Chapter 234: Go Die
Serena took a long time to answer.
"I underestimated you."
Giselle did not react to the admission. She stood in the empty corridor without shifting her posture, silver hair resting against the dark line of her coat. There was something almost austere about her stillness, like a white flower growing out of hard winter ground.
Serena had not expected this from her.
Giselle was younger, less practiced in the ways people hid cruelty behind clean hands and official paperwork. Serena had assumed that made her predictable. The Frost girl could show up with concern, make a demand, then retreat once someone older pushed back.
Instead, she had arrived carrying records.
And she had chosen to bring them here, to Serena’s own building, where every polished surface was supposed to answer to Serena first.
Giselle had found the irregularities quickly. More than that, she had followed the thread from Elias’s foster mother to the hospital records surrounding Arthur Hale and gathered enough pieces to see the outline of what Serena had built.
It started because Giselle feared what might happen after Marlene Bennet took Elias away from campus. She had someone trace Marlene’s movements, looking for proof that Elias was being mistreated or moved somewhere he could not get back from on his own.
That search revealed a pattern.
Marlene’s debts had never been simple gambling losses. They had been manufactured into a noose. The moment Giselle understood that, she stopped looking at one woman’s debt and started looking at the people around Elias who could be turned into leverage.
The deeper she went, the worse it became.
There had been no single document marked with Serena’s name. That was not how Serena worked. There were only favorable coincidences that arrived too neatly, people whose desperation was redirected at precisely the right time, and doors that opened for Elias only after someone made certain every other exit hurt more.
Arthur Hale was part of it too.
The hospital bills, the suite, the dependency, the fear that one wrong decision might put his foster father at risk. Serena had not merely found weaknesses in Elias’s life. She had arranged them, reinforced them, and presented them to him as inevitable.
Everything Serena used to threaten him had been built by her own hand.
The ugliness of it still sat badly in Giselle’s throat.
"Give Elias back," she said. "Or else..."
"Or else what?"
Serena cut her off.
She lowered her folded arms and lifted one hand toward Giselle, pointing loosely through the space between them. The polished smile she had worn in the lobby had thinned into something openly contemptuous.
"Take whatever you found to the police," Serena said. "Try it. See whether they can trace any of it to me."
Giselle’s expression held, though the darkness in her eyes deepened.
Serena was right.
The trail was too clean. Even after digging through medical billing, gambling records, private contacts, and the people who had benefited from Marlene’s panic, Giselle had found no document that reached Serena directly. No recorded order. No payment authorization. No careless intermediary who would point at Blackwood Group and say this was where the pressure came from.
Giselle knew Serena was behind it because she knew Serena.
The police would need evidence, not knowledge.
Her silence answered the question.
Serena saw it and felt the advantage return.
Giselle had come with the truth, but truth without a chain of proof was only a weapon in the hands of someone willing to use it. The Frost girl had not brought police, reporters, attorneys, or a warrant. She had come herself, alone, driven by the belief that naming Serena’s cruelty would force Serena to feel it.
Serena had felt it.
She simply had no intention of admitting it.
Her smile softened into the pleasant version she wore for the public. "You must have spent a lot of time collecting all of that. You should go home and rest."
Then her eyes changed.
"And Elias..."
The smile remained, though something hard passed under it.
"He is mine. Don’t even think about taking him."
She turned away in the composed posture of someone who believed she had won.
Then Giselle’s face changed.
The shock on it was so abrupt that Serena noticed before she had taken another step. Giselle had shown more emotion today than Serena expected from her, but this was different. Her eyes had fixed on something behind Serena, all the sharpness gone from them at once.
A warning rose in Serena’s chest.
She turned.
Near the closest turn in the corridor, a huge floral installation had been arranged beneath one of the glass partitions. It was meant to make the executive floor look welcoming: white orchids, long branches, layered greenery, expensive enough to appear permanent.
Behind it, someone was crouched low.
