Chapter 593: As Broken Pieces Heal... A/N: @Jessierose3600 this Chapter is yours, I have been waiting for the time to upload it, thanks for your patience. The penthouse smelled like emotional warfare—expensive perfume mixing with the sharp tang of nervous sweat, coffee that had gone cold an hour ago, and that particular LA afternoon heat that made floor-to-ceiling windows feel like they were conducting electricity straight into my skull. Patricia and Sofia Delgado sat across from each other on my sectional like two generals who’d finally agreed to put down their weapons but still weren’t sure about the ceasefire. Madison stood by the window, arms crossed, playing referee. I leaned against the kitchen island, watching three weeks of careful manipulation finally pay off. [DING! MISSION COMPLETED!] [MISSION: PERFECT LIBERATION] [REQUIREMENTS: Liberate Patricia Morrison and Sofia Delgado from sexual starvation and the dread of a lifetime sentence of mediocre dick.] [REWARDS: Processing...] I stood in the penthouse living room, frozen, staring at the system notification floating in my vision. For weeks—weeks—I’d been waiting for this fucking notification. Patricia had become mine two days after I’d revealed who I was. She’d agreed to join the harem, accepted her place in the empire we were building, even started attending the group video calls with the other women. I’d thought that would trigger the mission completion. It hadn’t. Then Sofia had fully committed, moving some of her things into the estate in a room Madison had claimed for her, laughing with Luna and Emma like they’d been friends for years instead of months. I’d thought that would trigger it. It hadn’t. The system missions were proving to be more complicated as they went on. More nuanced. Less about just the physical act of liberation and more about... something deeper. I’d spent two weeks trying to figure out what the fuck the system wanted. Turned out, it wanted reconciliation. Patricia held Sofia while the younger woman sobbed into her shoulder. Patricia’s hand stroked Sofia’s dark hair with maternal gentleness that made my chest tight, murmuring apologies that had taken three weeks to finally surface. It had taken me weeks to figure out this was what needed to happen. Sofia had admitted it during one of our late-night conversations—that she kind of hated Patricia for Jack’s actions. That seeing Patricia at events, at family dinners, watching her smile and play the perfect society wife while her son systematically destroyed Sofia’s and other girl’s self-worth, had built up poison in Sofia’s heart. She’d hated Patricia with the kind of bitter, helpless rage that come from being trapped. And I’d realized—this mission wouldn’t complete until that hatred was resolved. Patricia had her own nightmare. Years married to Richard Morrison, a man who couldn’t satisfy her, who’d been ruined sexually by my birth mother and took his inadequacy out on Patricia through neglect and coldness. Years of watching her son become a copy of his father—entitled, cruel, using women as props for his ego. She’d tried to intervene, but Richard had shut her down every time, told her she was being dramatic, that boys would be boys. And Patricia, sexually starved and emotionally beaten down, had stopped fighting. Sofia deserved to know that truth. Not as an excuse. But as context. **** The divorce had been the first step. Patricia Morrison was now Patricia Mercy again—her maiden name reclaimed, her identity separate from Richard’s for the first time in twenty years. The settlement had been brutal. He had tried to fuck her over financially, but Patricia’s lawyers—paid for by Liberation Holdings because fuck Richard Morrison—had torn him apart. She’d walked away with some vacation house, half of his assets (not part of the 15% shares of Morrison Constructions, those were hers), and a restraining order that kept him minimum five hundred feet away at all times. Jack had taken his father’s side, of course. Disowned his mother publicly, called her a whore on social media, tried to rally support. It had backfired spectacularly when multiple women came forward with stories of Jack’s abuse. Not coordinated—ARIA had made sure of that, just gentle nudges to the right people at the right times—but enough to shift public perception from "poor Jack, his mother abandoned the family" to "holy shit, Jack Morrison is a fucking predator." The Morrison family name was in shambles. And Patricia was free. But that freedom had come with complications. Three weeks ago: "You’re Peter fucking Carter?" Patricia’s voice had been hollow. Shocked. We’d been in her newly-reclaimed vocation house in Beverly Hills, in the bedroom I’d fucked her in a dozen times as Eros, and I’d finally told her the truth. Patricia had run when I told her I was Peter Carter. Three days of radio silence. Phone off. Location services disabled. ARIA keeping safe, but I’d told her not to interfere. Patricia needed space to process that the mysterious billionaire who’d swept her off her feet was also the kid her son had bullied for years. The kid her husband had hated because of his birth mother. The kid she’d watched suffer and done nothing about but cry late at night for sixteen years. When she finally came back, she’d gone straight to Madison, determined to apologize to Linda for "fucking her son." Thank fuck Madison had talked sense into her—telling Linda would accomplish nothing except easing Patricia’s guilt while potentially destroying my relationship with my mother. Two weeks ago: "You came to seduce me for revenge." Patricia’s voice had been flat when we finally sat down to talk. Her sitting across from me in her living room, distance between us like a physical barrier, convinced I’d orchestrated everything as payback for the Morrison family’s sins. I’d explained the truth. That I had known who she was when I first approached her, when I realized she was Jack’s mother, there was a moment of ironic satisfaction. But that’s not why I pursued her. I pursued her because I fell for her. Fast. The way I’d fallen for Madison—that same recognition of someone drowning who deserved to be loved the way they should. Someone who’d been neglected and dismissed and made to feel worthless for so long they’d started believing it. I had a thing for mothers, for women who carried pain with grace, for women who’d been broken by inadequate men and still managed to be kind. And Patricia had touched something in my soul. It had taken another week before she’d let me touch her again. Another week of talking, processing, working through layers of guilt and shame and fear. But when she finally pulled me into the penthouse bedroom and kissed me with desperate hunger—it had been worth the wait. The divorce had finalized. And Patricia was free. Now: Sofia pulled back from Patricia now, wiping her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was raw but steady. "I hated you," she said. "For years. Every time Jack made me feel worthless, every time he humiliated me, I’d think about you. About how you raised him. And I hated you for it." Patricia’s voice broke. "You had every right to." "But I understand you now." Sofia’s words came faster. "About your marriage. About Richard. About how you were drowning too. And I—" Her voice cracked. "I need to let the hatred go. It’s been eating me alive. And I can’t carry it anymore." "I’m so sorry," Patricia whispered. "For not protecting you. For seeing and do nothing. For failing every girl Jack touched." Sofia stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Patricia again. "I forgive you," she said. "I forgive you." Patricia broke—full-body sobs, the kind that sound like they’re being torn from your chest against your will. Sofia held her, crying too, both of them shaking. Madison moved to my side. "You did this very well." "Had to, I hate when my women hate each other," I murmured. "They couldn’t heal separately. The poison was connected." "You’re either a genius or a sociopath." "Can’t I be both?" She elbowed me. "Shut up and watch your handiwork." That’s when I felt it. No sound. No fanfare. Just the System’s presence sliding into my awareness like a knife between ribs—familiar, invasive, mine. Liberation is not merely physical satisfaction or escape from inadequate partners. True liberation requires resolution of emotional wounds and reconciliation of broken relationships. Patricia Morrison’s divorce finalized, severing legal ties to the source of her sexual starvation and also a man who treated like something worthless. Sofia Delgado’s forgiveness of Patricia today resolved the emotional blockage preventing full liberation. Both women are now free—from their pasts, from their resentments, from the cycles of pain that bound them. I kept my face neutral even as excitement surged through my chest. The System had finally recognized it. Not just the sex, not just the escape from bad men—but this moment. This healing. Two women who’d been trapped in the Morrison family’s dysfunction, finally breaking free together. [NEW TITLE UNLOCKED: "DADDY"]