Chapter 55: Frozen Fra
Giselle Frost didn’t know the first thing about dicine—she was almost entirely ignorant on the subject—but she knew Serena Blackwood inside and out.
Elias’s father’s illness might genuinely need a world-class dical team, but Serena would never actually arrange one. Elias simply wasn’t worth that kind of investnt to her. The real danger was far simpler: all Serena had to do was lie about either the severity of the condition or whether the team had ever been secured, and she could keep Elias on a leash for next to nothing.
Yet after the way he had turned her down ti and again, Giselle knew that even if she laid out the truth, he wouldn’t believe a word. Besides, this was all still just her suspicion...
The silence stretched between them, heavy and unbroken.
Giselle finally spoke, her voice flat. "I’ll help you."
"I can get a dical team capable of treating your father."
Surprise flickered across Elias’s reddened eyes. He glanced up at her, and for once the reaction was real—he genuinely hadn’t expected Giselle to offer help so decisively.
Elias asked inside his head, "What’s her favorability at right now?"
[System Theta: 16%.]
Of course. Everything still ca back to her feelings for Lucien Hart.
Even with the objective achieved, Elias couldn’t resist one last little prod. "Giselle, can you really get..."
Her expression darkened in an instant.
The question landed like a challenge, as if he thought she couldn’t possibly asure up to Serena Blackwood.
"You..." Her lips parted sharply, but the words died before they could form. Saying anything now would only make it sound like she was competing with Serena—especially when Serena wasn’t even in the room.
Giselle corrected herself, tone asured. "I have my ways."
Her gaze drifted to his mouth. She couldn’t decide whether his lips were too soft or his canines too sharp, but the small cut on his lower lip was still there, vivid even now.
Her eyes flickered. "But I have one condition."
Elias’s voice ca out small and careful. "What is it?"
"You’re not allowed to see Serena Blackwood anymore."
Elias: Heh.
Favorability at sixteen percent trying to stake a claim on soone sitting at twenty-five? Cute.
Besides, after that night he and Serena had reached a much smoother understanding. At this point she was basically half the queen in the castle.
And Giselle... exactly who did she think she was?
Still, on the surface Elias only pressed his lips together lightly and gave the tiniest nod.
Giselle narrowed her cold eyes, watching him with open suspicion.
He had rejected the hand she kept offering more than once. She had no idea whether this ti would end the sa way...
Elias kept his face perfectly neutral, his mind utterly at ease. What exactly are you staring at? He was just an innocent college guy caught in an impossible situation. Everything had been forced on him. Everything was unavoidable. Even if his body had already been claid by Serena in every possible way, his heart remained untouched and pure.
(A/N: Elias is worse than NTR Heroines....)
[System Theta: ...]
It had thoughts, but it wasn’t stupid enough to voice them.
"Also, rember to stay put at the hotel."
With that, Giselle turned on her heel and walked away.
Elias called after her quickly. "Giselle, wait..."
She paused, glancing back over her shoulder.
Elias bent down, picked up the fallen jacket from the floor, and held it out. "Your coat..."
"I don’t want it." Giselle’s refusal was instant and absolute. She had a deep-seated cleanliness fixation; once sothing was tainted, it was worthless to her forever.
The door slamd shut with a heavy thud.
Elias clicked his tongue softly as he watched it close.
Truly heartless.
If it weren’t for the fact that his face so closely resembled Lucien Hart’s, her attitude toward him probably wouldn’t have been any different from the way she treated that discarded jacket.
The rule was simple: if it’s dirty, throw it away.
In so ways, Giselle’s personality would have made her a natural at playing the domineering CEO herself.
Elias tossed the jacket back onto the floor without a second glance, then walked slowly to the window. He pushed it open and looked down just in ti to see Giselle and Sloane walking away side by side.
From any angle, Giselle’s posture remained perfectly straight, her head held high with that signature aristocratic tilt, as though she would never lower herself for anyone.
Yet here she was—offering help to a young man who had rejected her multiple tis. In its own quiet way, wasn’t that a form of surrender?
Taming soone took patience. It was a gradual process. No need to rush.
Elias let a faint smile curve his lips. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen.
Still no replies from any of those won.
Exactly as expected.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and instead fished out a pack of cigarettes. With a practiced flick of his right hand he tapped the pack against the windowsill until a single cigarette slid free. He lowered his head, catching it between his full lips, then drew out a lighter and sparked the fla. A thick plu of white smoke curled out through the gaps in his shielding fingers.
Elias’s face disappeared into the haze, features softened and blurred. Only his eyes remained visible—slightly dazed, the corners still faintly red from the tears he had forced earlier.
And that precise mont was captured from a blind spot Elias would never notice, then sent onward without a sound.
Liora Voss stepped slowly out from the circle of won who had surrounded her. No one dared block her path.
She glanced back at the dim, noisy, chaotic space. It was a club she had visited often enough in the past to unwind, yet right now it felt unbearably dull and empty, as if sothing vital was missing.
At that mont her phone vibrated inside her clothes. She pinched it out with two fingers. This ti the ssage was from exactly the person she had been expecting.
Liora’s eyes lowered. Her fingertip hovered over the screen, as if hesitating, but after a long mont it finally descended.
The phone unlocked. She opened the ssaging app. Dozens of photos had arrived one after another since she had first stepped into the club, but she hadn’t opened a single one yet.
Now felt like the perfect ti. Liora scrolled down slowly, starting from the very first image and working her way through them all.
The photographer had stayed professional and detached, simply recording Elias’s every movent. Many of the shots showed him walking alone, head down, focused on wherever he was going.
One detail puzzled Liora slightly: no matter the destination, he never took transportation—he always walked.
Only a few fras carried any real weight. One showed Elias sitting outside a laundry service, head lowered as he concentrated on his phone with an unusually serious expression.
Hooking up with another woman? But that focused look didn’t match the usual flirtation.
Then he had gone into the hotel and stayed inside without erging. The next photo shifted to nightti, outside the hotel entrance. For the first ti another figure appeared beside Elias—but it wasn’t Giselle.
Liora’s face remained perfectly impassive. She knew it was Sloane Sinclair.
The following shot captured Elias in tears. Even in a frozen image, Liora could feel the raw grievance and pain radiating from him. He must have been letting out those soft, stifled sobs, swallowing them down as much as possible—the very picture of innocence.
Yet the sight made Liora’s mind drift to another mory: Elias crying beneath Serena Blackwood. Had he held back those sa choked sounds then, or had the tears been shy and hesitant, leaving trails of sha across his cheeks...
Her finger suddenly stopped, freezing on the final photograph.
Elias’s eyes still carried that lingering red from crying, making him look heartbreakingly vulnerable. But here he was, holding a cigarette between his full, soft lips. His pink-tinted fingernails matched the tender pink of his mouth, the two shades complenting each other perfectly as he exhaled smoke. Even with his striking features half-hidden, blurred, and softened by the drifting haze, it was impossible to miss the carefree allure and seductive charm in his brows and eyes—a version of him she had never seen before, one that radiated a unique, unrestrained magnetism.
A completely new Elias. One she had never witnessed until this exact mont.
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