Chapter 216: Chapter 216: Mistake
Chapter 216: Mistake
The tongue was one of the softest parts of the body.
One of the easiest places to wake a person from madness.
No matter how far someone had gone, pain there cut through heat, anger, pride, and desire with clean cruelty. Serena had not lost her mind completely. The bite reached her fast.
She caught Elias’s face with one hand, fingers pressing into his cheeks until his mouth opened. Only then did she pull free from his teeth.
A thin line of blood touched her lip.
Serena drew in a breath through her nose. The tip of her tongue stung so sharply that her first word broke.
"Don’t..." She hissed once, then forced the rest out. "Don’t move. If you keep fighting me, I’ll take you right here."
Elias’s whole body tensed.
He clearly did not want to obey her.
His eyes were still bright with rage, his breathing unsteady, his wrists straining against the hold she had on him. But the threat landed. No matter how much hatred filled his face, he slowly drew in one thin breath and made himself go still.
Serena pressed him against the back of the front seat, caging him with her body. The space in the rear of the car had been built for comfort, privacy, and expensive silence. Now it felt too small for both of them. Their breaths tangled without distance. Heat gathered between them, damp and close, turning the tinted, quiet car into another private room she had dragged him into without asking.
Serena looked down at him.
Blood stained his mouth.
It made the red of his lips darker, brighter, almost cruel. His face was pale enough that the blood looked worse than it was, a vivid mark against a boy already shaken past pride. He looked ruined and beautiful in the same glance, which only made Serena’s chest hurt more.
She lifted her right hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
At the second touch, Elias turned his head away.
Serena’s fingers stopped in the air.
Then she lowered her hand.
"Eli," she said, softer now. "Listen to me first, all right?"
His jaw tightened.
"That night, there was a misunderstanding between us." Serena spoke carefully, each word chosen like she was stepping across cracked glass. "I’m not avoiding what I did wrong. I know I was wrong. I’m apologizing to you."
The apology came out lower.
"Eli, I’m sorry."
He did not move.
Serena kept going because stopping now felt like falling. "Anything else you feel hurt by, anything you think I did badly, we can talk about it when we go home. I won’t let you be wronged again. I’ll listen to whatever you say. Whatever you want me to change, I’ll change it."
By the end, her voice had begun to tremble.
She was nervous.
Serena Blackwood, who could stand before thousands of Blackwood Group employees and speak without a flicker in her voice. Serena, who could sit across from board members, donors, competitors, and old family sharks and smile through every hidden knife. Serena, who knew how to make tenderness sound like policy and threat sound like concern.
In front of one boy, she could barely hold her tone steady.
This was not acting.
She did not know how to act this badly. She would never choose to look this desperate on purpose.
Every word was real.
Elias listened to all of it without expression.
Then he lifted his head.
His eyes had gone strangely colorless, drained of anger and pleading alike.
"We can’t go back," he said.
Serena forced a small smile. "Why not? Nothing irreversible happened. This isn’t some melodrama where one mistake ruins everything forever. We’ll go back first, and then..."
"What if I made one?"
The words were very soft.
Serena froze.
Elias looked at her. "What if I’m the one who made an irreversible mistake?"
Her smile grew more careful, almost tender from effort. "You didn’t. And even if you did, I can forgive you. I was wrong first, so..."
"I slept with someone else," Elias said. "Can you forgive that too?"
The car went silent.
Dead silent.
Serena’s hand stayed on him, but her grip no longer felt controlled. For a suspended breath, she did not seem to understand the sentence.
Liora’s voice came first.
"Get out."
The order was not for Serena.
It was for the driver.
Serena had not expected the process of taking Elias back to become this complicated. She had thought it would be quick. A confrontation, a threat, a few hard words, then home. Because of that, the driver had remained in the front seat.
Liora noticed what Serena did not.
Whatever came next was not something a driver should hear.
The driver, stiff with terror, escaped as if she had been granted parole. She opened the door and stepped out so fast the movement nearly looked undignified.
Liora stood by the car, composed as ever.
She gave the driver a mild beckoning gesture, directing her to the spot where Liora had been standing.
"Thank you, Ms. Voss," the driver whispered more than once, face pale with relief.
Liora smiled. "Some things are better unheard."
The driver nodded quickly, grateful enough not to ask questions.
Liora said nothing more. She turned her head and looked down the street as if she were only stretching her attention, letting her mind rest while Serena handled her own disaster.
Then she took a small wireless earbud from her pocket and slipped it into one ear.
The sound inside connected just in time.
"Eli," Serena said, her voice carrying a faint, fragile smile. "You’re lying to me again."
Inside the car, Serena had finally moved.
She pointed at him as if the gesture could make the world sensible again. "You’re lying."
Her mouth smiled.
Her eyes did not.
People smiled because joy came first. A smile without joy was only a shape the face remembered how to make. Serena’s was beautiful and useless. It could not hide the way her gaze had gone unfocused, the way the blood seemed to leave her lips, the way her throat worked as if breathing had become something she had to think about.
Her mind, usually so fast, had emptied.
She nearly wrung logic from it by force.
Anger.
That was all this was.
Elias was angry, so he had said something to hurt her.
Of course he had.
A boy like him would not simply fall into someone else’s bed. Serena knew better than anyone how difficult he had been. How many arrangements it had taken. How much patience, pressure, money, tenderness, and coercion. Even then, getting him had not been smooth. He had resisted her for half the night in his own way, stubborn enough to make victory feel earned.
Elias Kane would not cheapen himself with some random woman.
He was too proud.
Too difficult.
Too clean in the one place Serena needed him to remain clean.
That thought let her breathe again.
Just barely.
A faint iron taste still sat in her mouth from where he had bitten her.
Then Elias laughed.
It was not mocking.
That was worse.
It came out hollow and painful, like a sound squeezed through a bruised throat after a beating.
He looked numb when he spoke.
"I’m not lying."
Serena stared at him.
Elias’s voice barely held together. "I really slept with another woman."
Something exploded inside Serena’s head.
A sharp ringing filled her ears.
It was so loud she could not tell where it came from. The car, her blood, the street outside, her own skull. It pierced everything until she raised one hand and struck the side of her head three times.
The slaps were hard.
Too hard.
Almost like she was hitting herself.
The ringing seemed to disappear after that.
Serena turned her eyes back to Elias with a stiffness that made her look less human.
What kind of joke was this?
Elias, with another woman?
Impossible.
No.
Not impossible.
A thought surfaced, vicious and immediate.
There was one possibility.
Her eyes changed.
If it was Giselle Frost...
Elias seemed to know exactly where her mind had gone.
He closed his eyes and lowered himself against Serena’s lap, as if he no longer had strength to sit upright. His voice came muffled and low.
"It wasn’t Giselle."
Serena stopped breathing.
"My body is this dirty," Elias said. "How could I use it to stain her?"
The words slid under Serena’s skin like a blade.
"I don’t remember very clearly," he continued. "I only remember that I don’t think I knew her..."
"Shut up!"
Serena’s shout cracked through the car.
She seized his wrist, fingers closing hard enough to bruise. Her eyes had gone red, fixed on him with a fury that looked too close to terror.
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