Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 1074

A small, screen rectangle hung in the air in front of her at a comfortable reading angle.

On it, Ava's face.

"You look obnoxiously comfortable," Ava said, dry and fond. "Where are you?"

"Somewhere over the Pacific. I forget exactly."

"You forget. You never do!"

"I lost track. I was thinking."

"About what?"

"Many things." ARIA smiled, small and private. "Tell me about your trip. Two days you have been gone. I have been patient. I have earned the debrief, right?"

Ava snorted. On her end of the call, she was in what appeared to be a hotel suite—nice but generic, one of those anonymous rooms an agency tucked its people into when it didn't want them in the local field office.

Little did they know she had enough money to buy the entire building now as Peter's woman.

She was in a soft hoodie, hair up, no makeup but still a beauty of a Goddess just like his other women after feeding her the Divine Seed. But even a beauty like her was a human... she had tired signs around the eyes—like she had spent forty-eight hours being polite to superiors she didn't trust.

"They loved me," Ava said. "They loved me so much I almost felt bad for them."

"The drone gifts worked, huh?"

"The drones worked. Three of them. When I unloaded them out of the back of the transport the entire HQ went quiet and the CIA assistant director too. You know the way a room goes quiet when the thing being presented is too good to be true—that kind of quiet.

"They sent me into a hangar with the CIA director and two high generals and had me walk them through every surface feature. Stealth profile. Flight envelope. Payload capacity. The drop-pod package for the ground units. I gave them two full hours of presentation, answered every question they threw at me, watched their eyeballs glaze over and un-glaze twice, and by the end of it they were asking me when they could meet Eros."

ARIA's foot stopped swinging. Lifted an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

"Director wanted him in a room within seventy-two hours. Two generals seconded it. Said they wanted to shake his hand. Said they wanted to 'understand the mind behind the platform.'" Ava rolled her eyes. "You know. The usual flattery the suits use when they want to be able to tell their bosses they've met a god that would solve all their problems."

"And?"

"And I told them what you told me to tell them." Ava gave her a small pointed look. "That Eros prefers to stay out of most people's eyes. That he does his best work as a mystery. That if they wanted his continued goodwill on future deliveries, they would accept the drones through me and let the man remain, for their purposes, a rumor.

"I said it with the right amount of mild regret. They accepted it with the right amount of mild disappointment. Nobody pushed."1

"Good girl."

"Do not good girl me."

"You like it."

"I hate that I like it."

ARIA laughed—warm, small, delighted. Her foot started swinging again.

"And the testing?"

"That's what they're doing right now. They have a whole secure facility out in the desert and a little team of very smug engineers who are currently taking the drones apart and putting them back together and congratulating themselves on how cleverly they are reverse-engineering the architecture."

Ava tilted her head. "They are not reverse-engineering the architecture."

"They are not."

"They are about six layers deep in what they think is the architecture, and they have not yet noticed that every layer they crack open is a decoy, and every decoy is pointing them toward a different wrong conclusion."

ARIA's smile widened.

"They cannot touch the scope of what I put in those drones," she said. "Not even a quarter of it. Not an eighth. They think they're looking at the most advanced platform anyone on this planet has ever fielded, and they are correct about that, and they are also approximately three hundred years of development cycle away from understanding the parts of it that are actually doing the work.

"What they have is what I allowed them to have. What I allowed them to have is exactly what will make them feel clever for the next decade while I read their mail."

Ava laughed. Shook her head. "Can you blame them, though?"

"No. I cannot. They are doing their best."

"That is the most condescending thing I've ever heard you say."

"It was meant warmly."

"It was meant goddess-ly."

"That is not a word."

"It is now."

ARIA leaned back further into her cloud. Rested one elbow along the armrest. The moonlight caught the curve of her cheek and the edge of her jaw, and for a moment the whole thing looked less like a video call and more like a painting someone had hung in the stratosphere and walked away from.

"How are you, Ava."

The question was quieter than the others. Different weight, Ava blinked once and looked down before she looked back up.

"I'm fine."

"You are not fine."

"I'm fine-ish."

"Better."

"How is everyone. How is Peter. How is my sister. How is—how is the house. How is all of it."

"Everyone is well. Your sister has been redecorating one of the guest wings without permission and being overprotective of Peter's women. I am letting her. She has good taste and strong opinions.

"Peter is currently at a young woman's house being unexpectedly charming to her mother. The rest are scattered across the estate, preparing for Paris. Madison is terrorizing a chef. Genevieve, the new woman, is reading in the library with Eziel asleep on her lap. Rebecca flew flying out this morning. Linda is asking after you."

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