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

Chapter 815: A Mother’s Fear

"And how do you expect me to react to that, huh?!"

Dr. Maria voice cracked through the living room like a whip that had clearly missed anger-management training. The windows didn’t actually rattle—physics has standards—but they definitely considered it.

Her dark eyes (the exact pair she’d generously donated to her daughter at birth, no refunds) burned with the same fury she usually reserved for residents who couldn’t tell a scalpel from a soup spoon, hospital admins who thought "budget cuts" was a personality trait, and anyone foolish enough to page her during Gilmore Girls reruns.

But never at Valentina. Not like this. Not with the full nuclear-mother glare.

"Smile?" Maria kept going, stalking the hardwood like a surgeon pacing before a malpractice deposition. "Meet up with him and we talk like I’m so grateful he took my daughter and added her to this—this polycule clearance sale? A harem?! Are you out of your goddamn mind?

"I raised you better than that, Valentina. I raised you to at least demand royalties if you’re going to be part of someone’s collectible series!"

Valentina sat on the couch, hands folded in her lap like she was waiting for Communion instead of an execution. She’d known this conversation would be a bloodbath.

That’s why she’d spent the last six weeks inventing dental emergencies, surprise fourteen-hour shifts, and one very creative excuse chain. But immortality isn’t on the market yet, so hiding was no longer an option.

And she was done apologizing for finally finding people who made her feel like she belonged somewhere instead of just... tolerated.

"Mom—"

"Don’t you ’Mom’ me like I’m about to hand you cookies!" Maria spun, finger out like she was about to perform an emergency tracheotomy with it. "Do you have any idea what you’re telling me? My daughter—my brilliant, beautiful, could-have-been-a-senator-or-at-least-married-one daughter—is splitting one man with how many women? Ten? Twenty? Is there a group chat? Do you have assigned seating? A chore wheel?"

"It’s not like that—"

"Then what IS it like, Valentina? Use small words. Because from where I’m standing it looks like you took every lecture I ever gave you about self-respect, dipped it in kerosene, and used it to light a romantic bonfire."

The words landed like a wet palm across the face.

Valentina’s jaw locked. Something hot and sharp climbed her throat—less hurt little girl and more cornered panther deciding whether to scratch or bite.

She’d come braced for disappointment. For statistics about STD rates and inheritance disputes. For the classic guilt trip. She had not come prepared for her mother to stare at her like she’d just confessed to joining a cult that worships expired yogurt.

"You don’t know him," Valentina said, voice steadier than her pulse. "You’ve never met him. You’ve never seen how he treats me—how he treats all of us. But you’re ready to diagnose him as Human Trash™ based on... what? The headcount?"

"That headcount alone is enough to get him banned from every decent family reunion for three generations!" Maria’s voice was pure venom now. "No—he’s worse. He’s somehow convinced you that being one of seventeen is a personality upgrade. That you deserve to be some man’s... his..."

"His what, Mom?" Valentina rose slowly, voice dropping into that register doctors use right before they say we did everything we could.

"Go ahead. Say the word you’re choking on. Slut? Concubine? Side piece with benefits and emotional labor included?"

Maria’s mouth opened, closed, opened again—like a goldfish auditioning for a horror movie.

"You can’t even say it, can you?" Valentina took one step closer. "Because even you know it sounds like something a bitter 1950s advice columnist would scream before clutching her pearls and dying of irony."

"I’m not his plaything. I’m not a notch. I’m his partner. Yes—one of several. But a partner who is respected. Valued. Loved. You remember love, right? That thing you keep swearing died with chivalry and house calls?"

"Love?" Maria barked a laugh so brittle it could’ve cut glass. "You think that’s love? A man who treats women like he’s curating a Pokémon deck—gotta catch ’em all?"

"He doesn’t collect us. He chooses us. And we choose him. Every morning we wake up and decide—again—that this is worth it. That’s more commitment than most monogamous marriages get before the seven-year itch turns into a full-body rash."

"That’s not how relationships work!"

"Maybe not the relationships you’ve suffered through." Valentina’s tone sharpened to a surgical edge. "But then again, your highlight reel of romantic success isn’t exactly Netflix material, is it?"

