Chapter 213: Chapter 213: Shameless
Chapter 213: Shameless
The instant Elias saw Marlene Bennet, his eyes widened.
Excitement flashed through them before he pressed it down.
Of course he understood.
Marlene could not have appeared here on her own. Serena Blackwood had been the one keeping her contained. If Serena wanted someone locked away, that person could grow wings and still not fly out unless Serena opened the cage.
So Serena had finally lost patience.
She was making a move.
Wonderful.
Elias nearly wanted to reward her by sleeping with her once.
Then he remembered the sea trip he had just arranged with Giselle and wondered, briefly, whether he had overplanned. A second later, he dismissed the thought. No. In a trash romance, every overlapping disaster eventually became useful. The more knives on the table, the better the meal.
His face changed before Marlene reached them.
The excitement disappeared. Confusion rose in its place, followed by embarrassment and the dazed shock of a boy hearing his name shouted in public by someone he had not seen in a long time.
Marlene did not have that kind of control.
She came hurrying over with open excitement on her worn face, eyes shining as if she had found a winning ticket on the sidewalk. Her clothes looked slept in. Her hair was pinned badly, her makeup uneven, and the eagerness in her expression had nothing maternal in it.
Giselle stepped in front of Elias without thinking.
Her movement was quiet, but decisive. She placed herself between him and Marlene, eyes cooling as she blocked the woman’s path.
She did not speak.
No matter how ugly this woman looked, no matter how wrong her behavior felt, she was still Elias’s mother.
Marlene saw Giselle.
Then she looked at Elias, then at the tiny space between them, at the way Giselle had moved to protect him, at the way Elias had not immediately corrected it.
Her smile stretched wider.
"Oh, Elias," Marlene called, voice loud enough to carry past the gate. "You got yourself a girlfriend? And you didn’t even tell your mom?"
The words were deliberate.
They landed in the open air at Westbridge University’s gate, where students were coming and going, where security cameras watched the sidewalk, where every passing glance could turn into a post within minutes.
"I..." Elias’s lips parted, as if he wanted to explain.
Then Marlene reached for him.
Panic broke across his face.
He dodged back too fast, stumbled, and nearly fell. Giselle caught his arm at once and steadied him.
Marlene’s enthusiasm vanished.
Her face darkened with frightening speed.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" she demanded. "I don’t see you for a few days, and now you don’t even recognize your own mother?"
Elias’s face went white.
Marlene’s eyes narrowed. "Or is it that you found yourself some rich little heiress, and now your mom isn’t good enough for you?"
Her voice rose with every word.
The first few students slowed. Then others stopped. People near the gate turned their heads. A delivery rider waiting by the curb looked over. Within seconds, a loose circle began forming, not quite close enough to interfere, close enough to watch.
Elias stood in the middle of it, pale and frozen.
Marlene’s words hit him where the public could see. She did not need truth. She had volume, ugliness, and the word mother. In a crowd, that was often enough.
Giselle’s patience snapped.
"Shut up."
Her voice cut through the noise.
For an instant, Marlene faltered.
Giselle’s face had gone cold in a way most people at Westbridge recognized. The Frost name did not need to be spoken for the air to feel different around her. She looked down at Marlene as if deciding whether the woman was worth crushing.
Fear crossed Marlene’s face.
Then she remembered where they were.
A campus gate. A crowd. Phones. Witnesses.
And she was Elias’s mother.
What could Giselle do?
Hit her in front of everyone?
Marlene pushed forward again, greedier now. "Elias, come on. Come home with your mom."
She reached for him.
Giselle caught her wrist.
The grip was clean and fast. Not hard enough to break anything, but enough to stop the hand from touching Elias.
Giselle’s eyes sharpened.
Why would a mother humiliate her son like this in front of strangers?
Before she could say anything, Marlene screamed.
The sound was sharp enough to make people flinch.
"She hit me!" Marlene cried. "The rich girl hit me!"
