Chapter 80: Just Howork
Elias saw right through Sloane Sinclair’s little plan and laughed to himself.
As if he would ever go crawling back to her.
If breakfast had filled her up, great. If it hadn’t, she could save her appetite for the next ti she t Giselle and got punched for it.
With that pleasant thought warming him, he turned and kept walking. Sloane, after standing there for a mont with her pride soothed, went back inside to finish breakfast.
Elias pulled out his phone and imdiately contacted his personal uber driver, otherwise known as Liora Voss.
Elias: Big sis, Giselle slept with and then ditched . She left stranded at the biggest entertainnt complex in the world. Save .
Liora looked down at the ssage thread, and the first real smile of her day finally touched her otherwise placid eyes.
She did not reply to him at once.
Instead, she called Serena.
The line connected quickly. "Hello?" Serena’s voice ca through as gentle as ever.
She was still working.
"Sis," Liora said lazily, "want to guess what happened to your little sweetheart last night?"
That got Serena’s attention imdiately. Liora was smiling. She could hear it in her voice, and that alone was enough to signal that sothing was off.
Her pen stilled over the docunts on her desk. "What happened?"
Liora’s smile deepened. "Last night, Giselle took him away."
A sharp crack sounded through the receiver.
Liora heard it clearly. It sounded very much like a fountain pen snapping in half.
"Are you busy right now?" Serena asked.
Liora leaned back, amused. "What could I possibly be busy with?"
"Then get in the car and co here right now," Serena said, still using that sa soft tone. "We’re going to find that bitch together."
Liora’s expression brightened into sothing almost radiant. "Of course, sis."
At almost the sa ti, Elias’s phone lit up with an incoming call from Serena.
He had barely finished sending Liora that ssage before Serena called, which made the chain of events painfully obvious. Elias stared at the screen, now freckled with mist from the light drizzle, then answered anyway.
"Hello?"
"Where are you right now?" Serena’s tone was impossibly gentle.
Elias had to fight not to laugh. He could already picture the expression on her face. The fact that she could still sound this soft while obviously furious was impressive even by her standards. She was starting with him because she wanted the location first. Typical Serena.
He let a beat of silence pass, then said quietly, "I don’t know."
"Oh?" Serena’s voice held the faintest trace of amusent now. "So you’re not at school."
Through the half-open office door, her assistant caught sight of Serena’s face and went pale on the spot. Her boss’s voice remained mild, but the expression twisting across her features was horrifying enough to stop the assistant cold before she retreated without a sound.
Elias lowered his voice a little more, making it deliberately awkward. "Last night... Giselle and I went to her friend’s place to work on assignnts."
Serena’s tone did not change. "Is that so? Then send your location. I’ll co pick you up."
The call ended.
The instant it did, the phone in Serena’s hand died a violent death. She slamd it onto the floor with enough force to shatter it into pieces, leaving the case split open and the screen ruined beyond repair.
Howork?
Please.
The excuse landed with exactly the sa energy as so man breathing hard into the phone while insisting he had rely been out for a run.
She had always treated that kind of joke as a joke. It had never occurred to her that one day she would be the one on the receiving end.
Now she was living her own personal NTR scenario, and the worst part was that the "bull" was a girl younger than her.
Serena drew a breath, then called her assistant back in.
The poor woman stepped inside with a face that still looked a little drained of blood. "Ms. Blackwood."
Serena glanced at the mangled phone on the floor and pointed at it. "Take the SIM card out and put it in a new phone."
"Yes, of course."
The assistant moved as fast as she possibly could. Any slower, and she had the distinct feeling she might end up replacing the phone in a far more literal sense than she cared to imagine.
By the ti she finished, Serena had already settled enough to resu thinking clearly. She picked up the replacent phone, checked the location Elias had sent over, then handed a stack of pending files across the desk.
"Sort these for . I’ll deal with them when I get back."
