Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 516: The Blaze

Tessa felt the back-half of the ballroom wobble like a bad dream: Isabella’s lipstick still glimmered on Parker’s cheekbone, Diana’s perfume still clung to his collar—and half the damn Five Families had been close enough to taste the static. Her grandfather. Her parents. All of them.

She wove past servants with trays and couples slow-spinning under chandeliers, heart jackhammering, mouth already forming an apology she shouldn’t have to make. Parker, for his part, leaned against a gilded pillar looking annoyingly un-wrecked, chatting with Maya like nothing catastrophic had just unfolded on the dance floor.

Tessa grabbed his forearm, nails digging through cotton. "Tell me you realize Grandpa Wilder just watched two literal power vixens try to dry-hump you in public."

Parker’s dark eyes flicked down; the bastard had the nerve to smirk. "Sweetheart, everybody saw. It was basically televised."

Maya threw her in an Oscar-level sympathetic nod. "Pretty sure half the guest list went home to journal about it."

Blood drained from Tessa’s face. Her mind conjured images of her mother fanning herself, of her father polishing a shotgun that shot legal injunctions, of her grandfather’s pacemaker doing a jazz solo.

Parker watched panic bloom in real time and kept the troll face for five cruel seconds—until Maya snorted pink champagne out her nose.

"Relax," he said finally, looping an arm around Tessa’s waist. "Outside of this little circle, it looked like standard gala choreography. No one saw hands wander south of the border. Your family’s fine, my crown’s intact, world keeps spinning."

Heat flooded Tessa’s cheeks—equal parts relief and fury. "You—absolute—ass," she hissed, smacking his chest. "You couldn’t let me stew in anxiety stew just a tad longer?"

"Character growth," Maya deadpanned. "He waited five whole seconds before mercy. That’s, like, record time."

Tessa scowled, but she was already breathing easier. Until Helena appeared—a queen in emerald satin, eyes ice-bright with worry and a dash of high-grade jealousy.

She gave Parker a once-over that could file patents. "Those two—Harrington and Beaumont—won’t quit now. You tasted like power dipped in sin. They’ll march to the edge of the planet if it means you’ll touch them again."

Parker opened his mouth—maybe to argue, maybe to drop another troll bomb—but fate (and tight dresses) intervened. Isabella and Diana swept back into orbit, a perfect pincer movement of perfume and need.

"Round two, gorgeous," Isabella cooed, fingers already sliding up his sleeve. Diana’s palm branded his lower back, nails drumming promise.

Parker didn’t resist, because of course he didn’t.

Helena exhaled like a woman watching her kingdom slip. She turned to Tessa and Maya, voice low and lethal. "Here’s the truth. Knowing Parker? He’ll eventually take them along. And when he does, he won’t be able to separate what he wants from what they’ll make him pay."

Tessa’s jealousy flared hot. Maya’s did too—older, colder, steel-edged. They pivoted as one, glowering at Helena.

"Are you seriously whining about two stupid family empires," Maya snapped, "while our husband is currently being mouth-watered by designer succubi?"

Tessa jabbed a finger toward Parker, now half-dragged onto the terrace by the pair. "We can buy back stock portfolios. We can’t buy back sanity after that man goes full galaxy-destroyer in someone else’s sheets."

Helena’s lips parted—defensive words hovering—then she thought better and just nodded. "Fair."

Maya’s anger cracked first; she let out a low, wicked chuckle. "Poor Tessa. Engagement night and you’re already scheduling marital ceasefires."

Tessa huffed, spun on her heel, and stomped off—heels clicking like tiny gavel strikes. Maya followed, muttering Spanish curses under her breath. Helena stared after them, then at Parker vanishing into moonlit shadows with two unapologetic predators.

She sighed—the put-upon mother of a cosmic soap opera—and whispered to no one, "God help him if the girl he actually loves decides to bite back."

And somewhere beyond the terrace doors, Isabella’s laugh peeled like velvet thunder while Diana murmured something hot enough to warp glass. Parker answered with a growl low in his throat—the kind that promised galaxies or ruin, maybe both.

Inside, the music kept playing. Champagne kept flowing. But everyone could feel it:

Jealousy had teeth.

Love had claws.

And the Prince of Existence was about to learn what happens when both sink in at once.

