Chapter 219: Chapter 219: The Locked Room
Chapter 219: The Locked Room
Was this what people meant by sisters sensing each other?
Liora stood near the car after the staff scattered, one hand still resting lightly against her chest. The tightness there had not faded.
Then another thought came, and her expression stiffened for an instant.
That kind of shared ache was supposed to belong to sisters by blood, wasn’t it?
She and Serena had grown up under the same family name, shared the same rooms, the same servants, the same dinners where every smile carried a private cost. But blood had never been what tied them together.
So if this feeling was not sisterhood...
A staff member hurried back from the house, face pale with panic. "Ms. Voss, Ms. Blackwood, she..."
Liora’s eyes narrowed at once. "What happened?"
The staffer flinched under the look and finally forced the rest out. "She took him to the storage room."
Liora went still.
"Take me to security."
The Blackwood residence was enormous, but surveillance inside the house was limited. The family did not need cameras in every hallway to feel safe. They had security, money, staff loyalty, and a last name that made ordinary threats turn around at the gate.
The cameras existed where cameras were useful.
A few near the front entrance, visible enough to warn outsiders. More around the garage. And in the storage areas, because those rooms held expensive things no one used often enough to notice missing at once.
Privacy was not supposed to be an issue there.
That, apparently, had become a problem.
In the security room, Liora stood beneath a wall of monitors. The screens showed fragments of the estate: the front drive, the side entry, the garage, a service hallway, then the storage room.
Her attention settled on the clearest angle.
On the screen, Serena dragged Elias inside.
The picture was grainy, but the shapes were unmistakable. Serena’s taller figure pulled the slimmer one forward, then shoved him hard enough that he fell to the floor. Even through the surveillance feed, Liora saw pain cross Elias’s face.
Serena moved immediately, crouching as if to check whether he was hurt.
Elias pushed her away.
Serena stumbled and nearly dropped to the floor herself. She caught her balance, rose, and went back to him.
The next time, she pulled him into her arms and held on.
No matter how he struggled, she did not let him go.
Then Serena kissed him.
Liora slowly turned her head.
The security guard and the staffer who had brought her here had both lowered their eyes. Neither dared look directly at the screens. Their training had chosen survival over curiosity.
Liora’s red mouth curved slightly.
For some reason, she could not make the smile work.
The heaviness in her chest did not ease after seeing the monitor. It worsened, sinking deeper, pressing harder.
"You two can leave," she said, her voice carrying a trace of amusement that did not reach her eyes.
They left at once.
When the door closed, Liora looked back at the screen.
The question she had avoided finally found its answer.
Was she jealous?
She had a secret with Elias that belonged only to them. She had a place Serena did not have, a place Giselle did not have. She had heard what she was not meant to hear, accepted what she was meant to be ashamed of, and received a reward from him for it.
She already had more than most.
Still, when she heard the wet, intimate sounds of Elias with Serena through the earbud, irritation had first stirred under her skin. Then that irritation turned into something she could not smooth away.
Greedy.
The thought made Liora laugh again, softly this time.
There was nothing wrong with admitting it.
Greed was natural.
She had chosen this position herself from the beginning. Every step had been hers. She had watched, listened, accepted, and waited.
She did not regret it.
Inside the storage room, the air felt gray.
The room had been cleaned by staff, of course. Nothing in the Blackwood residence was ever truly dirty unless a family member made it so. Still, storage rooms carried a lifeless quality. Covered furniture. Sealed boxes. Old decorative pieces. Expensive things removed from sight but not thrown away.
Elias lay on the cold floor and looked up at Serena.
His eyes were icy.
Deep inside that chill, a thread of laughter flickered.
No wonder this world was a trashy psychological melodrama. No wonder Serena was its perfect abusive CEO.
The locked room had arrived late, but it had arrived.
Elias had known Serena would not disappoint him forever.
This room was not formal enough to be a proper cage. It lacked the customized bed, the soundproofed walls, the hidden medical kit, all the classic signs of someone who had planned captivity with taste and capital.
Still, the essence was the same.
A room for locking up a lover who refused to obey.
And the reward for this kind of route was usually excellent. Once the locked-room segment ended, the person doing the locking often came out with a sharply increased favorability value, a worse conscience, or both.
Elias felt a genuine spark of anticipation.
It had been a long time since anyone had locked him up. Coming in again was almost exciting.
[System Theta: ...]
The system quietly wondered whether this counted as a rare form of masochism.
Then it decided not to ask.
Getting scolded was likely.
Elias stayed motionless on the floor while Serena’s kisses fell over him, one after another. His face. His mouth. The side of his neck. Her breathing had grown uneven, and the heat of it touched his skin, carrying the faint scent of her with it.
He waited for the next escalation.
Then Serena stopped.
Elias looked up as she slowly rose from him.
His gaze followed her with honest confusion.
What now?
Was she getting picky about the setting?
Had Yvonne Quinn possessed her? This was the room Serena had chosen. If she thought the environment was bad, she only had herself to blame.
Hurry up.
Serena looked down into his eyes.
Those eyes had lost all color somewhere between the car and this room. No anger remained. No pain. No grief. No fear.
Everything that had been there before seemed stripped out, swallowed by something silent and final.
A phrase surfaced in Serena’s mind.
There was no grief heavier than a heart that had stopped reacting.
Her own heart trembled.
Her voice came out hoarse. "Why aren’t you fighting?"
Elias stared at her without expression. Even his eyes barely moved. Only his swollen lips parted, faint blood still marking one corner.
"Would it matter?"
Serena’s chest tightened again.
That sentence dragged her back to something Elias had once given her without even realizing how much it mattered.
Trust.
Trust was consumable. It did not stay forever because someone had owned it once. Every test, every humiliation, every lie, every forced touch spent a little more of it. One day, the account emptied.
For her and Elias, that day had apparently arrived.
Serena wanted to say something. Her lips opened, closed, opened again.
In the end, what came out was cold enough to hide the damage.
"You can’t think clearly right now. Listen to yourself. You don’t even know what you’re saying."
Elias did not respond.
Serena straightened, her tone hardening by necessity. "Stay here and calm down. When you’ve thought it through, I’ll let you out."
Elias’s eyes moved at last.
He looked at her.
Blood traced the corner of his broken mouth. Slowly, that mouth curved into a beautiful smile.
"You want to imprison me?"
Serena’s pupils contracted.
That one sentence tore away the last layer of her own disguise.
If he insisted on leaving, then the answer was simple.
Lock him up.
Keep him where she could see him. Keep him where Giselle could not reach him, where unknown women could not touch him, where his mother could not drag him through a crowd, where his lies and his ruined softness could not run beyond her hand.
Keep him until he belonged to her again.
Serena’s face settled.
"I told you," she said. "This is to help you calm down."
Her voice was even, almost steady.
"You’ll stay here and reflect for a while."
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