Under ordinary circumstances, Serena’s first thought would have been anger. Which employee had been stupid enough to hide there and listen to a private conversation?
Giselle’s face stopped that thought before it could take shape.
Serena’s heart missed a beat.
The corridor had been empty when she followed Giselle in. Elias had been upstairs, eating lunch under the watch of staff and, soon enough, Liora. He should not have been anywhere near this conversation.
Yet there was someone behind the arrangement, and Giselle had gone pale.
Serena walked toward the flowers with an irrational prayer running under every step.
Please do not be him.
The figure came into view.
Elias was crouched on the floor with his head lowered. One hand covered his mouth. His body shook, though he was making no sound. He was trying to keep the crying inside himself, holding it down so hard that the effort trembled through his shoulders.
Serena’s mind stopped.
Her body kept moving.
She stepped forward and reached to pull him up. "Why are you here? Come on. Get up..."
Elias knocked her hand away.
The slap cracked through the corridor.
Serena stumbled back as if the touch had burned her. Her arm stayed raised in the position it had been in when she reached for him. She stood there, fixed in place, looking down at him with the stupid stillness of an old machine that had finally stopped responding.
Elias lifted his head.
Both of his eyes were red.
Tears had soaked his face. More gathered along his lashes and fell when he moved, running down his cheeks and dropping onto his legs. He looked at Serena with too many emotions in his gaze: confusion, grief, hurt, despair.
Then there was recognition.
Like someone who had been lost in the dark for years and had finally found the door.
A smile appeared on his face.
It should have been the expression of someone relieved to see daylight. His eyes always caught the light when he smiled. With tears still shining over them, the sight was unbearable.
His lips parted.
His voice came out thin, distant, nearly weightless.
"Go die."
A violent ringing tore through Serena’s head.
Her palm struck her own face before the sound had finished forming.
She had seen something like this happen once before. She knew the warning now, knew that if she let herself fall into the shock she would lose control completely. The blow was supposed to pull her back into her body.
It did not work.
Serena’s face stayed blank. She walked toward Elias and crouched in front of him, reaching as though she could simply gather him up and take the problem somewhere it could no longer speak.
"All right," she said. "Come home with me first. I’ll agree to it."
The words made no sense.
They betrayed her anyway.
Her thoughts had already gone ragged. She did not know what she was promising, only that she had to bring Elias back with her. He could not remain here. He could not look at her like this in a corridor where Giselle could hear him breathe.
He could not leave.
Serena reached for both of his hands.
They were freezing.
The contact cut through the haze. Her gaze shifted, trying to settle, trying to return to the room.
Elias had heard every word.
The fact came in with such clarity that it hurt worse than the ringing. She had spent so long telling herself that he hated her over fragments, over one contract, one night, one misunderstanding that could be repaired if she pushed hard enough.
Now he had heard the whole structure beneath it.
The trap.
The debts.
Arthur’s hospital stay.
Marlene’s fear.
All of it.
Then someone ran toward her from the other end of the hallway.
"Ms. Blackwood!"
It was the executive aide who had come to report Giselle’s arrival. Liora was behind her, having reached the corridor at last.
Serena swayed.
The aide caught her before she could fall completely. "Ms. Blackwood, what’s wrong?"
The words entered Serena’s ears in broken pieces.
Ms. Blackwood.
What’s wrong.
Her hand flew to the side of her head. Pain drove into her skull with the sharp, punishing rhythm of needles. The ringing in her ears multiplied, each layer rising over the one before it. The hallway tilted. The floor rose. The ceiling seemed to tip back over her.
Then the strength left her legs.
Serena dropped to one knee, dragging the aide down with her despite the woman’s effort to keep her upright. The ringing did not ease. It crashed through her in waves, louder and harsher until the world lost all direction.
She could no longer tell what was upright.
She could no longer separate voices from the shriek inside her own head.
Then her eyes found a blurred outline through the distortion.
Elias.
The moment she recognized him, the world began to come back into focus.