Chapter 790: Relief Isn’t Monstrous The morning at the estate slammed into us like a hangover from someone else’s funeral—sharp, unwelcome, and smelling faintly of blood money. Charlotte felt happy. Genuinely, unapologetically, balls-to-the-wall happy. Which should’ve been the default setting now that Dmitri Volkov—sex-trafficking piece of shit extraordinaire—had finally graduated from breathing to room-temperature corpse. The kind of poetic justice that makes you wonder if the universe occasionally takes freelance gigs. Champagne. Confetti. Maybe a quick lap dance on the grave. Standard victory protocol. Charlotte felt it. She stood in the kitchen, phone clutched like a talisman, scrolling the news with a face that ran the full emotional obstacle course: shock, vicious satisfaction, a flicker of Catholic-school guilt, then back to satisfaction like her conscience was doing laps on a short track. "He’s dead," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "Dmitri Volkov. They found him in his cell. Guards just... found him." Then she laughed. Not the polite titter you give at a funeral when someone says "he looks so peaceful." No. This was a full-body, diaphragm-deep, fuck-you-to-the-universe laugh that had been caged in her chest for months and finally kicked the bars down. The kitchen went graveyard quiet. Charlotte froze mid-breath, clapped both hands over her mouth like she’d just committed a war crime with sound waves. Eyes wide, pupils blown, smile fracturing at the edges like cheap porcelain. "Oh my God," she whispered, voice cracking into something small and terrified. "I laughed. At someone’s death. I’m... happy he’s dead." Her gaze locked on mine, pleading for either absolution or a public stoning—preferably both. "That’s wrong, right? That makes me a monster?" We all laughed. Couldn’t help it. The sheer cosmic comedy of Charlotte Thompson—CEO, tech prodigy, woman who probably says "excuse me" to doors when they hit her—standing there convinced she’d just invented evil because she was glad a man who’d kidnapped her mother, shot at us, terrorized, and tried to auction her off like premium livestock was now about to become fertilizer to American soil. Madison moved first, wrapping Charlotte in a hug that swallowed her whole. Sofia piled on. Patricia followed, maternal radar pinging at full strength. The rest of us closed ranks like a living fortress of tits, arms, and unshakable certainty that her joy was not only valid but fucking overdue. "Stop," Margaret said from across the island—Charlotte’s mother, my newest woman, voice carrying the calm authority of someone who’d walked through her own inferno because of the same man and come out with better shoes. "You have every goddamn right to be happy he’s gone. Every. Single. Right. That man tried to steal you. Broke pieces of you. Would’ve sold what was left if Peter hadn’t stepped in." Her tone softened, just enough. "Relief isn’t monstrous, sweetheart. It’s the sound your soul makes when the chains finally snap." Charlotte broke then. Not sad tears—relief tears. The kind that burn coming out because they’ve been cooking in battery acid for too long. We held her through the storm, this ridiculous, beautiful family that made the word "harem" feel like calling a nuclear reactor a "campfire." The rest chimed in like a murder of supportive crows. Sofia: "I’d be popping bottles if it were me." Luna: "Fuck that guy. I hope the blade or whatever was dull." Isabella: "Statistically speaking, global average happiness quotient just ticked up 0.0003%. You’re welcome, humanity." This was us. Complicated. Loyal. A little fucked-up. But. Perfect. Margaret being one of my women was the family secret we kept locked in the vault—for now. Her call. Charlotte was still reassembling herself from trauma shrapnel; dropping "Oh, by the way, your mom’s spiritually and carnally bound to your soon-to-be boyfriend who runs a small army of lovers" would’ve been like handing a freshly concussed genius a Rubik’s Cube made of C4. So we played normal. Margaret was "just Charlotte’s mom." Not "Peter’s woman who received divine-grade cum at 2 a.m. while you were asleep in the estate." The lie tasted like rust, but Margaret’s boundaries were iron, and I respected my women’s iron. Besides, we had bigger problems than awkward maternal sex logistics. The breaking news, and the room temperature dropped ten degrees. "Trent Holloway, convicted