Even now, she had not forgotten work.
"Yes, Ms. Blackwood."
anwhile, after sending Serena the location, Elias turned right back around and sent another ssage to Liora.
Elias: Thanks, big sis. This kiss is all yours this ti.
He knew perfectly well that Liora never disappointed him when there was a chance to enjoy chaos.
He had rewarded her once last night already, and he was about to reward her again.
After all, considering how intimate things must have looked between him and Giselle, Liora had probably been entertained enough to laugh out loud.
A little over ten minutes later, the car arrived.
It was one of those luxury vehicles whose presence announced money before the driver even touched the brakes. Elias had been standing by the roadside long enough that even the thin rain had soaked him through. His hair clung damply to his forehead and neck, and the shoulders of his clothes were dark with water. The mont he saw the car pull up, his eyes brightened.
The rear door swung open.
He had just started to climb in on his own when a hand shot out from the darkness inside, seized him, and yanked him bodily into the back seat.
From the outside, it looked much less like a pickup and much more like an abduction.
The force of it sent him stumbling straight forward. He fell into Serena’s arms so hard that most of his face ended up buried against her chest, his nose full of her scent before he could even steady himself.
He planted one hand against her waist and the other against the seat, trying to push himself upright, but Serena wrapped an arm around him first and kept him where he was. By the ti he managed to lift his head, he was half across her lap with his hips perched directly on her thigh.
He lowered his gaze, alert now. "What are you doing?"
From the driver’s seat, Liora glanced into the rearview mirror.
Serena and Elias were pressed close together in a posture that practically radiated possession. Liora took it in without comnt, the corner of her mouth curving very slightly.
Serena caught that expression at once.
Maybe she did not want her sister to see her like this. Maybe she simply did not want her looking at Elias. Either way, she hit a button, and a partition rose smoothly into place. It cut off the driver’s view and dimd the back seat at the sa ti, leaving the air between them more private and more dangerous.
Serena’s hold on him remained firm enough to feel almost coercive, but her voice turned softer still, almost aggrieved in its sweetness.
"You spent the night with soone else and didn’t tell first."
The shift was so abrupt that goosebumps broke out across Elias’s skin. He was forced to soften his own tone just to survive it.
"I didn’t spend the night with her."
Serena said nothing.
Elias continued in a lower voice, "She’s not that kind of person."
He hesitated, then added, "Neither am I."
His expression was earnest enough to look almost fragile. "We really were just doing howork."
Serena’s fingers tightened once around his waist before slowly relaxing again. "Then why did you have to go to her place?"
Elias went quiet for a mont. "You know what happened. After that, the dorm..."
He trailed off before finishing.
That was enough.
Serena understood imdiately.
Her tone cooled a shade, though not enough to lose its smoothness. "That’s an easy fix. I’ll buy you a place off campus."
A flicker of happiness lit his face at once. "Really?"
She looked at him as though the question itself was faintly absurd. "Why would I lie to you about sothing like that?"
If anyone else had reacted that way, Serena would have assud he was excited about the money.
But Elias was different.
After he returned the black card to her, she had looked into it afterward. The millions attached to that card was still untouched. He had not spent a single cent.
Which ant his reaction now was not really about the property or the money.
It was because she was willing to give it to him.
That realization soothed her and inflad her at the sa ti.
"I believe nothing happened between you and Giselle," Serena said at last.
Her hand, still resting at his waist, slid slightly lower.
There was sothing strange moving in her eyes now, sothing dark and bright all at once.
"But I’m still unhappy," she murmured. "What should I do about that?"
Elias sensed the danger a fraction too late.
His eyes widened. "Wait, what are you... ah!"
Her hand had already slipped beneath the hem of his shirt.
Her palm was shockingly cold. The instant it touched his bare skin, his whole body jolted. A hard shiver ran through him, and the strength went out of him so fast that he softened completely against her, collapsing back into Serena’s arms.
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