Chapter 222: Chapter 222: Surrender
Chapter 222: Surrender
On the monitor, Serena’s face looked merciless.
Her brows were cold. Her mouth held no softness. Anyone glancing at her would have thought she did not care what Elias did inside that room.
Only her lips betrayed her.
They pressed together in a small, tight line, the only crack in the armor she had forced over herself.
Liora had been right.
If this were a negotiation, it was unfair from the beginning. The two sides had never held equal leverage. One side held something impossible to price. The other side held a contract that was worth almost nothing once Elias stopped believing in it.
Time passed.
Serena’s unease became harder to hide.
Her fingers shifted. Her shoulders tightened. Her breathing slowed, then grew too controlled. Every little movement was a flaw in the woman who could usually make entire boardrooms wait for permission to feel afraid.
Then Serena seemed to remember there was someone beside her.
She turned sharply.
Liora had her head lowered and was looking at her own toes.
Serena’s gaze moved from Liora’s sandals to the side of her face.
Only then did Liora lift her head, as if she had just noticed the attention. "What?"
Serena frowned.
Then she smiled faintly. "I’m waiting him out."
The words carried thick confidence, as if Elias would be the one to fold first.
Liora’s red lips curved. "Is that so? Then I won’t disturb you."
She stepped back and left the security room with smooth, unhurried grace.
From beginning to end, she did not look at the monitors once.
Under normal circumstances, Serena would have noticed.
Liora’s avoidance was too deliberate, almost as if she already knew what the screen showed and was carefully protecting herself from suspicion.
But Serena’s thoughts were too tangled. Elias had stirred her until every part of her attention felt raw. She missed the flaw completely.
She looked back at the screen.
The sight made her hands clench.
Elias had not curled up to conserve warmth.
Instead, he opened his arms.
Bare skin met the cold from every angle, as if he were inviting the room to take as much heat from him as it could.
To anyone else, the action would have looked stupid and useless. It accomplished nothing except self-inflicted harm.
Against Serena, it was a killing move.
No answer.
No clean way around it.
The contest between them had never truly been about who could be crueler. Serena had been losing from the start. All she could rely on was Elias’s body. He was fragile enough that, sooner or later, his own limits would betray his stubbornness. His body would warn him before his pride broke, and he would be forced to put his clothes back on.
When that happened, Serena could open the door.
He would not have surrendered.
She would not have won.
But she would not have lost either.
A draw was the worst result Serena could accept, and for someone as proud as her, it was already an enormous concession.
Then Elias moved.
Serena’s heart lifted with a flash of hope.
Was he finally unable to stand it?
Was he going to put the clothes back on?
Instead, Elias stepped out from beneath one camera and crossed into the range of another.
Serena stared harder. "What is he doing?"
The answer came quickly.
Elias picked up a broken strip of wood from somewhere near the stored event panels. He weighed it in one hand, then raised his head and found the camera.
For one instant, it looked as if he were looking straight at Serena.
His mouth curved.
Was he smiling at her?
Serena’s eyes widened.
Then Elias lifted his arm and drove the sharp end of the wood into his own wrist.
Outside the security room, the guard and staff member both flinched at the crash from inside.
Before either could move, the door flew open.
Serena came out like a storm given a body, moving so fast that fear seemed to run ahead of her. She vanished down the corridor in seconds.
Slowly, the guard and staff member turned toward Liora.
Liora stood a few steps away from the door.
She knew exactly why Serena had run.
The anxiety in her eyes was nearly the same as Serena’s, though she wore it better.
He really did not cherish himself at all.
Inside the storage room, Elias sucked in a sharp breath.
There was no true pain on his face, only a severe restraint that looked less like enduring hurt and more like holding back pleasure.
After several seconds, he let out a slow breath.
"I forgot I had Pain Conversion."
For a while now, the women had been unusually well-behaved. None of them had caused him serious physical injury on purpose. Small pains had become background color, little sparks he treated as flirtation because, honestly, they did feel good.
This time, he had misjudged the force.
The stimulation had been much larger than intended.
Which meant the sensation had been...
Well.
[System Theta: I, I forgot too...]
That was why it had screamed in his head a second ago. Elias had told it what he was planning, and it still failed to react in time.
How embarrassing.
The storage room door burst open.
Serena entered almost at a run.
The force of her momentum carried her straight to Elias, driving him back against the wall. Elias closed his eyes, bracing for the impact, but the expected cold shock never came.
A hand was behind him.
Serena had caught the back of his body with her own palm, taking the collision against herself.
When Elias opened his eyes, Serena was staring at him.
Her eyes were bloodshot, fierce enough to look starved, as if she wanted to swallow his flesh and marrow to make sure nothing else could ever reach him first.
Before Elias could react, the wooden shard was torn from his hand.
His injured arm was seized next.
He tried once to pull it back.
Serena’s grip did not move.
She looked down at his wrist.
The smooth skin had opened under the wooden edge. Red welled from the cut and slid toward her fingers. The metallic smell rose between them, sharp enough to make Serena’s reason thin again.
He had done it.
He had truly done it.
From the moment he picked up the splinter to the moment he cut himself, he had not hesitated for even a second.
He was merciless to himself.
Too merciless.
Serena understood then that the cruelty was not really toward his own body.
It was toward her.
He had no attachment left for her, so he could use himself as the knife. He wanted to leave this place so desperately that he would rather hurt his own body than wait for her permission.
Serena looked up suddenly.
Elias met her eyes.
Then, like a startled bird, he closed his eyes.
Serena’s mouth twitched.
Did he think she was going to hit him?
She wanted to laugh, but even a bitter laugh would not come. She could only look at his drawn brows, his tightly pressed lips, the fragile paleness at the edges of his mouth, and feel a dull ache spread through her chest.
She did not know whether she hurt because he was wounded, or because his first instinct was to fear her hand.
Maybe there was no clean way to separate the two.
Elias’s body suddenly lifted.
He opened his eyes in shock and realized Serena had picked him up.
Her arms held him across her chest, careful enough not to jar the injured wrist, strong enough that his resistance would mean nothing if he tried again.
He was still almost bare from the cold room, skin chilled, limbs tense, pride stripped raw by the monitor, the storage floor, and Serena’s hands.
Serena looked down at the boy in her arms.
Her eyes were red.
Not only the whites now. The skin around them had taken on a faint flush too, as if something inside her had finally burned through the last layer of control.
At last, she smiled.
It was impossible to tell what emotion shaped it.
Her voice was ruined when she spoke.
"All right."
She swallowed once.
"I lost."
[Serena Blackwood’s favorability has increased. Current value: 80%.]
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