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

Chapter 971: The Gentleman’s Code

If chivalry is dead then I’m the gentleman who showed up to the funeral in a matte-black Lamborghini, slept with the widow in the coatroom, and left a five-star Yelp review for the catering.

People like to pretend morality collapses in dramatic fashion — swords clashing, violins screaming, someone delivering a monologue about honor before falling nobly into the abyss.

In reality it usually dies much more quietly, somewhere between a decision and a good story, preferably while expensive alcohol is involved.

My life has simply been a long series of those moments, and if that makes me the villain then at least, I’m a well-dressed one with excellent transportation and surprisingly supportive accomplices.

Because that’s the funny part.

My women—brilliant, dangerous, slightly unhinged creatures that they are— have never once tried to stop me from making questionable choices.

On the contrary, they treat my moral decline the way a Formula One pit crew treats a driver who insists on taking corners at suicidal speed: with professional admiration, enthusiastic support, and just enough distance to claim plausible deniability when something inevitably catches fire.

Which is how I ended up watching a man’s marriage implode in high-definition while cruising through the city in a Lamborghini.

Because Madison had called while we were still on the road, and instead of the usual boring rectangle of a video chat she simply rotated her Quantum Watch toward the camera like a stage magician revealing the final act.

The interior of restaurant suddenly gained a floating display the size of a respectable television, a shimmering projection so sharp that the poor bastard currently destroying his reputation could probably count his own pores if he’d had the presence of mind to look.

—Genevieve’s husband, former husband, rapidly approaching historical footnote — was in the middle of a public meltdown so theatrical that even Hollywood would’ve asked him to dial it back a little.

Arms flailing, voice cracking, veins standing out along his temple like someone had installed emergency plumbing beneath his skin, he was shouting at a waiter who looked barely old enough to legally drink the champagne he’d been hired to serve.

The kid had the expression of a man who had arrived expecting canapés and polite applause and had instead stumbled into the third act of a divorce proceeding.

Madison, naturally, had taken it upon herself to narrate the event like a wildlife documentary.

"And here," she said in the calm, fascinated tone usually reserved for rare animal sightings, "we observe the endangered Neglectful Husband in his natural habitat: public humiliation. Notice the erratic arm movements and the distinct lack of self-awareness. A truly magnificent specimen."

Charlotte burst out laughing somewhere on the call, Amanda added a comment that I didn’t quite catch but which apparently contained enough venom to send the entire group into hysterics, and I found myself watching the spectacle with the detached appreciation of someone observing a particularly entertaining train wreck.

The man was pointing frantically at the gallery door we had exited through earlier, demanding answers from the terrified waiter about where his wife had gone, with the artist.

The waiter blinked several times, glanced around the room for adult supervision, and briefly considered the advantages of a career change that did not involve wealthy people experiencing emotional collapse within throwing distance of a cheese platter.

Of course the situation didn’t last long.

Helena’s security team materialized with the quiet efficiency of professionals who have spent their entire careers escorting wealthy idiots away from situations they created themselves.

He was guided toward the exit with the gentle firmness usually reserved for drunken relatives at weddings, the difference being that this particular relative had just watched his wife leave with an artist driving a Lamborghini and was discovering in real time that shouting at catering staff does not qualify as a viable recovery strategy.

Then Helena herself appeared on the projection.

Tall, composed, her ponytail pulled back with the kind of precision that suggested it had been engineered rather than styled, she stepped forward and placed a single hand on his shoulder.

It wasn’t a threatening gesture, which was precisely why it worked so well; Helena possessed the rare ability to communicate absolute authority without raising her voice, her hand, or even her eyebrows.

The message was delivered silently and received immediately: the performance was over, the audience was bored, and compliance was now the only available option.

He went from furious husband to cooperative civilian in approximately one and a half seconds.

Thirty seconds later he was outside.

Inside the gallery, the party resumed its usual rhythm — champagne circulating, collectors discussing art with the kind of reverent tone normally reserved for religion, and Celeste smiling with the serene satisfaction of a woman whose evening entertainment had just upgraded itself at no additional cost.

