaustion, the motion was beautiful.

"Yeah, that happened," I admitted, glancing up at the tower. From her vantage point, she probably just watched a guy turn suicide-by-gravity into a casual step down. "You saw the whole thing?"

She nodded hard, like a kid confirming Santa Claus was real. Then she raised her hand to her brow in a makeshift salute, scanning the street left and right before whipping her gaze back to me. "I watch for danger men," she said carefully, her words halting but precise. "Then I see you..."

She repeated the falling gesture, more animated now, her face scrunched in dramatic concern.

"First I think—oh no, man will die! Very sad!" Then, just as quickly, she brightened, her hands fluttering down gracefully. "But then you... magic man."

I sighed and reached into my pocket, pulling out a crisp hundred-dollar bill. Money was the universal solvent—it didn’t fix everything, but it solved enough. Whatever problem she represented, I didn’t have time for it.

Margaret was still out there, and every second wasted meant the kidnappers had more ground.

"Here," I said, holding it out. "Get somewhere safe."

She looked at the bill like it was both salvation and insult, her hands trembling as she accepted it with a kind of ceremony. Not snatching, not greedy. Careful. She held it in both palms as if it might dissolve in the humid air, then bowed—an automatic, ingrained motion.

"Thank you, but..." Her voice cracked. She looked up, biting her lower lip, hesitation and shame mixing in her eyes. "...money not fix big problem."

That made me pause.

I studied her—clothes, posture, tone, the subtle bruise half-hidden under her sleeve, the faint tremor in her shoulders. She wasn’t just some random lost girl. She was a loose thread dangling from the same tapestry I’d just ripped apart upstairs.

"What’s your name?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.

Her lips parted. She hesitated, like the syllables themselves might drag me deeper into something I wasn’t supposed to touch.

"Soo-Jin Park."

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