Elias Kane’s smile vanished in an instant, clean and abrupt, the easy curve of his mouth flattening into nothing as he turned on his heel and started walking away without another word.
Liora Voss blinked, caught genuinely off guard by how swiftly the mask dropped—how the boy who had been all teasing invitation a mont ago simply erased the performance and left her standing there, the faint echo of his footsteps already retreating down the corridor of polished marble and muted lighting.
She almost laughed.
She, of all people, being given the cold shoulder.
"Hey—wait." Her voice carried, calm but edged with the faintest trace of amusent, the kind that never quite reached her eyes. "I’m not waiting for anyone anymore. Where are you going?"
Elias paused mid-stride, shoulders stiffening for the barest second before he glanced back over one shoulder, green eyes flat and unreadable. Only then did he pivot fully, cross to the passenger side of her sleek black sedan, pull the door open, and slide inside without ceremony.
"Hospital," he said, voice low, stripped of every layer of playfulness he’d worn earlier.
Liora turned her head just enough to study him, hazel eyes narrowing slightly as though searching for visible signs of illness on that too-pretty face—though of course she already knew the real reason, had known from the mont the word left his lips. The sudden shift unsettled her more than she cared to admit; the boy who had draped himself across her car hood like he owned the night should not look this composed when speaking of a foster father whose condition had reportedly worsened.
Or perhaps he simply did not care.
The Elias Kane in her files was supposed to be fiercely protective, quietly devoted beneath the cynicism. This version—light, almost flippant until the mont he wasn’t—forced her to recalibrate.
He said nothing more, simply stared straight ahead, both hands pressed tightly between his thighs, fingers rubbing restlessly against the fabric of his trousers in the small, unconscious rhythm of soone fighting to keep their nerves locked down.
Liora’s gaze lingered on those white-knuckled hands, and the corner of her mouth curved—just a fraction, private and satisfied.
So the mask wasn’t perfect after all.
She started the engine, the low purr of it swallowing the silence between them, and pulled smoothly into traffic toward the private hospital where Arthur Hale was currently confined.
When they arrived she killed the ignition, set the parking brake with a soft click, and was already reaching for her door when she felt his stare—sharp, accusing—fixed on the side of her face.
"How did you know this was the hospital?"
Liora did not flinch. She opened her door in the sa unhurried motion, voice cool and matter-of-fact as she stepped out into the crisp evening air. "My sister intends to sponsor you. Naturally that ans we investigate everything about you—thoroughly."
No apology, no evasion, no attempt to pretty it up.
Elias watched her for a long beat, expression unreadable. "Private investigation of personal information without consent is illegal."
"Gambling is also illegal." She gave him the smallest, sharpest smile, the kind that acknowledged his point while simultaneously dismissing it. "Get out of the car."
He did.
They moved through the gleaming lobby in silence, Elias leading with long, tense strides while Liora followed a half-step behind, heels clicking softly against marble. He reached Arthur’s room first, hand already rising to push the door open—only to be stopped by the nurse stationed there, young and polite, her face creased with professional regret.
"I’m sorry," she said gently. "The patient’s condition isn’t stable yet. No visitors are allowed in or out at the mont."
Elias’s lashes lowered. "Is that so."
He didn’t need to think; the lie was obvious. Serena Blackwood’s hand was all over this—Arthur was almost certainly fine, stable enough that letting Elias see him would ruin the entire performance.
A doctor erged from the room just then, clipboard in hand, scanning them both. "You’re the family?"
Liora took one deliberate step backward, hands sliding into the pockets of her coat, signaling without words that she was not involved.
The doctor’s attention settled solely on Elias. "The patient’s condition has deteriorated. We’re recomnding—"
"Transfer, then," Elias cut in, voice flat. "Do it. I have the money."
The doctor exhaled through her nose, a tired sound. "It’s not about the money..." She trailed off, shook her head once, and gestured down the corridor. "Co with . We’ll handle the transfer paperwork."
Elias knew better than to believe it would be that simple.
Sure enough, as he started to follow, a figure appeared at the far end of the hallway—disheveled hair, rumpled clothes, wild eyes scanning frantically until they locked on him.
The woman—his foster mother—lit up like soone drowning who had just spotted a rope. She hurried forward on unsteady feet, closing the distance in seconds, and seized his shoulder in a bruising grip.
"Elias! What are you doing here? Perfect timing—you still have money on your phone, right? Transfer it to now, I have an ergency!"
He tried to shrug her off. She only tightened her hold.
"Dad needs to be transferred," he said quietly.
"Transferred? Then do it." She waved the concern away as though it were irrelevant. "Hurry up, send the money to Mom. I’ll pay you back in a few days, I swear."
Liora watched from two paces away, lips curling into a cold, silent scoff. She had seen the files—knew exactly how many tis Bennet had fed Elias that identical promise, never once following through.
The doctor frowned at the rising volu. "Please keep your voice down. This is a hospital—other patients are resting."
