Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 524: Reality and the Dreams

The storm had passed, but the skies outside still murmured with lightning’s memory.

Low thunder rolled like a slumbering beast beyond the windowpanes. Pale curtains swayed gently with the wind that slipped through barely-cracked glass, cool and scented with distant eucalyptus, ocean salt, and rain-drenched asphalt. Somewhere far below the estate’s private wing, the city hummed with its late-night chaos — distant sirens, splashing tires, a saxophone solo echoing from a rooftop bar across the hills.

But in this room, silence reigned like velvet.

A fire whispered in the hearth — low flames, orange and blue, casting long shadows across polished obsidian floors and high walls streaked with marble veins. The bed was a massive thing — circular, sunken into the floor like a secret haven, buried in silk and midnight linens. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Here, in this warm hollow carved into the world’s cold edge, Parker lay with one arm around the woman who had once tried to betray him... and who now carried his child.

Tessa.

Eighteen years old, but her eyes — tonight — felt older than time.

Her back rested to his chest, her hair spilling behind her like ink across the pillow. One of his hands curled protectively around her abdomen, his thumb gently stroking the soft rise of a belly that still barely showed, and yet... carried a heartbeat loud enough to stir the cosmos.

Their legs were tangled. Her fingers were woven with his. The kind of closeness no royal procession, no battlefield, no supernatural tribunal could ever mimic.

They were alone. Together. And safe.

For the first time in a long, long while.

"I thought it’d feel scarier than this," she whispered.

Her voice barely touched the air, like she was afraid it might shatter the moment. The fire cracked gently, like it agreed. The golden light flickered across the silk sheets, casting their entangled limbs in soft, living shadows.

Parker didn’t speak right away. He simply held her tighter, chest pressed to her back, thumb slowly tracing the curve of her stomach. The warmth between them was more than body heat. It was something sacred.

"What?" he finally murmured, his breath warm against the nape of her neck. "Knowing you’re carrying the next anomaly of existence?"

She let out a quiet, amused exhale.

"No." Her voice was soft, but steady. "Being this happy."

A pause.

A heartbeat.

Three of them now.

One ancient and sovereign — his. One wild and defiant — hers. And one impossibly new — a rhythm born in defiance of fate itself, vibrating through her womb like the future trying to speak.

She tilted her head back slightly, her hair brushing against his jaw. Her eyes stayed on the ceiling, but her mind was somewhere else — somewhere between what she used to fear and what she now hoped for.

"I used to dream about it," she murmured. "This. Us. Me, next to you like this. Your hand here."

She took his hand and pressed it firmer against her belly. His fingers splayed, covering more of her — not just touching her skin, but shielding the pulse of their unborn daughter. Her breath hitched.

"But my dreams were always cold," she said. "Empty rooms. Rain against glass. You were never there long enough. I’d wake up before I felt your warmth."

He didn’t interrupt.

"I never thought I’d survive long enough to earn this. Not after everything. Not after all I did to you at our first meeting. I thought I was going to be just a fling and you move on."

"You didn’t earn it, Tessa," he said softly. "You made it. With your fire. With your fearlessness. This life, this heartbeat... it didn’t come from permission. It came from defiance. Yours."

She exhaled, but it wasn’t relief — it was pride. A kind of victory that belonged only to women who had been broken and still chose to build something from the wreckage.

"Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d never met you," she said quietly.

Parker’s chest tensed behind her. "Don’t."

"No, I mean it." She rolled slightly to face him now, her palm settling on his collarbone. Her gaze was sharp, clear. "Because I think I would’ve become something terrible. Something worse than Diana? Worse than Isabella? Power without anchor. Desire without purpose. I was so close to that given my upbringing."

He searched her eyes — and found the truth she wasn’t exaggerating.

"You met me," he said, "and still would’ve become all of that or worse. You just chose to love me anyway."

That made her smile.

"I chose to kneel once. That was enough." Her fingers brushed his lips. "The rest... the rest was me choosing to fight for a place next to you. And now, with this?"

Her hand returned to her belly.

"Now I have my legacy." She smirked, though her voice trembled slightly.

The silence between them held.

Not the empty kind.

The sacred kind—the kind that filled up the room like smoke from ancient incense, the kind born from surviving too much and still choosing softness.

