With a decision to make left in their mind of the women of Darren's life, the Saturday morning sun dawned over Los Alverez, Calivernia.

Since it was the weekend, it didn't come with the usual frantic energy of a weekdays, but with a gentle, hopeful breeze. The kind of breeze that makes one want to lie and rest all day.

The glass and steel canyons of the financial district stood silent and gleaming, monuments to a week's labor concluded. From the high vantage points, one could see the city breathing easier. The roads, usually choked with the impatient snarl of luxury cars and delivery trucks, were now serene arteries carrying a slower, more deliberate pulse.

Life was being lived, not just transacted.

The companies that were crippled by Ryan Anders' venomous schemes all those months ago were finally being reconstructed.

Some were being rebuilt in newer locations, others were letting go of officials and board members who had anything to do with the scandalous man.

Scaffolding clung to buildings like skeletal promises, and the percussive rhythm of hammers and the growl of earthmovers spoke of resilience.

The capital fueling this renaissance flowed from the venerable institutions of Archibald Mooney, a quiet, steady counterpoint to the flashy volatility of the city's younger billionaires.

His old-money stability was the bedrock upon which a new hope was being built, and it was about time, seeing that it was rebuilding the businesses of Los Alverez that he had returned in the first place.

But speaking of lying and resting all day, that was what resorts were made for, wasn't it?

Far from the city, on a private stretch of coastline that belonged more to a dream than to any map, Darren Steele stood alone in a room of breathtaking opulence.

The master suite of the Serenity Cove Resort's premier villa was a symphony of taste and expense. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls offered an unobstructed panorama of the cerulean Pacific, its rhythmic crash against the cliffs the only sound.

The air was cool, scented with salt and the subtle, clean aroma of linen that cost more per thread than most people's entire outfits.

The furniture was low-slung, modern, and sculptural, upholstered in creams and deep blues. It was a room designed for decadence, for whispered secrets and shared sunsets.

It was achingly, profoundly empty.

Darren stood before the panoramic glass, but his eyes were not on the majestic view. They were fixed on the familiar, holographic purple glow of the system interface, its data a cold splash of reality in the midst of all this curated beauty.

┏Rachel: 27%┛ ┏Kara:70%┛ ┏Olivia:40%┛ ┏Cheyenne:39%┛ ┏Penelope:35%┛ ┏Sandy:28%┛ ┏Ileana:55%┛ ┏Miranda:30%┛ ┏Daisy:20%┛ ┏Tamara:30%┛

He pressed his lips. 'Barely increased since the meeting.'

That was true. The numbers were stagnant for the most part. A mere fraction of a percentage point of fluctuation, nothing more.

It seemed that after everything; everything meaning the grand pitch, the visionary reframing, the laying bare of his soul, heart and strategy had only resulted in statistical inertia.

The system, in its cold logic, was calling his bluff.

A lesser man would have despaired. A needier man would have rage-quit, or worse, started frantically calling them.

Darren's jaw tightened, his gaze turning steel. He had formulated this plan based on a deep, calculated study of human nature, feminine nature to be exact.

He had to trust the data, not the immediate metrics.

The plan was still in motion, even now. All he required was the conviction to see it through.

There was no way this plan would fail because it was engineered around the most powerful forces in the universe: ambition, desire, and the fear of loss.

And in his mind's eye, he could see it playing out perfectly across the city, in eleven different sanctuaries of doubt and desire.

He could see Rachel, in her impeccably minimalist apartment, the access card held between her fingers as if it were a live wire. Her logical mind, the one he prized so highly, was screaming that this was insanity, a logistical and emotional nightmare.

But her heart… her heart was replaying his words. "You are my right hand."

Not his girlfriend. Not his lover. His partner. He hadn't offered her a ring; he'd offered her a throne beside his.

The sheer, intoxicating respect in that offer was a key turning in a lock she didn't even know she had. She was weighing a lifetime of conventional loneliness against the chaos and glory of an impossible empire.

An empire with a man she was so desperately in love with.

Undeniably, the empire was winning.

He could see Kara, not in her cluttered IT office, but in her messy bedroom, surrounded by discarded outfits.

Her 70% was the highest, which proved her passionate, all-or-nothing heart. For her, it was simpler.

The other women were abstract concepts. He was the reality. He'd called her his "beautiful disruptor," his "weapon." He'd validated her chaos, made it desirable.

She wasn't thinking about sharing; she was thinking about winning. Winning him. Someone like Kara would be happy as long as he made out time for her.

In fact, she had always been.

Amelia and Olivia might have slightly similar reactions.

Though Olivia made hers more obvious, Darren still knew that Amelia always had feelings for him, be it conceited ones. It was best to address them now, which was why she too had been invited.

He could see them in their homes, staring out at the same city as he was right now. For Olivia, her mind wasn't on romance; it was on the word "continent."

"I am offering you a continent to conquer." He had bypassed her heart entirely and spoken directly to her life's addiction: ambition. The drive to prove to her parents that she could make it without them.

The idea of aligning with Tamara, her rival, was galling. But the idea of subsuming her within a larger structure, of having Darren's resources to amplify her own power… it was a chess move of breathtaking brilliance.

She was calculating the ROI on sharing a man, and the numbers, infuriatingly, were starting to make sense.

For Amelia, it was merely the dream of working by him... For as long as she could. Amelia was a good soldier, one who fell in love with her commander.

A soldier without her commander was a stray. And Amelia dreaded losing Darren for this reason.