Chapter 223: Chapter 223: Love
Chapter 223: Love
Serena Blackwood had surrendered.
That woman, the same Serena who could split the city’s corporate world with the Frost family, the woman even Victoria Frost watched with caution, had lowered her proud head in front of one boy.
The moment the favorability notice sounded in Elias’s mind and marked Serena at eighty percent, it meant one thing.
Emotionally, she had lost badly.
Elias did not answer her.
He only looked at her.
Serena could not stand that expression. When she admitted defeat, she had expected shock, suspicion, disbelief, perhaps even some fragile stirring of the boy who used to look at her like she mattered.
She had not expected this calm.
It made her surrender feel worthless, as if every emotion she had torn out of herself had been performed for an empty room. As if the person who should have received it had already walked away and left only a body behind.
"I lost," Serena said again.
This time, her voice rose. "Are you satisfied now?"
Elias wanted to say no.
Of course he was not satisfied.
He had worked himself nearly to death for this. Marlene had humiliated him in public. Serena had dragged him back, kissed him, restrained him, locked him up, chilled him half to freezing, and forced him to cut his own wrist just to move the route forward.
After all that, Serena’s favorability had only risen by one percent?
If favorability had been a real item and some department could be blamed for theft, Elias would have filed a complaint on the spot.
Hello? There is a woman here who deserves to be hung from a streetlight, and she is embezzling favorability.
Still, he was not truly displeased.
Every target had her own structure. Serena was different from Liora. For a woman like Serena, love came harder because she had built her entire life around profit, control, and usefulness. In a sense, she was interest itself given a beautiful face. She had seen too much, bought too much, and bent too much to believe easily in something as inefficient as love.
But once she did love, the change would be much harder to hide.
That was why favorability mattered.
Without the numbers, Elias would never believe Giselle was still below love after all that gentleness.
He looked at Serena again and wondered whether he should give her a small reward.
Her face looked like it might actually collapse.
Then he thought about their current relationship and decided that not slapping her again already counted as mercy.
[System Theta: ...]
System Theta felt that the host had a very special understanding of the word mercy.
Serena picked up the clothes Elias had thrown off in the storage room and covered his chilled body with them for the moment. Then she carried him out, past the storage wing, and into his bedroom.
She set him carefully on the bed and turned up the heat.
"Put these on."
Elias looked at the clothes she had produced as if by magic, then looked up at Serena. She looked drained in a way he had never seen before, face pale, hair slightly disordered, the mark from his slap still on her cheek.
He raised one bare foot and kicked the clothes off the bed.
His attitude was clear.
He had standards.
If it was not American-made, he was not wearing it.
Serena said nothing.
She bent down, picked up the clothes, and placed one knee on the bed. Elias tried to slip away. Serena caught him around the waist and pulled him back, then forced the clothes over him with the efficiency of someone dressing a furious cat.
Elias stared at her.
Was she serious?
He had stripped himself bare in front of her, and she had no reaction?
Serena Blackwood, you brainless streetlight candidate. What was the point of having eyes?
[System Theta: Because she loves you now.]
There was one more thing System Theta did not dare add.
After everything Elias had just done to Serena’s mind, if she still had that kind of appetite, even System Theta would have to question whether she had a soul at all.
Elias was in no mood to be reasonable. "I don’t care. I’m worked up now. I want her right now."
[System Theta: Don’t you mean the other way around?]
Elias paused.
Then he smiled.
[System Theta: ...]
It had said the wrong thing.
That smile was terrifying.
Fortunately, Elias was busy glaring at Serena and had no time to properly torment the system.
Serena caught one of his slim ankles and tucked it under the blanket. Then the other. She covered him until only his face was exposed, leaving not a single inch of skin out in the room’s air. Only after that did she breathe a little easier.
She turned toward the door and called, "Bring the doctor."
After giving the order, Serena reached for Elias’s injured wrist.
He refused to give it to her.
Now that she had wrapped him so tightly, she realized she had created trouble for herself. She tried once, failed, adjusted the blanket, and finally managed to draw his arm free.
Under the bedroom lights, the wound looked worse.
The cut itself was not large, but blood still welled out steadily. Round drops gathered, broke, and slid down his forearm in thin red paths. What had looked like one bright puncture in the storage room had already begun to bruise around the edges, the skin near it turning faint purple.
Elias’s skin marked too easily.
A firm grip could leave pink. A careless press could leave red. A wooden splinter driven down with that much force was enough to turn the area ugly.
The only good news was that the wound had not opened deep enough to spray blood. If it had, Serena would not have been sitting there so still.
She clenched her jaw.
Her lips parted, and for a moment it looked as if she might scold him. The words reached her throat, then stopped.
What was the point?
Their relationship had already rotted to this stage. If she said one more harsh thing, Elias would not listen. Nothing would improve. It would only become another blade between them.
A hurried knock came before the door opened.
"Ms. Blackwood."
The private doctor rushed in with a medical kit.
Elias glanced at her.
White coat. Clean hands. Professional posture.
Unfortunately, she did not wear it like Yvonne Quinn did. Yvonne made a white coat look like a threat someone might willingly step toward. This doctor only looked like someone who had been called out of routine for a house emergency.
A pity.
[System Theta: ...]
The host was drifting very far today.
Was it allowed to hear this much?
Serena brought Elias’s wrist under the doctor’s eyes. "Check it. Make sure there’s no sign of infection."
The doctor opened the kit and took out antiseptic and sterile swabs.
The moment the antiseptic touched the wound, Elias’s body trembled.
The sting was immediate and sharp enough to make his expression twist. His long arm tried to pull back on instinct, strength flaring in the movement despite how exhausted he looked.
The doctor reached to hold him still.
Serena looked at her.
The doctor understood instantly and withdrew her hand.
Serena held Elias herself.
Her grip was precise, firm enough that he could not pull free, light enough not to hurt him more. Pain flickered through his face anyway, and Serena’s eyes darkened.
Her mouth, however, remained unkind by habit.
"This is what happens when you don’t care about your own body. You really..."
Deserve it.
The word almost came out.
Serena stopped it by force.
Panic flashed through her eyes.
Only then did she realize how naturally she had reached for the old kind of cruelty. The cutting line. The reflexive contempt. The way she used to cover worry with mockery because it kept her above the person in pain.
She hoped Elias had not noticed.
Then she saw his mouth move.
A familiar smile slowly formed on his face, thin and painful, full of self-mockery.
"Yes," Elias said. "I’m cheap trash that doesn’t care about his body. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten drunk and let who knows how many women..."
"Shut up!"
Serena’s voice cracked like a whip.
The doctor flinched.
Her face went pale as she looked down at the wound again, suddenly desperate to become invisible. Whatever she had just heard was clearly not something a private doctor should know.
Serena inhaled several times.
Then she let the air out slowly.
When she spoke again, her voice was low.
"That matter," she said, each word dragged under control, "is not to be mentioned again."
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