Then her body seemed to lose its bones.
She dropped toward the ground in a limp, ugly collapse.
Giselle’s pupils tightened. She released Marlene at once, almost like she had been shocked.
That made it worse.
The moment Marlene was free, she committed fully. She hit the pavement, rolled once, and began wailing without caring about the dirt on her clothes.
"My own son doesn’t recognize me now!" she sobbed. "And he lets his rich girlfriend beat his mother! I raised him with my own hands. I worked myself half dead to put him through school, and now he turns his back on me because he found some trust-fund girl!"
Elias watched her performance without a ripple inside.
Terrible acting.
Just like her employer.
Serena really needed better tools if this was what she had chosen to send.
Unfortunately, terrible acting often worked on people who wanted a story more than they wanted truth.
The crowd thickened.
Phones came out.
Even without knowing who anyone was, the scene had everything people liked to chew on: an elite campus, a rich girl, a beautiful boy, a mother on the ground, accusations of betrayal and class cruelty.
Add Giselle Frost into the frame, and the whole thing became gossip with a pulse.
Elias, the character in the middle of it, looked destroyed.
His face had gone bloodless. His eyes stared without focus. His body seemed to have forgotten how to move.
Giselle saw him and something painful crossed her expression.
She forced down the urge to deal with Marlene directly, grabbed Elias’s hand, and turned. "We’re leaving."
That was the right choice.
Get him out first. Stop the scene from feeding itself. Gossip like this burned hot and fast. A few days, perhaps a week, and campus would move on to the next scandal.
Marlene would not let that happen.
She scrambled across the ground and caught Elias by the ankle.
Then she dragged herself closer and wrapped both arms around his leg.
Elias came back to himself and tried to pull away.
Marlene shut her eyes and screamed, "Go on! Kick me to death if you have the guts! Kick your own mother!"
Elias froze.
The attempt to pull away died instantly.
Despair rose over his face so cleanly that several people in the crowd went quiet.
Giselle’s free hand clenched.
The bones in her knuckles shifted under the skin.
If she could, she would have beaten Marlene bloody on the pavement and walked away without looking back.
But she could not.
Because Marlene was his mother.
Once that word attached itself to a grudge, everything became weaker. Anger. Justice. Explanation. Defense. Every clean line blurred under the weight of blood, obligation, shame, and the old public instinct to forgive the parent before hearing the child.
Giselle understood that too well.
She took a slow breath and moved to separate Marlene from Elias herself.
Marlene saw the motion.
Her face twisted.
Then, with a viciousness too fast for Giselle to stop, Marlene yanked down Elias’s pants.
A flash of bare skin broke through the crowd’s vision.
Elias dropped at once, crouching low and grabbing the fabric with both hands before more could be exposed.
For a second, no one moved.
Then the phones lifted higher.
Elias crouched on the pavement, his whole body trembling so hard it looked less like shaking and more like a breakdown. His shoulders jerked. His head lowered. The pale line of his neck, the whiteness of his face, the way his fingers clutched at his clothes, all of it made the exposure feel even more violent.
Marlene had pushed him to the edge.
Giselle moved first.
She tore off her coat and stepped in front of him, shielding his lower body from the crowd. The fabric fell over him, blocking every angle she could cover. Then she turned her eyes on Marlene.
They were no longer the bright blue Elias had compared to the sea.
They had deepened into something darker.
Marlene felt a chill crawl over her.
For once, she scrambled backward without pretending. "Elias, honey, it was an accident. Mom’s sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just want you to come home with me, that’s all." Her voice changed, softening into a fake plea. "Come back with Mom, okay?"
Giselle opened her mouth.
Before she could speak, a voice rose from under the coat.
It was very light.
Almost broken.
"Okay..."
Giselle went still.
Elias crouched there, hidden beneath her coat, his fingers gripping the fabric so tightly they shook.
"I’ll go... back with you."
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