Chapter 221: Chapter 221: Taking Himself Hostage
Chapter 221: Taking Himself Hostage
The reversal let Liora breathe.
For a moment, the tightness in her chest loosened so suddenly it almost felt like pain leaving a bruise.
Of course.
He was still Elias.
The same beautiful, reckless boy who moved through women’s lives like a bright knife through silk. The same boy who could tempt, ruin, and vanish without ever truly belonging to the hand that reached for him.
No one could own his feelings.
No one deserved to.
If someone received even a brief moment of his favor, that was already the reward.
[Liora Voss’s favorability has increased. Current value: 84%.]
Liora exhaled slowly, relief softening the line of her shoulders.
Then she remembered Serena’s expression from a moment ago, that happiness she had nearly failed to hide when she thought Elias had surrendered. The way it had transformed into rage after she realized he had tricked her.
Liora’s mouth lifted before she could stop it.
Her sister had never been played like this before.
The door to the security room opened hard.
Serena returned faster than she had left.
Liora’s eyes flicked to the monitors on instinct. On the screen, Elias had already gone back to normal. The lazy, flirtatious smile with one finger at his lips had vanished so cleanly it felt like something Liora alone had dreamed.
She controlled the curve of her mouth before looking back. "What happened?"
Serena’s chest rose and fell visibly.
The woman who usually wore warmth like a tailored jacket had finally started to crack. Her clothes were still ruined from the storage room, her face was marked, and now even the inside of her seemed torn open by Elias. Anger that could not be released only ever injured the person holding it.
Serena understood that better than anyone.
She parted her lips and drew in a slow breath.
Then she let it out.
Her eyes stayed closed through the entire motion. It did not look like someone calming nerves before a speech. Serena could stand before thousands without needing to prepare herself. This was different.
This was one boy ruining her control.
At last, she opened her eyes and looked at Liora.
The exhaustion in her expression was no longer hidden.
"He lied to me."
Four words.
Calm ones.
Liora looked at her sister and said nothing.
She wanted, absurdly, to tell Serena to stop fighting Elias head-on. If this were a negotiation, the two sides did not even hold the same kind of leverage. Elias carried Serena’s love in his hands. Serena had a contract that was more power than law, and the belief that Elias’s love, hatred, and dependence still belonged to her.
That was not equal.
But Liora could not say any of that.
Serena would not listen.
Worse, saying it would expose Liora’s own attachment too clearly.
So Liora remained the observer, the spectator, the sister at the edge of the abyss, watching Serena sink with the smile of someone who had chosen not to reach out.
She glanced toward the monitor. "Look."
Serena turned.
On the screen, Elias stood beneath the camera again and waved.
Serena’s freshly controlled anger caught fire at once.
Her eyes went cold, fury contained so tightly it looked almost rational. "Let him wave. Once his arm gets tired, he’ll stop."
Inside the storage room, Elias kept waving for a while.
When Serena did not come, he finally lowered his hand with visible regret.
"Ah," he sighed. "She didn’t fall for it."
[System Theta: You already tricked her once.]
"I did trick her once," Elias said. "But this second time, I sincerely thought things through. How could she not come?"
[System Theta: ...]
If Serena came now, her brain had probably been replaced with water.
Elias sighed again, more dramatically. "This is on her. She rejected my surrender. If I refuse to give in later, she can’t blame me."
[System Theta: ...]
System Theta had become used to this.
Apparently, one of the most important skills of an ace operative was shamelessness.
Elias tilted his head. "Are you calling me shameless?"
[System Theta: !]
Elias laughed.
He had only been teasing it.
"Getting out of a locked room usually increases favorability. That part is true. I’ve tested it plenty of times."
He spoke more to himself than to the system now.
"But that doesn’t mean I actually want to be locked in here for a long time. A proper route only needs the process. Once the beat lands, we move on."
[System Theta: Are you planning to leave? But you just lied to Serena.]
"Then I just need to make her understand I’m serious."
As soon as he finished, Elias lowered the zipper on his jacket. One arm slipped free, then the other. The jacket dropped to the dusty floor.
System Theta suddenly understood.
Was this the scene from the training files?
In the security room, both women watched the monitor.
At first, neither understood what Elias was doing.
Then he caught the hem of his shirt with both hands and pulled it over his head in one smooth motion.
Serena’s eyes widened.
Liora took one glance, then quietly stepped back, making sure she was outside the edge of Serena’s peripheral vision.
From this angle, she could watch Elias without giving herself away. If Serena turned, Liora could lower her head at once and pretend she had been respecting privacy the entire time.
The precaution proved unnecessary.
Serena was not looking anywhere else.
Her gaze had been taken completely by the boy on the monitor.
Elias stood in the grainy blue-white camera feed, bare from the waist up. Even through the imperfect image, his skin looked too pale for that cold storage room, smooth and unmarked enough to seem almost unreal against the dull floor and stacked crates behind him.
There were no visible marks on him.
No claim Serena could point to.
No proof that another woman had already written herself onto him.
That made it worse.
A blank page could be a comfort.
It could also be an invitation.
Serena knew exactly what he was doing.
The storage room temperature was low. With clothes on, he could endure it for a while. Without them, with his body already worn down from the day, he would not last long.
On the screen, Elias lifted one leg.
His shoe had already been kicked off at some point. One socked foot slipped briefly out of the camera’s view, then returned bare.
He did the same with the other.
Soon both socks lay with the rest of his clothes, and Elias stood barefoot on the cold, dusty floor.
He stripped himself down to the last small layer of fabric and nothing more. It covered enough to keep the camera from showing what it should not, but it did nothing for warmth. If anything, it made the scene more unbearable, because everyone watching knew how little protection remained.
Serena’s jaw tightened without her noticing.
Elias was threatening her by hurting himself.
Forcing her to lose through his own body.
The decision in it was almost cruel.
For a moment, her face changed.
Then coldness rose in her eyes, hard and angry.
If he did not treasure himself, did he expect everyone else to keep doing it for him?
Fine.
She wanted to see how long he could last.
When he could not stand it anymore, he would put his clothes back on.
Even if something did happen, she could summon the best doctors in the world.
Longhaven would come if she called.
Any specialist would.
Money could repair fever. Exposure. Weakness. A fainting spell.
It could not repair the way Elias looked at her, but Serena pushed that thought away before it touched her.
Inside the storage room, Elias did not stand still.
He began looking around.
His gaze moved from sealed boxes to old framed pieces, from covered furniture to the metal shelving bolted against the wall. He walked lightly despite the cold floor, arms close to his body, every step making the camera follow the line of his figure through the room.
He seemed to be searching for something.
System Theta watched with growing unease.
[System Theta: Host... what are you looking for?]
Elias did not answer right away.
His eyes settled on a stack of old event supplies near the far wall, then moved again.
Every abuse-romance locked-room route had a necessary plot beat.
The question was only whether Serena’s storage room had given him the right prop.
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