Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System! - Chapter 580

Chapter 580: Goddess and the Unholy Demon

The message was crystal clear—no need for subtitles. Maya knew exactly what had been happening behind the scenes in her family, and she wasn’t about to stay silent any longer. Not today. Not ever.

Maya reached for her wine, swirling it lazily, eyes gleaming like a predator who’d just reminded the table she had teeth. “You see,” she said, now turning ever-so-slightly toward the two girls flanking her, “The thing is…”

Bella, Cassandra and Cleopatra all glanced up, instinctively tense, like students who’d just realized the quiz wasn’t hypothetical.

“Waiting,” Maya continued, voice velvet-wrapped steel, “only works in fairytales. The girl who waits for the prince to notice her? She gets rewritten out of the story by the girl who moves. Who takes.”

She let the words hang, sipping her wine with surgical calm.

“I told you both before—men like Parker aren’t won by patience. Not with everything that circles him. Not with what he is.” Her gaze was cutting now, not cruel, but clarifying. “You don’t win by hoping he chooses you. You win by making sure he doesn’t forget you exist.”

Bella’s lip parted slightly, like she wanted to respond but couldn’t quite find words. Cleo’s expression flickered—curiosity, fire, something untamed—but she didn’t speak either.

Maya didn’t need them to.

“Parker is a storm walking in human skin,” Maya said. “He won’t end up with someone who dithers at the edge of the battlefield, waiting for an invitation to step in. He’ll be claimed by the one bold enough to walk through the lightning and take his hand like she belongs there.”

She smiled, not cruelly, but with that terrifying, queenly grace that said I don’t lose. I just wait for the rest of you to realize it.

“Just remember,” she added softly, “when you hesitate… someone else is already making the move you were too afraid to try.”

Her glass clinked quietly against her plate as she set it down.

Lesson delivered.

*

The door shut with a quiet thud behind her, but it may as well have been the sound of a world collapsing.

Annabelle stood still for a long moment, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat, her eyes fixed on the cold reflection in the mirror across the room. Her own face stared back—flawless, regal, untouchable. The face of a princess. The face of someone who always had everything… except the one thing she truly wanted.

She tore the necklace from her collarbone, the jewels scattering across the marble like shattered thoughts. The silence in her room was deafening, like the universe holding its breath for her breakdown.

Because it wasn’t just the story Maya had told.

It was that Maya had told her story.

L wasn’t just some faceless character.

L was her.

And the worst part—the cruelest, most goddamn unbearable part—was that M wasn’t even just one person. M was everyone. Every goddess, witch, vampire, heiress, priestess, or prodigy who got close enough to touch him.

Parker.

His name echoed through her ribcage like thunder in an empty cathedral. Her knees gave out before she realized she was falling, silk nightgown pooling around her as she sank to the floor, back pressed against the edge of her bed like a ruined statue collapsing under invisible weight.

She had loved him for so long it had ceased being love and become something more raw—something old, buried, smothered in pride and pretense and every stupid little defense mechanism she’d built to protect herself from the truth: She was terrified.

Terrified of what it would mean if she reached for him and he didn’t choose her.

Terrified of finding out she was nothing more than the friend, the cousin, just his creation.

A creation.

Her throat tightened until she couldn’t breathe.

She remembered the way he’d touched her cheeks that day—right after punishment, when she’d stood broken and burning in her shame. The way his fingers were both cruel and gentle, holding her like something he hadn’t decided whether to scold or save. The name he’d called her—something she’d locked deep inside her chest like a stolen jewel.

And then again, at the Wilder Mansion, when he’d stood beneath the night sky like it was chandelier light and looked at her like she wasn’t just an obligation. When they’d talked. Really talked. About choices, about regret, about the weight of eternity.

For one impossible hour, she’d felt like they saw each other. Like maybe—just maybe—there was a chance.

But then…

Then he left.

Then there was Tessa. Then Bella. Then Maya. Then Cleopatra. Then—

Then there was tonight, and Maya’s story.

And now Parker was somewhere, arms wrapped around someone else’s waist, mouth tracing someone else’s throat, making someone else tremble the way she never had—because he had never touched her like that.

Never seen her like that.

And she was supposed to sit here. Be good. Be noble. Be L.

Annabelle choked out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She pressed a fist against her mouth to muffle it, like shame was still something she could hide from in this place.

What was next?

Who would be next?

Aunt Helena – who was her fake mom – with her silent loyalty and untouchable mind?

Bella with her mysterious, sacred origin, the Granter of his Rebirth?

Cleopatra and Cassandra with their divine bloodlines and deadly charm?

Even Isis, with her eternal wisdom and ancient allure?

Or maybe someone older. Someone stronger. Noctavine with her void eyes. Evelyn’s mother with her ageless beauty and whispered power. Would he fall into their beds too, seeking pieces of himself in everyone but her?

Annabelle slammed her palm against the floor, her magic rippling out in a golden shockwave that cracked the edges of the mirror. Her reflection distorted, fragmented—just like her.

“I am not a spectator,” she whispered hoarsely, barely hearing her own voice over the drumbeat of her fury. “I am not some background character in my own damn story.”

But the words tasted like lies.

Because she had been watching. Always watching. Hiding behind sarcasm and entitlement, pretending not to care because caring hurt too much. Pretending not to ache when he laughed with someone else. Pretending not to shatter when she saw him kissing Tessa or Atalanta in the garden.

Pretending not to scream inside every time he passed her by like she was just a footnote in the saga of his divinity.

Annabelle clawed at the satin sheets of her bed, dragging herself up as her body shook with rage and grief. She was tired of pretending. Tired of pretending she wasn’t in love with him. Tired of pretending she didn’t hate every girl he smiled at the way he’d never smiled at her.

She stood before the cracked mirror, tears sliding down her cheeks like liquid gold, and whispered the truth like a curse:

“I love you, Parker. And it’s killing me. Can you not fucking see any of this, any of my love? My eyes—the way they trace your whole being like I’m memorizing a map I’ll never get to walk again? The way my breath catches when you laugh, like you’re the only reason air still matters? How every second you’re near, it feels like I’m drowning and surviving at the same time?

“Can you not see. I am like a goddess crying for a demon’s love, bleeding stars in silence while you burn worlds unaware? The way I shatter and rebuild myself a thousand times just to stand beside you, invisible and broken? How my soul screams in quiet agony because loving you feels like worshiping a wildfire that’s destined to consume me?

“I am here, bleeding in the shadows and voids of your glory, and you look at me like you don’t even know I exist beyond the edges of your gaze.”

Her voice shattered on the last word, a fragile plea lost in the vast emptiness between them.

Her voice broke on the last word.

And still, outside these walls, the world moved on. He moved on.

And Annabelle, spoilt daughter of the Voidhowls heir to power and prestige and all things sacred—was breaking.

Alone.