Chapter 1043: What We’re Now!

"She used totuckme in, you know? When I was five or six, my parents would disappear on business trips and I’d stay at her penthouse. She’d read me to sleep, brush the hair out of my face, call meMaddie-bear,and I’d fall asleep against her shoulder because she smelled like perfume and safety. I cried in her arms every time I fought with mom.

"She gave me my first real makeup set. She wasthecoolaunt.The one every little girl needs so growing up doesn’t feel like walking into a horror movie."

Her voice cracked—not with sadness, just with the sheer weight of what came next.

"And now? She calls meEmpress. She callsyouEmperor. Shebowsperformatively—though yes, it’s Catherine, and she does live for the drama—but the performance isn’t mocking. There’s something real underneath it. She looks at me across a room and there’s this tiny moment, this silentYour Majestythat doesn’t need words.

"My aunt. The woman who taught me how to put on eyeliner. Now she’s asking if the dress I’m wearing meets Peter’sfuck-me-right-nowstandards because apparently her opinion comes second.Mineis law."

I held her closer. Pressed my lips against her temple. Let her breathe through the absurdity of her own ascension.

"AndRebecca,"she said, almost laughing at the sheer ridiculousness. "Rebecca. Peter, do you even know what Rebecca actuallydoes?"

"Yep. I do."

"Of course you do... I just found out two weeks ago she’s a VP at an aerospace firm. She literally runs their entire West Coast operation. We’re talking defense contracts, satellite launches, projects so classified most of her own staff doesn’t know what the hell they’re building. She manages eight hundred people. Two kids in college."

Madison laughed remembering what Rebecca had told them.

"Do you know her ex-husband was a senator until the day she found out he was cheating—and she personally, single-handedly, without telling a soul, orchestrated the financial investigation that ended both his career and their marriage in the same week. Ruthless. Brilliant. Terrifying."

Madison shook her head, still half in disbelief.

"And she looks atmelike I’m her Queen. Not like I’m some girl in her boyfriend’s harem. Not like I’m the youngest with the most leverage. Like I’mher Queen. Like some ancient part of her soul recognized the title before her brain could file a complaint. Last week she asked my advice on a promotion decision.

"A woman who’s been making executive calls longer than I’ve been alive asked a nineteen-year-old whether she should bump someone from director to VP. And she took my answer seriously. Implemented it the next day. Came back andthankedme because her superiors were overwhelmed by her decision."

She laughed again—soft, helpless, a little overwhelmed by the sheer scale of her own life.

"It’s absurd. All of it. It should terrify me. Itwouldterrifyme if I let myself really sit in it. But instead... it justfits. Somehow it fits perfectly. And not only because it makes me feel powerful—though yes, there’s a delicious little hit of that, I’m not going to pretend I’m above it.

"It’s because it makes me realize there is no better life I could possibly live that would even reach one percent of what it means to be your woman. To be yourQueen. The responsibility of it goes so far beyond being the heiress to afive-hundred-billion-dollargenerational empire that Torres Developments now feels like a cute little side project by comparison.

"My father built skyscrapers. I get to help buildwhatever you are. And whatever you are is going to outlast everything my bloodline has ever created."

Silence settled between us.

I didn’t answer her with words. I stroked her hair. Pressed another kiss to her temple. Let the stable and Nyxire and the warm amber light hold her while she sat in the weight of what she’d just confessed out loud.

Because Madison didn’t know—couldn’t know, would probably never fully believe if I told her—how much of all of this had beenher.Not a side effect of her or just as a supporting pillar.Heras a foundation.

The first stone.

The day she’d invited me to her house was the day the whole future had started bending toward what it was now, and every woman who’d joined after had joined into an architecture Madison had built the first floor of.

She brought me from so far in such a short time!

I could still remember that day. Sixteen-year-old me frantically googling how to shave without killing myself. Sneaking into my sisters’ room to steal body spray with names likeMidnight Seductionbecause I thought too much perfume was better than not enough.

Shaving off patchy facial hair while watching a YouTube tutorial from a bearded lumberjack who probably thought of razors as religious instruments. Scrubbing myself in the shower hard enough to take off a layer of skin because I thought if I smelled like a Bath & Body Works had a baby with heaven I might have a chance.

Pulling up banking and findingforty-seven dollarsand twenty-three cents and knowing it wouldn’t cover a sock at the stores where Madison shopped.

Researchinghow to seduce a hot girl when you’re a nerdwith the desperation of someone who’d just realized they had no map for the territory they were about to enter. Texting fuckingChatGPTfor last-minute advice like it was a hostage negotiator and I was the hostage.

Madison didn’t know any of that. Didn’t know about the YouTube tutorials or the stolen body spray or the nervous breakdown in front of the mirror or the fact that I’d walked out of that house convinced I was going toruin my lifeinside the next sixty minutes.

She’d sat in the passenger seat of the BMW later and told me I’d lookedreally good.And I’d told her she lookedinsane.And she’d laughed and put her hand on my thigh and told me we were going studying, and the wordstudyinghad detonated something in my sixteen-year-old chest that was still, in some quiet way,echoing.

That’s how far she brought me from!

All of this—the mansion, the harem, the empire, the Friesian mare watching us from her stall, the Ghost Mansion that existed outside of geography, the thirty women scattered through rooms I hadn’t built and couldn’t fully explain—all of it traced back to a girl who’d gestured to me across a cafeteria and made one decision.

"Thank you,"I said quietly.

She looked up at me."For what?"

"For being my Queen. For being the first. For everything that exists because of a choice you made when you didn’t have to make it." I kissed her forehead. Then her nose. Then her lips—soft, unhurried, the kiss of a man saying something his mouth couldn’t put into sentences.

"You’re thereasonall of this started. You know that, right?"

"Peter—"

"No. I mean it. Every woman in my life, every dollar in every account, every room in every mansion, every empire I’m building and every enemy I’ve crushed—all of itstarted the day you wavedme over to your lunch table. For all we know without you, I’d probably be still Peter Carter from Lincoln Heights and a crush on girls who weren’t going to look at me. You changed the whole trajectory. Everything that’s happened since has been downstream of that one day."

Her eyes filled. Didn’t spill. Just filled—gold flecks catching the amber light of the stable like something her body was producing on purpose because the rest of her couldn’t find the words.

"I love you,"she whispered.

"I love you more."

"Impossible."

"Demonstrably true. I have data."

"What data?"

"Proprietary."

She laughed—wet, soft, happy. Pressed her face into my chest and just breathed there for a while, and I held her and stroked her hair.

After a while she shifted in my arms. Lifted her head. Looked at me with an expression that had recalibrated into something playful.

"I have a surprise for you."

I raised an eyebrow.

"A surprise?"

"Mm-hm."

"What kind of surprise?"

"The kind that’s a surprise, Peter. That’s how surprises work."

"That’s a terrible definition. Can you narrow it down?"

"No."

"Big? Small? Illegal?"

"Secret."

"You’re being difficult on purpose."

"I’m being romantic on purpose."

I narrowed my eyes at her. She smiled the specific Madison smile she wore when she’d been sitting on something for a while and was now enjoying watching me realize she’d been sitting on it.

"When do I find out?"

"Soon."

"How soon?"

"Soon enough that you’ll forgive me for making youwait.Not so soon that you’ll forget I said the wordsurpriseand remember it was worth waiting for."

I stared at her. She stared back. Her eyes were bright. Her cheek was pink. Her hair was a mess of hay and my fingers. And she was keeping a secret from me with the satisfied expression of a woman who’d been planning something she was very, very pleased with herself about.

I kissed her because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.