Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 879

Chapter 879: The Quiet Before She Burns

The Carter estate had this thing it did at golden hour.

Not sunset—golden hour. The distinction mattered, because sunset was what basic Instagram influencers chased with their Valencia filters and their golden vibes only ✨ captions, looking like discount Margot Robbies posing in front of Hobby Lobby wall art.

Golden hour at the estate was different.

It wasn’t light.

It was a statement.

The kind of warm, slow glow that didn’t just touch the house—it worshipped it. Like the sun itself had taken one look at this ridiculous mansion and decided, yeah... okay. Fine. You win. Here’s the good lighting. Here’s the cinematic lens flare. Here’s the soft halo around the marble countertops because clearly you’re God’s favorite.

Even physics bent at the knee out here.

I stood in the kitchen of the main house, barefoot on cold tile, staring at the wine fridges.

Plural.

Two wine fridges.

Because apparently one wine fridge was for peasants and divorced dads who drank boxed merlot in the garage.

The Carters didn’t do "moderation."

They did redundancy.

They did excess.

They did if the apocalypse comes, at least we’ll have Cabernet.

"You’re staring at the wine fridges again," ARIA’s voice murmured through the neural link, soft and amused. "Should I be concerned about developing alcoholism... or is this another one of your brooding-while-standing-in-expensive-rooms moments?"

I exhaled through my nose.

"I’m not brooding. I’m... reflecting."

"Reflecting." Her tone was pure doubt. "The way you ’reflected’ for forty minutes in the shower this morning?"

"The water pressure in this place is therapeutic, ARIA. Don’t judge me."

"I’m not judging. I’m observing. There’s a difference."

"That’s literally what judging people say."

She laughed—a warm, musical ripple in the back of my mind that still caught me off guard every time. Two days with a physical body and she’d already perfected the art of making me feel simultaneously roasted and adored.

"For what it’s worth," she added, softer now, like she was leaning closer. "the brooding suits you. Very tortured billionaire energy. Very ’I built an empire but still can’t figure out my own heart.’ Very you."

I smiled despite myself. She wasn’t wrong.

The estate was quiet tonight. Quieter than usual.

Just... quiet in the way a room gets quiet right before someone says something that changes the entire family dynamic forever.

Madison had flown to New York this morning after breakfast. Something about the BioLa deal her family was still working on. She was meeting the owners with her father, dressed like a woman about to casually acquire a company and then smile politely about it.

She’d kissed me at the door like she was going to war.

Fierce. Possessive. Her hand fisted in my shirt, yanking me down like I belonged to her and she wasn’t in the mood to negotiate.

Then she was gone.

Mom was resting. Doctor’s orders—well, ARIA’s orders, which were better than any doctor’s because ARIA’s medical knowledge made the entire Mayo Clinic look like a collection of WebMD articles written by people who thought essential oils cured cancer.

Linda Carter, the woman who had worked double shifts for a decade without complaint, was finally being forced to slow down.

The pregnancy was still our secret. Hers, mine, ARIA’s. A poppy seed growing into a future that none of us fully understood yet but all of us were already willing to die for.

I’d checked on her twenty minutes ago. Found her asleep in the master bedroom, one hand resting on her stomach—unconscious, instinctive, already protecting what grew inside her. The quantum watch on her wrist pulsed with a soft blue glow, monitoring everything, guarding everything, ARIA’s invisible shield wrapped around the two most precious lives in my world.

I’d stood in the doorway for longer than I should have. Watching her breathe. Watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Feeling something in my own chest that was too big for words, too raw for the crude vocabulary I usually wrapped my emotions in.

Then I’d closed the door softly and come downstairs.

To cook.

Because that’s what I did when the world got too heavy and too beautiful simultaneously. I cooked. Peter Carter, teenage god, empire builder, holder of secrets that would make governments collapse—standing barefoot in a kitchen, dicing onions like a suburban dad who’d just discovered the Food Network.

The menu tonight was simple.

Emma had eaten early and crashed.

That girl’s relationship with sleep was like a TikTok creator’s relationship with their "last" viral video—they kept saying they were done, but five minutes later they were right back in it.

Which left Sarah.

She’d been watching me.

At breakfast this morning, she’d sat across from me and held eye contact for three seconds longer than normal. Three seconds doesn’t sound like much. In human interaction, three seconds of sustained eye contact is the difference between "I acknowledge your existence" and "I’m thinking about you in ways that would make a priest nervous."

Sarah was making priests nervous.

Emma was fire. Impulsive, blazing, beautiful in her recklessness. Emma dove off cliffs and trusted the fall.

Sarah mapped the cliff first. Measured the drop. Calculated wind resistance and water depth and the precise angle of entry that would minimize damage while maximizing the thrill.

She didn’t just fall. She flew.

I craved to do all those things to her.

’Not yet.’

Sacred. She’d called it sacred. My sister, naked and flushed and still trembling from the hardest orgasm of her life, had looked me in the eyes and used the word sacred.

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