Meanwhile, now, Genevieve sat across from me in a restaurant, watching the entire scene unfold over my shoulder while demolishing a breadstick with the focused intensity of someone who had recently burned through a small nation’s worth of calories.

She was starving, which made perfect sense considering the activities that had preceded dinner.

Her eyes flicked briefly to the holographic projection, registering the technology with the quick intelligence of someone accustomed to wealth but not easily impressed by it. For a moment her gaze widened — the precise widening that happens when a person realizes they have just encountered a category of luxury that sits several tax brackets above their previous experiences — and then the reaction vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

She returned to the menu.

Adaptive. Efficient. Sensible priorities.

I muttered "Quantum tech" to the people around us who were wide eyed, mostly because subtle arrogance is wasted if nobody hears it and turned my attention back to the projection just in time to watch Richard stumble out of the gallery doors and disappear into the night like a disgraced politician leaving a press conference.

Genevieve watched the moment with mild curiosity.

Then she snapped her breadstick in half, chewed thoughtfully, and turned the page of the menu.

That was the entirety of her emotional reaction to witnessing the collapse of her marriage in real time: a breadstick and a page turn.

I loved this woman already. Not in the soft, violin-swelling way poets like to write about love, but in the practical, appreciative way a connoisseur admires a rare piece of craftsmanship.

Genevieve had just watched her marriage implode on a holographic broadcast like it was late-night television, and her primary concern at the moment was deciding between fries and more fries.

That kind of emotional efficiency deserves respect.

So, I asked, casually, the way one asks about the weather or stock prices, where she planned to stay tonight.

She shrugged without looking up from the menu, turning a page with the serene indifference of someone who had already survived the most dramatic part of her evening.

"I’m freaking rich," she said, in the tone people use when someone asks whether water is wet. "And honestly? He’s been handing me this walk-away for years."

Another page turned.

"I was just waiting for the right door," she continued. "Turns out it was a men’s bathroom. Wish I knew ealier."

She glanced up briefly, the ghost of a smile touching her lips.

"Life’s funny like that."

I placed a hand against my chest with theatrical offense.

"So you used me," I said. "Wow. I feel incredibly exploited right now."

She lowered the menu slowly and looked at me with those dark, glittering eyes like I had just delivered the most delightful joke she’d heard in years.

"You feel used?"

Her gaze drifted downward, and she gestured toward pussy.

My charcoal jacket we’d recovered hung loosely over her shoulders, doing a valiant but largely symbolic job of maintaining public decency. Her legs were still slightly unsteady beneath the table, the aftershocks of earlier activities lingering in ways that would’ve made a Victorian faint.

"Sweetheart," she said sweetly, "guess whose evening involved significantly more... exertion."

I opened my mouth.

"It was mine," she continued before I could respond. "The answer is mine. So between the two of us, I’m fairly confident I win the Exploitation Olympics."

I considered that for a moment.

"...Fair enough."

"Yeah," she said, lifting the menu again with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had just won a legal argument. "Fair enough."

At that moment the waiter approached.

Young guy. Early twenties at most. Nervous in the particular way service workers get when their table looks like the opening scene of a scandal they’ll later describe to friends with exaggerated hand gestures.

He’d been hovering near us for at least two minutes, trying to solve the visual equation in front of him.

On one side of the table: a woman wearing nothing but a man’s jacket.

On the other: a teenager who looked like he’d been sculpted by a god artist who despised mediocrity.

Between us sat a Lamborghini key fob, gleaming under the restaurant lighting like a small, expensive punctuation mark.

His eyes kept bouncing between the elements of the scene.

Genevieve.

The jacket.

Her legs.

The key.

Back to me.

Back to the key.

Back to Genevieve.

You could practically hear the gears in his brain grinding as he tried to reconcile curiosity with the universal rule of hospitality: do not ask questions you are not emotionally prepared to hear answered.