Marlene Bennet imdiately turned on the charm, bobbing her head at the doctor. "Yes, yes, sorry, I’ll be quiet, I’ll be quiet..." She dropped her voice to a harsh stage whisper, leaning closer to Elias. "Don’t be difficult, sweetheart. Just send it. Be a good boy."
The doctor’s expression remained one of distaste, yet she made no move to intervene further—simply stood there, a silent partner in the pressure cooker they were building around him.
Liora took it all in without blinking. Even knowing Serena’s ruthlessness, the layered cruelty still impressed her: the fake transfer threat would have been enough to force compliance, but dragging the foster mother into it—publicly stripping away the last scraps of Elias’s dignity—was surgical.
The boy’s slender fra seed to sway under the woman’s weight, knees threatening to buckle, cheeks flushed a thin, angry red as his breathing grew shallow and uneven.
He finally wrenched free with a sharp jerk, shoulder burning where her nails had dug in, the pain blooming into sothing else entirely—sharp, electric, rolling down his spine in slow, tingling waves of unwelco heat.
He froze for half a second, stunned.
He had used the pain-conversion skill once before, back in that other world where cultivation let him channel agony into power. Here, in this ordinary body, the sa feedback loop twisted differently: the harder she gripped, the more the ache lted into prickling, syrupy pleasure that pooled low in his gut.
For one absurd, horrifying mont he wondered whether he might actually die like this one day—fucked to death on silk sheets, high on his own rewritten nerves.
He lifted a hand, rubbed at the throbbing spot on his shoulder, then looked back at Marlene Voss with slow, deliberate calm.
"Give you money so you can lose it to soone else again?"
Marlene Bennet blinked, stunned into montary silence.
Behind him, Liora’s interest sharpened. So the eternally patient boy was finally pushing back.
Too late, perhaps. Gamblers like this one did not fold easily.
Marlene Bennet recovered quickly. The pleading-mother mask cracked and fell away, replaced by sothing colder, uglier. "Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?"
She stepped forward, hand already rising—ready to slap the disobedience out of him and reassert the hierarchy that had kept him docile for years.
Elias lifted his gaze, t hers, and smiled.
A small, quiet smile—boyish on the surface, lethal underneath.
"Touch again," he said softly, "and see what happens. If there’s even one mark on afterward... ten fingers won’t be enough to pay for it."
—
Elias Kane’s voice drifted out light and even, the cadence almost polite—casual, as though he had rely remarked on the weather being pleasant rather than issued a threat that promised severed fingers. Compared to Marlene Voss’s earlier bluster it carried no visible nace, no raised volu or clenched jaw, yet the words landed with such quiet precision that her snarling aggression folded in on itself in an instant, the fury draining from her face until she stood there subdued, almost ek.
Marlene Bennet stared at him, eyes wide with a mix of shock and dawning uncertainty, as though the boy she had known for years had been replaced by a stranger wearing his skin. Elias—her compliant, endlessly forgiving Elias—had just spoken like soone who ran with people who made problems disappear, and the confidence in his tone left no room for doubt that he ant every syllable.
How could he dare? Where had that certainty co from?
Liora Voss, standing a asured step away with hands still tucked into her coat pockets, felt a flicker of genuine surprise cross her features before understanding settled in, cool and clear. The source of his backbone was obvious.
Serena Blackwood had set her sights on him.
Fox borrowing the tiger’s might—Elias knew exactly how to leverage what he had, the sa way he had leveraged that devastating face of his to work host-boy shifts at high-end clubs, fully aware of the currency his beauty carried in rooms full of won who could buy anything they wanted.
Marlene Bennet’s expression twisted through a rapid cycle of embarrassnt and wounded pride; the idea that a single sentence from this boy had cowed her stung too deeply. She shook it off—or tried to—raising her hand again, teeth gritted in renewed fury. "Let’s see how you’re going to chop my fingers off, you little—"
Liora spoke then, voice low and devoid of the faint warmth she had occasionally shown Elias, flat as winter pavent. "He’s not wrong. Touch him, leave even a bruise, and I promise you won’t have fingers left to hold a card—ever."
Marlene froze mid-motion, neck stiff as she turned to look at Liora properly for the first ti. Years in dimly lit gambling dens had honed her instincts for reading people; one glance at the composed posture, the unruffled hazel eyes, the effortless authority radiating from every line of Liora’s body told her everything she needed to know. This woman was not soone a person like her crossed and walked away from whole. Offend her, and the end would co quietly—no noise, no witnesses, just absence.
But how the hell did Elias know soone like that?
Terror flashed across Marlene’s face. Her raised hand dropped, trembling, and after several failed attempts to school her features she managed a sickly, ingratiating smile. "I—I was just so angry, you know? Heat of the mont, saying stupid things. I’d never actually hit him. He’s my own son—I love him, I’d do anything for him!"
The lie was transparent, grotesque in its brazenness; even the few words exchanged so far painted a clear enough picture of what kind of person Marlene Voss truly was, and how she had treated Elias behind closed doors for years.
