Chapter 206: Chapter 206: The Game
Chapter 206: The Game
Elias said it with a smile, but Victoria Frost had not survived this long by trusting smiles.
Her eyes narrowed by the smallest degree.
There it was.
Not fear. Not petulance. Not the fragile obedience he had been feeding her since the day he entered Giselle’s life.
Resistance.
Before this, Elias had never shown Victoria this side of himself. Around her, he had been pliant and pretty, a tame thing with lowered lashes, the kind of boy who seemed made to sit under a powerful woman’s hand and accept whatever shape she wanted to press into him. She could tease him, test him, threaten him, pull him into her lap, and he would only look up with those damp, harmless eyes.
Now the cat had claws again.
Victoria watched him for a moment, then laughed softly.
She did not look troubled. If anything, interest warmed her expression. An old hunter, bored with predictable prey, had finally seen something worth aiming at.
"Should I take that as a refusal?" she asked.
There was humor in her voice.
Elias felt the pressure anyway.
It did not come from her volume. Victoria never needed to raise her voice. The weight came through a slight change in her gaze, the measured pace of her words, the way the air around her seemed to accept her authority before anyone else in the room had a chance to decide. Women like her did not have to touch a person to make them feel cornered.
But Elias had not come this far by flinching at a raised eyebrow.
He did not answer her question.
Instead, his mouth curved. "Do you really love your daughter that much, Mrs. Frost?" he asked. "That’s impressive, considering you were trying to put your hands on the person she likes a minute ago."
Victoria smiled without answering.
Her expression remained mild, almost indulgent, but her eyes said plainly: You know exactly what I was doing.
Of course Elias knew.
Victoria had never truly wanted him. The photo, the tie, the lap, the close breath, the lazy question of whether she was allowed to take him. None of it had been simple desire. It was a warning dressed like temptation.
She was telling him she could reach him.
She was telling him Giselle was not the only one in the Frost family who could touch him.
She was telling him to stop.
Elias chose not to understand.
He blinked at her with the bright, clean innocence of a boy who had wandered into an adult conversation and somehow made it dirtier by accident.
Then his smile deepened. He bit lightly into his lower lip, a small, shameless motion that dragged sweetness and mockery into the same place.
"I get it," he said. "You don’t love your husband anymore, so you wanted to try me."
This time, he watched her closely.
Every tiny shift mattered. The set of Victoria’s mouth. The stillness in her fingers. The rhythm of her breathing.
Everyone born into this world had parents. Giselle could be an untouchable campus legend, a girl treated like a carved moonlit statue by half of Westbridge University, but she had not appeared out of thin air.
Yet Giselle had never mentioned her father.
At the Frost residence, Elias had seen no trace of a man who lived there. No presence. No habits left behind. No quiet evidence of someone still occupying space in Victoria’s life.
So he had guessed.
Maybe Giselle’s father was dead.
Maybe Victoria Frost was a widow.
If he was wrong, the jab might only be rude.
If he was right, he had just pressed his thumb against a sealed wound.
With a woman like Victoria, that was never safe. She wore elegance like a second skin, all maturity and soft laughter, but Elias would sooner believe a dog could file taxes than believe those hands had never been stained. Not literally, maybe. Not personally. Women like her did not need to swing knives themselves.
Still, he pushed.
The smile faded from Victoria’s face.
Her crossed legs uncrossed. Her bare feet settled against the floor. The change was quiet, but the room seemed to notice it.
"You seem to know quite a lot," she said.
Elias answered with a sweet smile.
She lowered her legs.
He crossed one of his own.
One hand rested lazily over his thigh, the other propped his chin as he looked at the beautiful woman in front of him. The posture was casual to the point of insolence.
"Mrs. Frost knows how girls are when they’re in love," he said. "They always have so much they want to tell the person they like. So..."
He let the sentence trail off.
He did not need to finish it.
Victoria could control staff, cars, buildings, guards, and the shape of Giselle’s education. She could arrange a room before anyone asked for it. She could have a photograph taken at the exact moment Elias stepped out of a shower.
But she could not know every word Giselle had ever said to him in private.
So Elias gambled.
He wanted Victoria to wonder if Giselle had told him.
He wanted her to imagine her daughter lowering her guard, opening a door that Victoria thought still sealed.
