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Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 858

Chapter 858: The Princess and Her Thorns

I could tell she was pressed by something today.

The Aurelia call.

I’d heard about it from ARIA on the drive over. Charlotte Thompson—the sweetest soul I’d ever met, the woman who’d paid bail for employees who’d betrayed her, who’d given severance to assistants who’d sabotaged her—had told someone to go to hell.

And it was eating her alive.

"Hey, princess."

Her head came up. Those soft brown eyes found mine, and something in them cracked. Not broke—Charlotte was stronger than that. But cracked, like ice under pressure, like glass that had taken one hit too many.

"Peter." She tried to smile. Failed. Tried again.

"Come on. We’re going to dinner."

"Peter, I can’t just—"

"You can. You’re the CEO. You can do whatever the hell you want." I wiggled my fingers. "Come on, Thompson. Don’t make me carry you."

She looked at my hand for a long moment. Then at my face. Then back at my hand.

She took it.

****

Charlotte drove.

Not because I couldn’t—but because she needed something to focus on. Something to occupy her hands while her mind processed whatever storm was raging behind those gentle eyes.

Her car was a Mercedes S-Class. Black. Understated. Very Charlotte.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she pulled out of Quantum Tech’s underground parking.

"La Maison. That French place in Beverly Hills."

"Peter, that place has a three-month waiting list."

"Had." I smiled. "Amazing what a few phone calls can accomplish when you’re technically a billionaire."

She glanced at me. "You’re not technically a billionaire. You are a billionaire."

"Semantics."

"Math."

"Same thing."

She laughed again. Still small. But less broken this time.

We drove in comfortable silence for a few blocks. LA traffic was being LA traffic—aggressive, impatient, a constant symphony of honking and brake lights. Charlotte navigated it with the absent competence of someone who’d grown up in this city, hands steady on the wheel, eyes forward.

But I could see her jaw tightening. Could see the way her fingers gripped the leather a little too hard.

"You want to talk about it?" I asked.

"No."

"Okay."

More silence.

Then: "She called me an incompetent heiress."

I waited.

"On Bloomberg. A year ago. When I’d just inherited Dad’s company and everyone had opinions about whether I deserved it." Charlotte’s voice was flat. Controlled. The voice of someone reciting facts rather than reliving pain. "She said I was nepotism dressed up as succession planning. That even my panties were daddy money."

"Aurelia Royce."

"You know her?"

"Know of her now. Kingsley Private Equity princess."

Charlotte’s lips twitched. Almost a smile. "She wanted a meeting. Wanted to discuss ’investment opportunities.’ Like she didn’t spend an entire television interview explaining why I was going to fail."

"And?"

"I told her to go to hell." Charlotte’s hands tightened on the wheel. "I told Amanda to tell her she could take her investment opportunities and shove them directly up her—" She stopped. Breathed. "I don’t talk like that. I don’t think like that. I’ve forgiven people who’ve done so much worse to me."

"Because she didn’t betray me," Charlotte said finally. "She just... dismissed me. Before she even knew me. She looked at my name and my inheritance and decided I was nothing. That I would always be nothing. And she announced it to the world like it was fact. Peter, do you imagine being humiliated before the entire world when all you ever did was takeover your father’s business. No choice, by a person who you’ve never even met or wronged. Yes, she was wright about most of everything. But why humiliate me like that. It hurt. I am human too!"

"Because it’s not... it’s not me. I don’t tell people to go to hell. I don’t hold grudges. I’m supposed to be better than that."

"Charlotte." I shifted in my seat to face her properly. "Being a good person doesn’t mean being a doormat. It doesn’t mean forgiving everyone who hurts you and letting them back into your life to do it again.

"Sometimes being a good person means protecting yourself. Setting boundaries. Telling toxic people to fuck off so you can keep being good to the people who actually deserve it."

"You know what I see when I look at you?" I continued. "I see someone who has given and given and given to people who never gave back. Who’s been kind to a world that treated her kindness like weakness. Who keeps showing up with an open heart even though that heart has been stomped on more times than I can count."

"Peter—"

I squeezed her hand again. "You told Aurelia Royce to go to hell. Good. She deserved it. You’re not a bad person for protecting yourself, Charlotte. You’re just a good person who’s finally learning that she doesn’t have to take shit from everyone to stay good."

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