Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 638

Chapter 638: The Lockdown Order

Blood pooled under me, warm and sticky, spreading across the concrete in abstract shapes that probably meant something very important to trauma surgeons and absolutely nothing good for me.

My right arm had checked out entirely. No pain, no sensation, just dead weight, like it had rage-quit the body mid-fight. My chest burned with every shallow breath, lung punctured, ribs grinding together in ways ribs were never meant to discover about each other.

Pretty sure the human skeleton wasn’t designed to sound like a bag of broken glow sticks.

But my mind was clear. Crystal fucking clear.

Which felt unfair, honestly. If I was going to be bleeding out in a parking garage on my birthday, the least my brain could do was shut up and let me hallucinate beaches or something.

The neural buds were still active, ARIA’s presence humming in my head like she was sitting beside me instead of scattered across a thousand servers and a terrifying amount of infrastructure I probably should’ve fireproofed better.

"ARIA." My voice came out wrong. Wet. Gargled. More blood than consonants.

"I’m here." Steady. Controlled. Professional. But under it, I could hear the tension, like a violin string pulled just short of snapping. "Ambulance is ninety seconds out. Peter, you need to—"

"Listen." I coughed, copper flooding my mouth again. Awesome. Love that flavor. "The estate. Take them there. All of them. Lock it down. Full security protocol."

Silence. Half a second, but loud. Then: "That’s military-grade siege protocol. Peter, that’s—"

"I know what it is." Another cough. More blood. At this point I was basically a leaking Capri Sun. "No one in. No one out. I don’t care if Madison orders you to open the gates. I don’t care if my mother begs. I don’t care if they threaten to brick your servers. You do not let anyone leave that property until I personally confirm their life is out of danger. Understood?"

"Peter, they’re going to fight this. Madison’s already trying the impossible of override my vehicle controls to turn around. Your mother is—"

"I don’t give a fuck what they want as of now. It is suicide!"

The words came out darker than I expected, edged with something cold and sharp that surprised even me.

Guess almost dying really brings out the dictator energy.

"The estate is a fortress," I went on. "Twelve-foot walls. Armed security. Surveillance systems that make the Pentagon look like a 7-Eleven with a camera duct-taped to the ceiling. Anyone tries to get in without authorization dies before they reach the front door. They’re safe there. Safer than anywhere else on this planet."

My vision flickered. Gray chewed in from the edges like an old TV losing signal. I clenched my jaw and forced focus, because apparently spite was still powering my brain.

"But out here?" I continued. "Out there? They’re targets. Dmitri knows their faces. Knows their cars. Knows their patterns. And he just proved he’s willing to redecorate parking garages with human beings to make a point. So you lock them down, ARIA. You keep them inside those walls until I tell you otherwise. Even if they hate me for it. Even if they never forgive me. They stay alive."

"Understood," she said quietly. "Security protocol engaging. Estate lockdown in effect. They’re not going to like this."

"They don’t have to like it," I muttered. "They just have to survive it."

Valets hovered over me, pressing whatever they had against the holes in my body—jackets, shirts, someone’s expensive-ass tie that probably cost more than my first year of groceries.

The pressure hurt worse than the bullets, like they were trying to shove my organs back inside manually, which, to be fair, they kind of were.

Sirens screamed closer. Thirty seconds. Maybe less.

Ava’s voice cut in, and she sounded wrecked. No polish. No composure. Just tired fear.

"Peter, there’s more. You need to know why this happened."

"Dmitri," I said.

"Yes. But it’s worse than you think." She took a breath. Completely unnecessary for an agent like her, which somehow made it worse. "He’s been gone for months. Completely off-grid after Miami. We thought he might be dead. Hoped, maybe."

"Shame," I muttered.

"But two weeks ago he resurfaced. Made contact with Vincent and Antonio."

Vincent and Antonio. The other two vultures from the triumvirate I’d burned down. The PMC commander and the media mogul. Arrested. Shackled. Empires reduced to court exhibits. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"They’re in prison," I said.

"They are," Ava confirmed. "Federal detention. Separate facilities. But Dmitri reached them anyway. We don’t know how—corrupted guards, coded messages, old-school methods intelligence agencies hate because they can’t automate paranoia. Point is, he made contact. And they gave him resources."

I coughed again, blood bubbling up like my lungs were trying to quit in protest. "Good. Fuck him."

"Good," I said again, because consistency is important. "Fuck him twice."

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