Tessa shifted in his arms again, curling tighter into the curve of his body. The fire flickered over her face, golden and forgiving, but Parker caught the change in her expression. Her voice came out quieter this time. Not wistful—haunted.

"You know I would’ve married someone else if I hadn’t met you, right?"

He didn’t move. Not yet. But his chest hardened behind her, breath slowing.

"Some asshole." She exhaled slowly. "The kind of man born into an old money, stitched-together wealth. His bloodline polished like silver like Aleric; his smiles trained for boardrooms and ballrooms. My family was approached once—by the Morenos on one side, the Kasiris on the other who aren’t even part of the Big Five I was just... part of the solution. A warm body in a luxury dress. Marriage as a ceasefire."

Parker didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His silence wrapped around her like armor, his arm tightening across her waist.

"He wouldn’t have hurt me," she said, softer now. "Not in the obvious ways. He would’ve been pleasant enough. Charming in public, distant in private. The type to remember anniversaries but forget what makes you laugh and even have a child."

She paused.

Parker lifted her chin with two fingers and studied her face like it held scripture.

"You wouldn’t have hated her," he said, voice low and reverent. "But you would’ve hated yourself. And that would’ve killed you slow."

She blinked rapidly.

He kissed her forehead, soft and slow, like a promise.

"When I think about it... I think I would’ve become someone else. Someone colder. Louder in all the wrong ways. I would’ve learned how to smile without meaning it. How to touch without feeling it."

Another breath. This one trembled.

"And every time I’d look at my child, I’d wonder if she could sense it. That I didn’t choose that life. That she came from a world I didn’t belong to. Not really. I’d love her—but I’d hate that she was a mirror of the life I was forced to live, and she was going to live it too."

Her voice faltered, just once.

"I would’ve hated myself."

Parker brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, his fingers gentle and slow.

"You don’t have to live in that shadow anymore," he said. "You didn’t just survive it. You outran it."

She turned in his arms and pressed her forehead against his.

"I didn’t outrun it," she whispered. "I found you. That changed everything."

"But look at you now," he murmured. "You’re not anyone’s pawn. Not anymore. You’re not just someone’s daughter or someone’s bride. You’re you. Fire and rebellion and clarity."

She smiled, broken and proud.

"You would’ve been a terrifying heiress though," he added with a dry grin. "Probably would’ve owned half of Europe by now and the UN wouldn’t even vote without your permission."

"I still might," she said, smirking.

"Fuck yeah, you might."

He paused. Then frowned.

"Where’s that uncle of yours, anyway? The one who tried to—" His voice turned cold. "The one who thought touching you was even a remote possibility."

Tessa rolled her eyes. "Saudi. Closing an oil deal. Some mess my parents left hanging when the Kasiris pulled out of the pipeline negotiations."

Parker’s jaw flexed. "I should kill him."

"Don’t."

"I want to."

"Don’t say that with our daughter in the room." She arched an eyebrow and tapped his chest with two fingers.

Parker snorted. "Come on. With a mother like you and a father like me? Language is going to be the least of our worries."

She narrowed her eyes. "She’ll be sweet."

He raised an eyebrow. "Sweet? She’ll turn gods into rumors."

"She’ll be polite," Tessa argued.

"She’ll be chaos with manners."

"What’s she gonna do, end the world?" Tessa muttered with a grin, half teasing.

And Parker froze.

He didn’t answer right away. Not because he didn’t want to—but because he’d felt it again. That third heartbeat. Not just growing.

Building.

Stretching its fingers through time like it was tasting futures.

He met Tessa’s eyes.

"No," he said finally. "She won’t end the world."

Tessa blinked. The moment passed. She nestled back into his chest.

He buried his face in her hair, lips brushing the crown of her head.

"We’ll protect her," she whispered.

"We’ll raise her," he replied. "To choose her own path. Not mine. Not yours. Hers."

The fire crackled louder for a moment, as if the room itself agreed. Or warned.

But for now, they were just two people wrapped in each other, warmed by a child they had made with rebellion and love.

Tomorrow could bring doom.

Tonight... belonged to them.

Parker blinked. Then laughed, full and low, like a drumbeat against her spine.

She grinned and buried her face into his chest.