of sexual coercion and blackmail of teenager girls into sexual abuse and harassment, escaped California State Prison last night during a violent incident that left six staff members dead, including Warden Marcus Blackwell—" We all were wide eyed and looked at her— Emma should’ve flinched. Should’ve gone small, pale, reached for me like she used to when Trent’s name surfaced in conversation. Three days of systematic rape and blackmail don’t vanish; they leave grooves. Instead? She grinned? Not a polite smile. Not relief. A wide, manic, all-teeth predator grin that belonged on something with claws and a taste for revenge. She actually bounced once on the couch—light, eager, like a boxer hearing the bell. Sarah side-eyed her twin. "Em? You... good?" "Better than good." Emma’s grin stretched wider, practically splitting her face. "This is perfect. Gives me a legitimate excuse to beat that fucker’s spine into talcum powder if our paths cross." Her voice was bright. Almost cheerful. The tone of someone who’d spent months training under Soo-Jin Park’s merciless regime, turning victim into weapon. Soo-Jin told me she sneaked some of the pills and elixirs I gave her to Emma. Combat drilling her until her knuckles bled. Seventeen documented ways to shatter a humerus. Emma Carter wasn’t prey anymore—she was the thing that made professional cage fighters check their exits. "That’s my girl," I said, pride hitting like top-shelf bourbon. She’d earned every ounce of that feral confidence. Sweat. Tears. Refusing to stay broken. But while Emma was mentally rehearsing chokeholds, ARIA and I were running colder math. The news kept talking. "Authorities confirm that approximately three minutes before the escape, all electrical systems and security cameras in the affected cell block suffered simultaneous catastrophic failure. Officials are investigating possible external coordination—" Three minutes. Complete blackout. No footage. No logs. No trail showing how Trent Holloway—rapist, blackmailer, mid-tier piece of shit—went from locked cage to ghost in the night. Six bodies left behind: Warden Blackwell (the man I’d bribed six figures to make Trent’s incarceration extra spicy) with his throat opened like a second smile. Five guards. Clean. Brutal. Efficient. Luck doesn’t pull that off. Professional help does. Someone cracked the prison like an egg, handed Trent the keys, and vanished. And whoever they were, they’d just turned a loose end into a live grenade. I stared at the ceiling as though it might confess something useful for once. "ARIA." Her voice poured into the room like chilled mercury. "Already running diagnostics, Master. And yes—we have problems. The expensive, bespoke, ’someone’s-about-to-regret-breathing’ variety." A hologram uncoiled itself above the coffee table. Security footage, or more accurately, its conspicuous absence. "Three minutes before Trent decided prison was cramping his style, every camera, sensor, smart bulb, and electronically monitored toilet in a three-block radius went politely offline. Not smashed with theatrical flair. Not EMP’d into scrap. Just... switched off. Someone hit the universe’s mute button. When the feeds blinked back on? "Trent had left the building, six staff members were redecorating the corridors in high-velocity crimson, and Warden Blackwell’s throat had received an unsolicited tracheotomy—single pass, carotid, very efficient. Almost polite, if you ignore the dying." The projection transitioned to the crime-scene Polaroids nobody asked for: blood pretending to be abstract expressionism, bodies arranged with all the grace of a toddler’s first still life, cells standing empty like they’d been ghosted by their occupant. "I’ve crawled through every lens in a five-hundred-miles bubble—every smartphone selfie stick, every paranoid Ring doorbell, every ATM that still thinks grainy 480p is cutting-edge. Ordinarily, I’d have Trent’s last meal receipt, browser history, and porn-search patterns before the coffee finished brewing. But Trent?" ARIA’s avatar gave a small, fatal shrug. "Nothing. No frame capture. No facial ping. No stray thermal ghost. He vanished like a bad alibi in open court." ARIA’s avatar gave a small, fatalistic shake of the head. "He may as well have been raptured by particularly selective aliens. Vanished like tax money in an election year." My stomach performed an involuntary accordion solo. "Someone gave him the VIP exit pass."