Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 816

Chapter 816: Valentina Luna’s Game

Maria’s eyes were wet now too. The dam had cracked. Not from agreement—from recognition. From seeing her daughter wear the same look Maria herself had worn once, long ago, before life sandblasted it off her face.

"When I’m with him, I feel... whole." Valentina’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Like I finally found the place I was always supposed to be. Like every wrong turn and every heartbreak and every lonely night was just leading me to this. To him. To them. To us."

A long silence.

Maria stared at her daughter—this woman who had somehow grown up without her noticing, who had become someone strong and certain and terrifyingly in love. Terrifying because love that certain usually ends in someone getting sectioned or sectioned off.

"I don’t understand this," Maria finally said, her voice rough. "I don’t understand any of it. A man with multiple women... in my day, we had a word for men like that. Several words, none of them kind."

Polygynist. Womanizer. Walking divorce settlement. Take your pick from the 1970s vocabulary of contempt.

"I know."

"I look at you, and I see my little girl. The one who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms. The one who cried for a week when her goldfish died. The one I promised I would always protect." Maria’s voice broke.

"And now you’re telling me you’ve given your heart to a man who has... how many others? And I’m just supposed to accept that?"

The little girl was still in there, somewhere—except now she was grown, armed with consent forms and emotional intelligence, and the monster under the bed had turned out to be a support group.

"You’re supposed to trust me." Valentina squeezed her mother’s hands. "Trust that I’m not the naive little girl who believed in fairy tales. Trust that I went into this with my eyes open, knowing exactly what it was. Trust that I found something rare and precious and real, even if it doesn’t look like what you expected for me."

Trust that your baby grew fangs and wings and flew straight into the one storm that finally felt like shelter.

"And if I can’t?"

"Then you can’t. But I’ll still love him, Mom. And I’ll still love you. Those two things don’t have to be in conflict." Brutal arithmetic: love doesn’t cancel itself out just because the columns don’t add up the way you were taught.

Maria was quiet for a long moment, her gaze distant, lost in thoughts Valentina couldn’t follow. Probably tallying every mistake, every compromise, every night she’d cried into a pillow so her daughter wouldn’t hear.

"He makes you happy?" she finally asked. "Truly happy?"

"More than I have words for."

"And these other women... you really see them as sisters?"

"I would die for them. Any of them. Without hesitation." Said with the calm certainty of someone who’d already mentally drafted the organ-donor card.

Another pause. Maria’s jaw worked, wrestling with something. Probably the ghost of every lecture she’d ever given about "standards" and "self-worth," now strangling each other in her throat.

"I want to meet him."

Valentina blinked. "What?"

"This Peter." Maria’s voice was still hard, still resistant, but there was something else beneath it now. Resignation, maybe. Or the first fragile shoots of acceptance. "If my daughter is going to throw her life away on this... arrangement... then I want to look the man in the eye. I want to see for myself what kind of person could make my Valentina believe this insanity is love."

"Mom—"

"I’m not promising anything." Maria held up a hand. "I’m not saying I’ll approve, or accept, or give you my blessing. I’m saying I’ll meet him. That’s all."

Translation: I’m not signing the marriage certificate. I’m just buying a ticket to the train wreck so I can decide whether to pull the emergency brake or bring popcorn.

Valentina felt something loosen in her chest. Not victory—it wasn’t about winning. But relief. Hope. The first crack in a wall she’d feared would never come down. A crack small enough for light. Big enough to maybe, someday, fit forgiveness through.

"Thank you," she whispered. "That’s all I’m asking."

"Don’t thank me yet." Maria’s eyes hardened again, just slightly. "If I don’t like what I see, I’ll tell you. And if he hurts you—if any of this falls apart the way I think it will—I’ll be here. Waiting. Ready to help you pick up the pieces."

The eternal promise of every mother who’s ever watched her child run headfirst into traffic... I’ll still be standing on the sidewalk with the first-aid kit and a very long "I told you so."

"And if it doesn’t fall apart? If this is real, and lasting, and everything I believe it to be?"

"Then I’ll learn to live with being wrong." She reached out, cupped Valentina’s face in her hands—a gesture so achingly maternal that it made Valentina’s heart clench.

"But you’re still my baby, Valentina. No matter how old you get, no matter what choices you make, no matter how many ’sisters’ you acquire... you’ll always be my baby. And I will never stop worrying about you."

The words landed soft, like a lullaby laced with arsenic—comforting until you remember the poison is still in the cup.

Valentina leaned into her mother’s touch, tears flowing freely now. Letting them fall was easier than explaining how those same tears had once been spent on different men, different promises, different versions of "forever" that all ended in the same obituary column.

Or the quiet terror that one day the child will outgrow needing rescue and the mother will be left holding an empty first-aid kit.

"How about a bet?"

Maria blinked. "A what?"

"Valentina—"

"You’re... you’re serious?"

"Completely."

The confidence wasn’t arrogance. It was arithmetic. She’d already run the numbers: exposure plus proximity equals capitulation. Or at least delicious, inevitable compromise.

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