Chapter 229: Goddesses Choose Their Altar The rooftop stopped being an engagement party the second our circle formed—it was less toasting the happy couple and more season premiere of The Bachelor: Narcissist Edition. What began as polite hellos morphed into the kind of gathering that happens when women who haven’t been touched since the Obama administration suddenly realize salvation has arrived in the form of me, poured into a Tom Ford tux. Forget literature, politics, or anything resembling adult conversation—we were playing the world’s oldest game: seduction, masquerading as networking. I was the sun, and they were orbiting planets, each spinning with their own flavor of desperate gravity. Madison to my right, heiress cosplay dialed up to HBO drama levels. Charlotte, clinically fascinated like she was writing her dissertation on Male Ego in the Wild. Amanda, glowing so hard from the attention that I briefly wondered if pregnancy tests now came in LED. And Margaret—ah, Margaret—conducting the whole thing like she was unveiling her art exhibit, except her prize piece was me, framed in tuxedo and arrogance. Then the reinforcements came. Vivienne, emerald-eyed and divorce-fueled like a cougar reboot of Sex and the City. Anastasia, oozing heiress energy so thick it smelled like generational wealth. Gabrielle, straight out of a Renaissance painting, though probably the one where everyone’s sinning in the background. Plus, two newcomers... Celeste, the art gallery owner, cataloging me like a priceless piece that needed further inspection under better lighting. And Ashby—dear God, Isabelle—whose French accent could make a tax audit sound like foreplay. And then—my favorite part—the men tried to join. "Ladies," Harold swaggered over like a mall cop guarding his Cinnabon, "perhaps we should—" Amanda didn’t even bother to look at him. "Harold, darling, we’re discussing European art acquisitions. You’d be dreadfully bored." Back off, Dollar Store fiancé. Daddy’s busy. Harold blinked, shuffled, and retreated like a golden retriever who just had his chew toy stolen. This wasn’t a conversation anymore; this was a fortress. Husbands, boyfriends, exes—they all bounced off the invisible forcefield these women had built around me. Their body language screamed: He’s ours. Touch the tux and die. Vivienne dealt the final blow. "Robert," she purred at her ex-husband hovering nearby, "why don’t you go network with the other men? We’re discussing... feminine perspectives on business." Robert, bless him, actually tried: "But Viv, I thought we could—" "Robert." Her smile had the same energy as a guillotine blade mid-swing. "We’re busy." He wilted like a canceled Netflix show—here one minute, gone the next—while I stood there basking, the star of my own rooftop reality TV disaster special. Anastasia’s husband—Viktor, the kind of man who thought a Rolex was a substitute for personality—finally decided to stake his claim. He slid into our circle like a shareholder barging into a board meeting. "Anastasia, we should discuss the Whitman merger with Harold—" She didn’t even glance at him. "Viktor," she said, her eyes locked on me like I was the only man alive, "I’m sure Harold would love to hear about profit margins. We’re discussing much more... stimulating topics." The word lingered between us, heavy with suggestion. Viktor caught it, turned red, and looked like he’d just been benched on his own team. Territorial rage simmered under his skin, but it didn’t matter—the crowd had chosen its king. One by one, the men fell away. Dismissed. Discouraged. Defeated. They looked around, suddenly irrelevant in their own relationships, while the women leaned closer, remembering they had choices beyond stability and bank accounts. "So, Eros," Margaret purred, reclaiming her seat like a hostess introducing the headline act, "Charlotte’s been terribly discreet about your business ventures. What exactly do you... specialize in?" I leaned back, letting silence and confidence work harder than any resume. My presence filled the space the way expensive cologne fills an elevator—inescapable, intoxicating, and a little dangerous. "I solve problems others consider impossible," I said. "Clients usually come to me after exhausting every conventional option. That’s when they’re ready for... unconventional solutions." Anastasia laughed, a sharp, knowing sound. Her world revolved around patents and pills—she understood the power of ambiguity better than most. "Delightfully vague. And profitable, I imagine?" "Extremely," I replied, my tone just shy of arrogant. Enough to remind them I belonged in this rarefied air, but not enough to cheapen it with bragging. "Though the most rewarding work isn’t financial. It’s helping people discover what they truly