Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 454

Chapter 454: Ritual

I descended those stairs like they were built for this exact purpose—which, honestly, they probably were. Somewhere in England, some perpetually underpaid engineer had calculated the precise height, angle, and surface texture required to make billionaires feel like exiting gods from their personal chariots.

The 7-Eleven door chimed my entrance—the cheerful, plastic electronic sound a jarring contrast to the silent luxury I’d just left.

Inside, fluorescent lights hummed slightly off-key, and that distinctive, glorious smell hit me: coffee burned three hours too long, cleaning chemicals fighting a losing battle against the Florida humidity, and hot dogs rotating on greasy heated rollers since probably the Bush administration.

I pressed the door release, and the Phantom’s suicide door swung open on hinges engineered to feel weightless, despite probably weighing more than a smart car. The steps extended automatically—motorized stairs deploying with whisper-quiet precision, the polished aluminum catching the afternoon light like consecrated jewelry.

Because gods forbid a person in a Rolls-Royce actually have to step down to the pavement like some kind of common peasant.

Utterly barbaric.

The cashier’s eyes went wide. First at the Phantom through the window—a matte-black spaceship parked in his lot like it owned the place—then wider still when he saw me.

An Armani suit that cost more than his entire year’s salary, walking through his fluorescent-lit kingdom like I owned it, heading straight for the refrigerated section with the purposeful stride of a man on a holy mission.

I found it exactly where it should be: bottom shelf, tucked behind all the overpriced organic bullshit that pretended to be healthier despite likely having the exact same ingredients.

Hidden among all the respectable adult beverages—coconut water and cold-pressed juices and whatever the fuck kombucha was supposed to do for your gut biome.

My salvation. My sacrament.

My. Strawberry. Milk.

Not some artisanal, small-batch, craft beverage with hand-drawn labels and a heartfelt story about sustainable farming on a small family-owned farm. Not some imported Japanese luxury drink in minimalist designer packaging.

Not even the organic hipster version that cost four times as much and tasted exactly the fucking same.

Just regular-ass, nuclear-pink strawberry milk. The kind of stuff elementary school kids bought with their lunch money. The kind that came in a wax-coated cardboard carton and had an ingredient list that read like a chemistry experiment designed in a sugar-fueled fever dream.

Strawberry flavoring. High fructose corn syrup. Red 40. All the shit that probably glowed under blacklight and gave nutritionists panic attacks.

It was perfect.

I grabbed one—the carton cool and slightly damp with condensation—and walked to the counter. I set it down between the scratch-off lottery tickets and the beef jerky, then pulled out my wallet.

The cashier just stared. At the strawberry milk. At my suit. At the Phantom visible through the window, looking like it was about to achieve sentience and vaporize his store. His brain was visibly short-circuiting, trying to reconcile these three mutually exclusive realities into some kind of coherent narrative.

"Just this?" he managed, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.

"Yeah."

"That’ll be, uh, two seventy-nine."

I handed him a hundred-dollar bill. Because of course I didn’t have anything smaller. I hadn’t needed to carry anything smaller than a hundred in weeks. Once you start measuring your net worth in six figures on a slow day, carrying twenties starts to feel quaint, almost rustic.

He held the bill up to the light, checking for the watermark like I was running some kind of elaborate, high-stakes, strawberry-milk-based counterfeiting operation. Apparently satisfied that it wasn’t a prop from a movie, he opened the register and started counting out change with hands that shook slightly.

"Keep it," I said.

He froze; a stack of twenties clutched in his palm. "What?"

"The change. Keep it."

"Sir, that’s... that’s ninety-seven dollars and twenty-one cents."

"I can do basic math, my man. Keep it." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The cashier’s expression suggested I had just personally funded his next three months of ambition—whether that ambition took the form of top-shelf weed, overdue rent, or simply the profound peace that only a stack of unexpected Benjamins can provide.

"Thank you. Thank you. Holy shit, thank you," he stammered, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

I grabbed the strawberry milk and made my escape before he could try to hug me or offer me his firstborn child. The Phantom’s motorized stairs waited patiently, still extended, still perfect.

I ascended back into the climate-controlled cathedral of British engineering, my cardboard carton clutched like a holy relic.

I settled back into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed with that distinctive thunk—a sound so perfectly engineered it probably cost more than a kidney transplant. I cracked open the carton.

"Ahhh~~ the taste... gods!"

"It’s called having layers, ARIA. Complexity of character."

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