Maria flinched like someone had just slapped her with her own medical license.

The room went graveyard quiet.

Valentina saw it happen—the exact second twenty years of carefully buried grief clawed its way back to the surface. Her mother’s shoulders folded inward, her mouth trembled once, and those fierce dark eyes suddenly looked very small.

She didn’t apologize. She didn’t soften the blow.

"When did Dad ever choose you like that?" Valentina asked, quieter now, but the blade was still in. "When did he ever actually listen when you spoke for longer than it took to order takeout? When did he show up when you were falling apart? When did he ever once make you feel like you were the center of his universe instead of just... convenient until some shinier woman walked by?"

"Your father and I—"

"When’s the last time you even laid eyes on him, Mom? Without a lawyer in the room?"

Maria’s mouth clicked shut like a trap.

"That’s what I thought."

The silence stretched so long and heavy it could’ve supported its own gravitational field.

The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. Valentina watched her mother’s face cycle through emotions—anger, hurt, denial, and something that looked almost like grief. The grief of a woman who had spent her whole life following the rules, doing everything right, and still ended up alone.

"He left you," Valentina continued, softer now. "He took his vows of monogamy, his promises of forever, his ’one woman only’ commitment—and he threw them away the first chance he got. How many affairs was it, Mom? Three? Four? How many times did he promise it would never happen again?"

"That’s different—"

"Is it?" Valentina shook her head slowly. "Is it really? Because from where I’m standing, the only difference is that Peter is honest. He doesn’t sneak around. He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t make promises he can’t keep. Every woman in his life knows about the others, and we all chose to be there with full knowledge of what we were getting into."

She let the words hang there like a coroner’s report—clinical, unsparing, and impossible to unhear.

"No hidden mistresses in the attic, no late-night "working late" texts that smelled like perfume and regret. Just paperwork signed in broad daylight." The honesty was almost offensive in its efficiency.

"That doesn’t make it right!"

"Maybe not by your definition. But it makes it real." Valentina’s voice cracked slightly. "And real is more than Dad ever gave you. More than most men ever give anyone." She didn’t say it like a victory lap.

Maria sank into a chair, suddenly looking older than her years. The fight was draining out of her, replaced by something that looked almost like exhaustion. Fifty-two going on defeated.

"I’m not asking you to understand," Valentina said, moving to kneel in front of her mother. "I’m not asking you to approve. I’m just asking you to trust me. Trust that I know what I’m doing. Trust that I’m happy—genuinely, truly happy—for the first time in years."

She knelt like she was asking for last rites, not permission. The posture said: I’m already buried in this. Just don’t shovel dirt on top of me yet.

"How can you be happy sharing—"

"I’m not sharing, Mom. That’s what you don’t understand." Valentina took her mother’s hands, feeling how cold they were, how tightly they trembled. "In a normal relationship, love is a finite resource. There’s only so much to go around, and if someone else gets more, you get less. But with Peter... it’s not like that. He doesn’t divide his love. He multiplies it."

Maria shook her head, not understanding. Of course she didn’t. She’d spent her life budgeting love like it was rationed wartime sugar.

"The women in his life—my sisters, that’s what they’ve become to me—we don’t compete with each other. We support each other. When one of us is struggling, the others lift her up. When one of us succeeds, we all celebrate. We’re a family, Mom. A real family. Not the broken, resentful, everyone-for-themselves kind that I grew up watching fall apart."

The irony sat there like an uninvited guest... the deviant arrangement had produced the functional family unit Maria had spent her whole adult life failing to assemble.

Tears were streaming down Valentina’s face now. She didn’t bother wiping them away. Let them fall. Evidence.

Exhibit A in the trial of her own happiness.

"I love them. Madison, Emma, Charlotte, all of them. They’re my sisters in every way that matters. And I love him—Peter—more than I ever thought I was capable of loving anyone. He sees me. Really sees me. Not just the nurse, not just the pretty face, not just another body to warm his bed. He sees Valentina—all of me, the good and the bad and the complicated—and he loves every piece."

She said it like someone finally getting their full medical history read aloud without flinching.