need, not just what they think they want." The words hung there, humid and heavy, impossible to ignore. Double-edged, unmistakable, and aimed straight at the softest parts of their pride. Celeste tilted forward, amber eyes appraising me like a curator evaluating a piece too valuable to sell. "And what," she asked, "would you say is the most common problem among your clientele?" I let her hold the silence before answering. "Unfulfilled potential. People who’ve settled for less than they deserve... because no one ever showed them better options existed." I didn’t have to add the obvious: better options were sitting right here, in a tuxedo, with a smile sharp enough to cut silk. The silence that followed was thick enough to bottle and sell as perfume. Recognition, confession, hunger—it was all there, written across their faces. Each woman looked at me the way someone does when they’ve just been diagnosed by a stranger and realized the stranger is right. "Remarkably insightful," Ashby murmured, her accent turning confession into seduction. God bless the French—only they could make self-awareness sound like foreplay. "And sadly, accurate for many women in our social sphere." "Ashby’s right," Amanda added, her voice gathering momentum like a plane breaking through turbulence. "We’re conditioned to be grateful for financial security, but what about other forms of satisfaction?" Margaret tried to intervene, matriarchal instincts kicking in. "Amanda—" "No, Margaret." Amanda cut her off with a flick of her diamond ring, the gesture as dismissive as it was blinding. She waved toward Harold, sulking with the other neutered husbands. "For once, I want to talk about what we actually want. Not what we’ve been programmed to accept." That was the crack in the dam. The air pulsed with unspoken truths, with decades of suppressed hunger. These women were circling the admission that their marriages were business transactions, that their needs had been shelved like outdated décor, that they were starving—and I was the five-course meal they’d been pretending not to notice. Vivienne, naturally, was the first to let propriety die. She smiled, slow and wicked. "Well, if we’re being honest... Eros represents exactly the kind of opportunity most of us assumed only existed in fantasy novels." "Vivienne!" Celeste gasped, but her laugh betrayed her. "What? Look at him." Vivienne gestured at me with the finality of someone dropping the mic. "When was the last time any of you met a man who looked like that, spoke like that, and actually gave a damn about your mind?" "Never," Anastasia said, her voice clipped and deadly serious. "Absolutely never." Gabrielle’s bitterness followed like a knife. "My husband hasn’t asked about my thoughts—or my feelings—in at least five years." And just like that, the circle expanded. Sophia, the museum curator with dark hair and sharper eyes, abandoned her husband mid-sentence. "Excuse me," she told him, cool as glass, "but they’re discussing something far more compelling than quarterly projections." Her husband’s jaw flapped, but Sophia dismissed him with a wave—like a queen excusing a servant. She slid into our circle with relief and an edge of defiance. "My husband thinks intellectual stimulation means reviewing stock portfolios." It became a pattern. Women arrived like pilgrims, drawn by the promise of something dangerous, real. One by one, they joined, dismissed their men, and leaned into the gravity well I’d created. My private constellation kept expanding, stars breaking orbit to settle around me. I decided to reward them. "Ladies," I said, my voice pitched to carry the warmth of sincerity and the arrogance of inevitability, "I have to say... this is the most enlightening conversation I’ve had in months. You’re all remarkably inspiring." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞 "Inspiring how?" Margaret asked, and I knew she wanted me to aim the arrow straight at her heart. "You remind me that intelligence and beauty aren’t mutually exclusive," I said smoothly. "Too often, successful women are told they must choose between achievement and satisfaction. You’ve just proven that assumption is complete bullshit." The profanity cracked the veneer like champagne against a ship’s hull. Laughter burst out, real and unguarded. "Finally," Celeste sighed, "a man who understands we’re not decorative objects." "Though," Ashby added, her smile pure mischief, "we don’t mind being appreciated as such by the right person." And that was it—the moment the air shifted from heated debate to sexual voltage. The tension thickened, clung, pressed down like humidity before a storm. Every woman was leaning in, every gaze sharpened. You could cut it with a stiletto—though personally, I preferred sharper tools.