*

The Wilder estate’s east-wing suite was built for sin in formalwear—black-walnut paneling, a fireplace coughing up lazy embers, and an L-shaped leather couch so wide it could host a treaty signing. Parker stepped through the doorway still humming with string-quartet reverb, collar crooked, pulse high from a ballroom that smelled like champagne and envy.

Isabella Harrington closed the door with one lacquered nail. Diana Beaumont flicked the lock without breaking stride. Silk whispered on satin; diamonds ticked like illicit metronomes. They moved in parallel without needing to choreograph, predators who’d spent entire careers circling prey that thought it was the hunter.

Isabella—all wildfire in molten-red silk—reached him first. The fabric clung like a second skin, parted at her thigh to flash a garter that looked hand-stitched for sin. She set a palm flat on his chest, the heat of her touch soaking through cotton. His heart answered, steady but heavy. She inhaled—oak, ozone, and the faint spice he carried like a private signature—then let the scent settle behind her eyes.

"Prince," she breathed, voice dipped in late-night bourbon. "Dance floor was foreplay. Let’s talk real terms."

Diana drifted in from the other flank, matte-black dress hugging every athletic line—backless down to scandal, gold chains crisscrossing her spine like a map to buried treasure. She looped a fingertip into Parker’s rolled sleeve, trailing up his forearm till gooseflesh rose under her nail. "And maybe skip the small print." Her perfume—leather and thunder—cut straight to the amygdala.

Parker’s grin was a controlled detonation. He caught Isabella’s waist with one hand, Diana’s hip with the other—heat leaping vein to vein.

Their closeness built a weather system: three breaths tangling, three heartbeats syncing. He let them pull him halfway into a kiss—Isabella brushing his jaw, Diana grazing his lip—but before momentum tipped into free-fall he anchored a palm on each woman’s lower back and eased them a step apart.

as much as all his women have no issues with harem it’s only mutual that he at least respected this much.

Instead, Diana nodded once and gestured to the plush L-shaped couch near the fireplace. "Then let us sit. Not as seductresses. Not as opponents. But as women who respect the man they want to follow."

Isabella’s pupils flared.

"You held me like I was more than memory," she murmured, fingers brushing his neck. "You touched me like I never left."

Isabella was slower, more calculated. She didn’t need to say anything. Her presence was its own language, curling through the space behind Diana like perfume. She circled to his back, pressed a hand to his spine.

Between them, Parker stood steady.

Two of the most beautiful women in the world—trained in seduction, sharpened by legacy, haunted by the echo of a man who had once broken them—now stood beside him again. And still, they trembled slightly. They hadn’t expected him to allow the dance. They certainly hadn’t expected the fire that returned with it.

And now they were testing if it could be real. Again.

Diana kissed the edge of his jaw, the corner of his mouth. Isabella’s hands dipped beneath his jacket.

"Tonight," Diana whispered, "you let us feel you again. Just for one song."

"Let us stay longer," Isabella murmured. "Let us show you what we remember. What we’ve kept for you."

They weren’t pleading. They were far too old, too proud for that. But the offer lingered like wine between parted lips—dangerous, warm, waiting.

And Parker, the Prince of Existence, slowly took their hands... and pulled them gently away.

He didn’t push. Didn’t scold. His refusal wasn’t rejection—it was reverence.

"Not tonight," he said quietly.

Diana blinked. Isabella froze.

Parker’s voice was low, rich with command and something deeper. Something human.

"Tonight is my engagement night. Tessa’s night. And as much as all my women have no quarrel with a throne shared between queens..." He turned to look them both in the eyes, soft but immovable. "It’s only mutual that I give her this. That... I honor."

Diana stepped back like she’d been struck. Not from pain, but respect. She hadn’t expected him to be that kind of man. Not anymore.

Isabella exhaled—no bitterness, just the sting of self-awareness. She nodded once.

"Respect is sexy," she whispered, though her thumb kept stroking the rise of his chest. Her skin buzzed where his fingers pressed into the small of her back. Even a half-second of his heat felt like being branded. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Diana exhaled a shaky laugh. "Restraint can negotiate later." She curled her hand over the back of his neck, chain-links glinting. The slightest brush of her thumb at his pulse made her knees want to unlock.