Liora knew, of course. She had no intention of intervening further, though. She simply turned her gaze back to Elias, a spark of amused curiosity flickering in her eyes—silent question hanging between them: How are you going to handle this ss?
A clinging, money-hungry foster mother. A foster father desperate for funds and dical care. Either way, it was a trap no college kid could escape on his own; the only way out was to lean on soone with real power.
And the only soone here was Liora Voss.
The price for her help went without saying.
Elias read the expectation in her look as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud. His lips parted, ready to accept—his objective had already been t, after all, and this was the logical next step.
Click.
The sharp, unmistakable sound of a stiletto heel eting tile cut through the hospital’s late-night hush, amplified by the empty corridors.
Everyone turned.
Liora’s mouth parted slightly in genuine surprise.
She had known Serena placed unusual value on Elias—enough to orchestrate this entire charade—but she had not expected the older woman to show up in person at this hour, unannounced.
Elias fixed his gaze on Serena Blackwood as she approached, the reflexive disdain he had carried from the original plot’s summary of her character thawing noticeably. If Liora was the effortlessly seductive type who wore her flirtations like perfu, Serena carried the aura of classical refinent—ink paintings, guqin strings, quiet elegance that evoked scholars and poets rather than boardrooms.
In that first mont of seeing her, Elias’s mind flashed involuntarily to a talented female cultivator he had once pursued in another world: features entirely different, yet the poised, cultured grace was eerily similar.
It was almost impossible to reconcile that image with "domineering CEO," with words like controlling, possessive, ruthless.
But Elias never judged by appearances alone.
He studied her face for a long beat, then let his eyes travel downward—lingering briefly on the taut fabric stretched across her chest, then lower still, to the long, sleek lines of her legs sheathed in sheer black stockings.
High-denier silk.
He gave a small, internal nod. Point in her favor. Serena Blackwood was officially no longer in the negatives.
Serena ca to a asured stop before them, voice soft but carrying effortlessly. "Liora, it’s so late. Why aren’t you ho yet?"
Elias’s ears actually twitched at the sound—low, velvet-edged, dripping with unintended sensuality.
Okay. Full marks. Serena Blackwood had just rocketed to the top of his ntal scoreboard.
Yet she did not glance at him once. Her attention remained fixed on Liora, as though her sole reason for being here was to collect her wayward younger sister.
A phone call could have handled that. Why co all the way to the hospital?
The fresh interest Elias had felt dimd by half. The "two-faced CEO" trope suddenly seed less appealing when the performance involved unnecessary preamble instead of crisp efficiency.
He stayed silent, watching her play out the scene.
After a few more gently probing questions about Liora’s late night, Serena finally lowered her gaze to Elias. Those beautiful eyes softened, brimming with concern that looked achingly genuine. "Having trouble? Do you need my help?"
Elias had to give her credit for the shalessness. Classic scum-woman passive skill: orchestrate the crisis yourself, then arrive like a benevolent savior, feigning innocence.
But wasn’t that convenient? He had always enjoyed peeling masks off people exactly like her.
He t her eyes steadily, voice cold enough to frost glass. "No need."
Serena blinked, visibly startled by the flat rejection.
Logically, it made sense. No matter how gentle her tone, she was still the woman planning to buy him. Any boy in his position would resist on principle.
And boys who resisted like that were usually fools—offer them the smallest crumb of kindness, and their flimsy defenses crumbled.
Just look at how he had let his garbage foster mother walk all over him for years. That indulgence was stupidity, plain and simple. Marlene Voss had beco what she was in no small part because Elias had never drawn the line.
Enough. Thinking further would only make Serena feel more contempt for this counterfeit pretty boy.
She said nothing aloud. She simply flicked a glance toward Liora.
Liora understood instantly. She turned to Marlene Voss with cool dismissal. "What are you still standing here for?"
Marlene Bennet—ever the quick study of power dynamics—bobbed her head frantically. "Right, right—I’m going, I’m going!"
And with that, she dropped to a crouch and literally rolled away down the corridor, scooting awkwardly on her backside until she disappeared around the corner.
Serena watched her go, then turned back to Elias, voice softer than ever, almost tender. "Better now?"
Elias looked down at the retreating figure, expression unreadable.
Liora suspected a pang of sothing close to sorrow might be moving through him just then—no matter how disappointed he was in Marlene, she was still the woman who had raised him, and watching her reduced to a kicked dog at soone else’s word had to carry at least a faint echo of shared humiliation.
Before she could dwell on it, Elias lifted his head. While Serena’s attention remained on the empty hallway, he turned to Liora and offered a small, clear smile—sharp little canines peeking just enough to catch the fluorescent light.
Liora’s heart stuttered once, hard and involuntary, the mory of his earlier words flashing through her without permission.
"If we kiss, will my fangs hurt you?"
Innocent on the surface, pure almost, yet threaded through with that bone-deep wantonness that seed to live under his skin.
[System Theta notification: Liora Voss favorability increased. Current: 2%.]
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