Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 957

Chapter 957: Shopping Time

The nine o’clock meeting Ms. Rook had promised arrived on schedule the next morning, convened on less sleep than anyone admitted to, and it revealed the new headquarters’ next flaw: a finished building and a furnished building were not the same thing.

The ops floor had been handed over furnished, technically. The contractor’s package: beige modular desks in rows, gray task chairs ordered by the gross, laminate surfaces pretending to be wood from ten feet away.

Vespera, knowing the guild building had to be habitable as soon as possible, and knowing how tight the family’s finances were, didn’t order a luxury interior furnishing service. It was utilitarian, intended to be upgraded at their own pace.

The map table stood in the middle of it all on its battered folding legs, the one piece of furniture in the building with a soul, and the glass wall overlooking the south lot deserved better company than any of it.

Doug had a real desk because Doug had carried one in himself. Ms. Rook had a real desk because the universe would not have dared otherwise. Everyone else had spent the meeting working off contractor beige, and the family had collectively agreed not to notice.

The meeting ended, and Aria set her coffee down, and the desk under it...

*Creak!*

"Did that bitch just groan?" Luna cursed under her breath. "It’s brand new!"

Aria looked at the cup. She looked at the laminate. She looked around the war room, one floor of a building three stories tall in dark glass and pale stone, furnished like a regional tax office.

"We need real furniture," the Moon Valkyrie declared.

Phones were out before she finished the sentence.

One moment the room held seven women in various states of post-meeting slouch, and the next it held an architecture firm.

Nyx had three catalogs open in as many seconds and was swiping through executive lounge sets with focused serenity. Aria drifted to her shoulder and began vetoing color schemes without being asked. Alexandra produced an actual spreadsheet from somewhere on her person, titled it, and started a budget column before anyone had agreed to buy anything.

’They’re in sync,’ Kaiden sighed inwardly, wry. He liked seeing his girls being on the same page, but... was upgrading furniture really that high on the list of importance?

"Walnut," Aria said. "Warm tones. The light through that wall is gorgeous in the afternoon and I refuse to waste it on gray laminate."

"Walnut and cream, bestie. Trust me~" Nyx tilted her screen. "Low profiles here, tall shelving on the dead wall, and the reception set faces the doors so visitors sit with their backs exposed. For their psychology."

"For their psychology," Aria agreed pleasantly.

Aria swiped past a sectional with visible longing, murmured "Office. Not home. Office," and let it go, a woman being strong.

Indeed, they were buying furniture for their work space now, not their home, which remained the Abyssal Palace.

"Then explain why I can’t have my corner." Luna was on a windowsill with one knee up, and she came into the conversation half a step behind its rhythm. Nobody looked over at the delay. "Every serious operation has a lounge. I’m asking for one wall. Dual rig, 8K, 240 hertz OLED, the good chair with the lumbar thing, cup holders. That’s not a bedroom, that’s infrastructure."

"You want a gamer den in the leadership office of the guild headquarters," Aria said.

"I want a morale suite."

"She rebranded it," Nyx observed. "She’s learning."

The room, by reflex, turned to Ms. Rook for the denial.

Ms. Rook looked up from her desk for the first time all morning and considered Luna over the rim of her tablet.

"Approved," she said.

The war room went silent in a whole new way. Even the catalogs stopped.

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