Chapter 207: Chapter 207: The Ultimatum
Chapter 207: The Ultimatum
For a rare moment, Victoria Frost lost focus.
Elias was smiling at her.
That smile should have looked sweet on an eighteen-year-old boy. Pretty, harmless, perhaps a little spoiled by knowing too many powerful women found him beautiful.
Instead, it carried the kind of nerve she rarely saw in people twice his age.
He did not look like a student caught in a room with someone far above him. He did not look like prey trying to talk his way out of a hunter’s hand. The courage alone would have been enough to set him apart from almost every boy his age.
Worse, it was not only courage.
He had leverage.
Victoria had given part of it to him herself, yes, but a gifted knife was still a knife if the person holding it knew where to place the blade.
In that brief silence, Victoria almost saw a shadow of herself in him.
No one stayed eighteen forever. Someone was always eighteen.
What made her pause was not that thought.
It was Giselle.
Her own daughter had none of this at the same age. None of the sharpness. None of the effortless cruelty. None of the bright, fearless instinct to aim straight for the wound.
A pity.
If Elias had been...
Victoria stopped the thought before it finished.
No.
Whatever other use he might have, Elias Kane would never be a safe husband for her daughter. He was not a good future spouse, not a gentle father in waiting, not a boy who would build a clean household around Giselle’s pride.
He was poison with a pretty mouth.
The kind that killed the wife and smiled at the funeral.
Victoria’s face settled into calm again. She tipped back her head and drank the rest of her tea in one swallow.
The bodyguard appeared almost soundlessly to take the cup.
Elias glanced at her and narrowed his eyes.
She had startled him.
The bodyguard kept her face professional and withdrew as silently as she had come.
Victoria set her attention back on Elias. "Do you know why he killed himself?"
Elias had been about to look away. The question stopped him.
Killed himself?
Who?
Then he understood.
Giselle’s father.
He did not know why Victoria had chosen to bring him up now. He had a guess, because every story from a woman like her was either bait or a blade, but he shook his head anyway.
"No."
Victoria gave a light laugh, the kind that said she had been right about one thing. Giselle had not told him.
"Because he touched a relationship that did not belong to him."
The sentence was plain. The meaning was not.
Elias understood it instantly.
It was practically his area of expertise.
Victoria Frost had been cheated on.
She continued before he could speak. "Our marriage was arranged between families. At a certain level, choice is a luxury people pretend to have after the papers are already signed."
Elias nodded.
That part, he understood very well.
He had played that kind of plot before. In one world, his status had been too high for ordinary marriage. His family arranged a match with another powerful house, and the girl tied to him had been considered his equal. Then her strength collapsed overnight.
According to the role he had been given, Elias broke the engagement.
He showed up. He humiliated her. He played the arrogant heir so well that even the elders wanted to slap him.
Then the girl challenged him.
A classic fallen-fiancée revenge arc.
[System Theta: What happened after that?]
"I looked down on her, obviously," Elias said inwardly. "Worse than early Giselle, actually. That world locked me into a prickly noble-boy persona."
[System Theta: Isn’t that kind of character outdated?]
"That depends on the world," Elias replied. "In a modern setting, sure. In a high-fantasy world with no decent entertainment, a proud, sharp-tongued boy is still useful."
He smiled faintly at the memory.
"I used a second identity and stayed beside her for years. Saved her a few times. Nearly died with her a few times. She fell for that version of me naturally."
[System Theta: And then?]
The system sounded almost excited.
Elias’s inner voice stayed mild. "Then we honored the duel. I made sure I was weak enough to lose, let her kill me, and right before I died, she learned I was the boy who had been with her all along."
There was no need to explain the rest.
Any proper employee of the Trash Trope Intervention Division knew a thousand ways to die so cleanly that even gods could not drag the soul back.
[System Theta: ...]
The sweetness System Theta had imagined shattered on the spot.
Victoria stood.
"The result was satisfactory," she said.
She was tall enough that, once she stepped close, Elias had to tilt his head slightly. The pressure of her body, her height, and the strength beneath her relaxed posture made the lounge feel smaller.
"I gained more leverage in business," Victoria said. "He received more wealth than he could have earned in several lifetimes."
"But he lost his freedom." Elias looked straight at her. "I assume Mrs. Frost did not let her husband keep other women outside."
Victoria shook her head.
"No. I allowed it."
Elias blinked.
Really?
So Victoria had a little of Liora’s spectator streak in her too?
Unexpected.
Victoria ignored the flicker of surprise on his face and stepped closer. The scent of tea and recent training clung faintly to her. Her chest nearly brushed his face, forcing the distance into something deliberately uncomfortable.
"What he should never have done," she said, "was let Giselle see it."
Something detonated quietly in Elias’s head.
Oh.
So that was it.
In front of Giselle.
Victoria’s face gave nothing away, which was exactly how Elias knew the matter had never stopped moving under her skin.
"So," Elias said, "you forced him to kill himself?"
Victoria lifted a hand and touched his face.
Her fingers were warm from the tea cup, smooth against his skin. The gesture looked gentle. It was not. Her eyes rested on his as if she were looking through him toward someone already dead.
"No," she said. "I only gave him a small lesson."
Elias did not believe the word small for one second.
A lesson that ended with suicide.
No wonder Giselle hated her.
And no wonder Giselle had never fully broken away.
Her father had not been blameless.
The story settled into place, ugly and useful. Yet Elias did not treat it as a story. Victoria Frost did not speak without purpose. She had not opened this part of herself because she wanted confession, sympathy, or nostalgia.
So he asked the only question that mattered.
"What happened to the woman?"
Victoria smiled.
This one was elegant. Nearly pleasant.
"She’s alive," Victoria said. "Would you like to meet her?"
A chill ran up Elias’s spine.
No.
Absolutely not.
If that woman was still alive after whatever Victoria called a lesson, then meeting her meant seeing a version of his own possible ending. Not death. Something worse. Something preserved.
Something Victoria could point to and say: look what happens when someone ignores me.
At last, Elias understood the full shape of the warning.
The story of Giselle’s father was a gift, a piece of truth offered to satisfy his curiosity. It was the sweet date before the knife. The last courtesy.
If he refused to listen, Giselle’s father would become his preview.
The threat carried more weight than a gun pressed to his forehead.
Elias lowered his chin in a small, polite nod. "Thank you for the story, Mrs. Frost."
Victoria watched him.
"As payment," he continued softly, "I’ll be merciful with Giselle. I won’t make her quite that miserable."
The temperature in Victoria’s eyes dropped.
This time, she did not bother hiding it.
Elias smiled under that killing gaze, obedient and soft, the perfect picture of a boy who had learned nothing.
"Of course," he added, "I can’t promise a hundred percent success. If someone interferes and affects my work, Giselle’s ending might become very close to her father’s."
The bodyguard had gone still at the edge of the room.
Victoria did not move.
Elias’s smile grew sweeter.
"And one more thing."
His voice stayed light, almost tender.
"I only sleep with virgins. Such a shame."
He tilted his head, eyes bright enough to look innocent if someone did not listen to the words.
"But in a while, Mrs. Frost, you can ask your daughter yourself. Let her tell you what I feel like."