For a few seconds, silence held.
Then Victoria lifted two fingers.
The bodyguard, who had disappeared at some point without Elias noticing, returned as if called out of the walls. She carried a cup and saucer, then lowered her head and placed them in Victoria’s hand.
Victoria accepted the tea.
She did not look at Elias.
She blew gently across the surface, scattering the faint curl of steam. The motion had an old-world grace to it, wrong for the hour, wrong for the combat studio, and very right for her. The kind of beauty that made a threat seem civilized.
She took one small sip.
"She would not tell you," Victoria said. "Not unless she had already fallen in love with you. As long as she has not reached that point, she will never bring up her father."
Elias went still for half a breath.
Victoria had seen through the bluff.
Then again, that had been part of the risk.
His expression smoothed almost at once. "You may be underestimating how much she feels for me now," he said. "Or maybe you are underestimating my methods."
Victoria smiled faintly. "Do not try to bait me. On that subject, my daughter and I have an understanding."
Elias fell silent.
The room settled into the space between them.
After a while, Victoria took another sip of tea. "However," she said, "if you told her I was the one who said it, she might believe you."
Elias’s eyes lifted.
"So that is your leverage?" Victoria continued. "Use this to damage the relationship between me and my daughter?"
Her phoenixlike eyes sharpened. For one strange instant, the studio around them seemed to fall away. Elias almost saw her in another world entirely, not seated in a private American training room, but standing beneath a cold sky with a blade in her hand, the kind of woman who could cut through flesh, debt, affection, and bloodline with the same calm wrist.
Almost.
Elias had faced real women with swords.
He was not about to fold because Victoria Frost had the spirit of one.
He opened his mouth.
Victoria spoke first.
"But you seem to have forgotten something," she said. "I sent you to her."
Elias paused.
"If Giselle learns that," Victoria said, "do you think your little friendship survives?"
There it was.
Not anger.
Counterplay.
The old fox had not only blocked his move, she had turned the board around and placed a knife against his own throat.
Elias could tell Giselle that Victoria had discussed her father.
Victoria could tell Giselle that Elias had been placed beside her as part of Victoria’s design.
It would not matter that Elias had approached Giselle before Victoria ever properly used him. It would not matter that he had his own mission, his own calculation, his own reasons. Once Giselle heard the wrong version at the wrong time, every warm look, every tear, every Besties joke, every touch would start to rot.
That was the genius of it.
Victoria had not created leverage tonight.
She had built it from the beginning.
If Elias stayed obedient, it remained buried.
If he bit her, she would pull it out and press it into his ribs.
Maybe this was not even her strongest card.
Elias sighed inwardly.
What a pain.
So this was where the world hid its real difficulty.
Elias said in his mind, "Trash Trope Intervention Division, you’d better start praying."
System Theta startled. "What? What happened?"
Elias ignored it.
After venting at the Bureau in the privacy of his own head, he looked back at Victoria Frost.
This opponent was troublesome.
Good.
Troublesome meant he had to stand properly.
Elias rose.
He did it slowly, unfolding from the seat beside Victoria until he stood over her. For the first time that night, he looked down at her.
It was not the height that changed the room. Victoria had too much presence to be diminished by a boy standing.
It was his eyes.
They still curved with a faint smile. His face was still lovely, almost heartbreakingly harmless under the training room lights. But the shape of his gaze seemed to narrow, taking on a foxlike brightness that had nothing to do with innocence.
Pretty, yes.
Soft, no.
He lifted one hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. The gesture was casual, almost lazy, and somehow more insolent than if he had raised his voice.
"Mrs. Frost," he said, "you seem to have forgotten something too."
Victoria watched him without moving.
"You did not send me to Giselle."
His voice was light.
"I found her first."
The bodyguard stood at the edge of the lounge, silent.
The tea steamed in Victoria’s hand.
Elias smiled.
"From the very beginning, she was my target."
His gaze did not waver.
"That has nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with anyone else."
He leaned in slightly, the clean curve of his mouth softening into something almost sweet.
"So go ahead," Elias said. "Try to stop me."
Then his smile bloomed, bright and beautiful enough to ruin someone who mistook it for surrender.
"But whatever happens after that, Mrs. Frost..."
His voice dropped.
"That’s on you."
