Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 288

Chapter 288: "Come to Room 124"

"Know where Vincent buries his real dirty secrets too. Three little black sites the government’s intel lapdogs haven’t sniffed yet. Training camps that’d make Abu Ghraib look like a fucking summer camp arts-and-crafts session." I leaned in, letting the weight settle.

"Dmitri’s real business model? But I assume you already know... It’s not just moving people. It’s parts, sweetie. Organ rings, weapons for any psycho with a hashtag, underage girls delivered like pizza to the corridors of power. Names, dates, video _proof_. Senators who like ’em young. Judges who like ’em quiet. CEOs who like ’em both. Compromised."

I stopped short of handing over my entire ARIA Rolodex, of course. Enough to ignite the fuse; not enough to make me the next exhibit.

"Proof?" Her voice was tight.

"Timestamped, watermarked, wrapped in a bow made of prosecutorial dreams. Everything your D.A. needs to send these cockroaches to the darkest hole we can find." I let the implication hang there like the stench of rot in a sealed room.

"And you’re just... giving this to me?" Her grey eyes narrowed to slits. Suspicion waltzed with naked greed in her pupils. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"In exchange for one tiny, insignificant detail." I spoke the name like it was a benediction and a threat. "Charlotte Thompson."

"The Quantum Tech wunderkind?"

"Those three vultures – Vincent, Dmitri, Antonio’s corpse-to-be – bought a fat twenty percent slice of her company with their illegal money." My lip curled. "Graft money. Blood money. Trafficking money. Tainted cash means tainted ownership. Expose the taint? Void the buy. Those shares become radioactive waste. No board stacked by vultures. Just her, her mother’s five percent, and a company uncompromised by criminals. Just her!"

Ava’s jaw worked, crunching legal angles. "You want the buy-in nullified. Wiped."

"I want Charlotte whole. Her board, her company. Not some nest of vultures picked by the very scum trying to gut her. Just her. Her mother’s five percent. And a Quantum Tech not built on bones and bribes." Simple. Almost pure. A diamond in this sewer.

She turned the drive over in her hand, the plastic catching the bar light like a small, obscene sun. "This eighteen billion... that’s evidence too?" She wasn’t asking. She was confirming the jackpot.

"Every stolen dollar. Expose it? The state seizes it like the proceeds of crime it is. Vincent’s PMC gets dismantled and folded into some boring alphabet agency. Dmitri’s network gets starved and shattered. Antonio’s little intelligence bazaar gets papered over with top-secret stamps and forgotten. Your case stops being ’a good shot’ and becomes an inevitable fucking tidal wave."

"And if I tell you to shove this detonator where the sun don’t shine?" Her vodka glass was suddenly very interesting.

"Then the government finds out eventually. Slower. Messier. More bodies. More embarrassing headlines. Maybe Marcus Webb throws a live grenade into an election cycle. Maybe some PMC goon decides freelance is more fun. I’m offering you clean: Evidence pre-packaged, transfers forensically tracked, political flak jackets issued. Your timeline. My conditions. Charlotte. Whole."

She drained her vodka in one efficient movement, pure defiance and calculation. Set the glass down with a sharp clink like a verdict. "You’re playing the government, Eros."

"Only insofar as the government has been playing itself into a fucking corner for decades," I countered, leaning back. "I’m just... accelerating the inevitable." Like kicking a wobbly house of cards before the breeze does.

Paranoid? Please. It wasn’t paranoia when the entire global economy and a handful of psychotic billionaires were the punchline to a joke you hadn’t even told yet. And I? I was holding the goddamn microphone.

"And if it eases you mind... I’m playing everyone," I admitted, like a magician revealing the trapdoor. "But in this specific circus tent? Everyone wins. You get Vincent and Dmitri—the two most rabid vultures in the flock. The government gets their assets, billions they’ll probably piss away on drones or hookers. Charlotte gets her life back. And I?" I leaned back, letting the grin steal across my face.

"What about Antonio Rivera?" she pressed, because lawyers always poke the bear after you’ve just handed it the picnic basket.

I met her stare, letting the temperature drop ten degrees. "Antonio? Oh, he’s my little pet project. More... intimate plans." I made it sound like a date with a bone saw. "Think less seizure, more meat locker. Less paperwork, more regret."

She stood scooping up the thumb drive like it was a live grenade with a loose pin. "I need to verify this fairy tale."

A real smile fractured her composure then—not warmth, but predatory acknowledgment, sharp enough to draw diamond dust from the air. "No," she countered, voice low and full of gravel. "You’d just use whatever bio-software glitch makes every woman in this bar look at you like you’re dessert."

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