Chapter 237: Found Again?
A flicker of danger finally cut through Giselle’s resolve.
Serena had spent the last few minutes speaking as if she could rebuild the world around Elias by calling it home, by offering dinners, old classmates, and a place at her side. Elias stood between them with tears still shining on his face, too exhausted to look away and too wounded to answer.
Giselle reached for his hand.
She wanted him to feel that he was not standing there by himself. No speech could compete with Serena’s practiced voice, the Blackwood name, or the years of memories Serena could twist until they resembled proof of love. Giselle could only offer what she had: a hand, a way out, and a quiet answer to the fear in his eyes.
Serena moved before Giselle’s fingers reached him.
She stepped forward and struck Giselle’s hand aside.
The sound was small in the underground garage. It carried anyway.
"What is Elias to you that you think you can put your hands on him whenever you like?" Serena demanded.
Her face was severe. The question made Giselle’s attempt to take Elias’s hand sound like an offense worthy of punishment.
Then Serena looked at Elias.
He did not object.
He did not move toward Giselle. He did not ask Serena why she had hit her hand away. He only stood there, damp-eyed and pale, looking as if he had no strength left for any of them.
A line of satisfaction rose at Serena’s mouth despite the bruise on her face.
The triumph was small, but it was there.
Giselle was an obstacle. Serena could admit that now. She had shown up, searched for answers Serena meant to keep buried, and tried to carry Elias out of the building in her arms. In any fight for Elias, she counted as half a rival.
But Serena and Elias had history.
They had shared rooms, fights, meals, private names, humiliations, tenderness, every ugly proof that two people could have a relationship even when neither knew how to call it one. None of that vanished because Giselle arrived with concern in her eyes.
Elias still softened toward Serena.
That was the advantage Giselle did not have.
Giselle’s expression darkened.
She glanced at Elias, and something tight moved through her chest. Serena had hurt him. Serena had trapped him. Serena had built the conditions that turned his life into a contract, then stood in front of him now and tried to claim him with the remnants of their past.
Yet Elias had let Serena stop her.
Had he truly forgiven Serena already?
Or was he simply too used to giving way?
Before Giselle could sort through the bitter feeling, Elias spoke.
"Your classmates?"
His voice was quiet.
"What does it matter that your classmates like me?"
Serena’s smile held for a moment.
Elias looked at her, tears drying slowly against his skin. "You could bring anyone to them. A man, a woman, a stranger off the street. They would still smile and say the right things."
He drew in a shallow breath.
"You run Blackwood Group. People who want something from you would praise whatever you put in front of them. You want something badly enough, you can afford to get it."
His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it.
"I was one of those things."
Giselle’s attention snapped back to him.
"Elias," she said.
He did not seem to hear her.
"I was the thing you kept around. The thing you used when you wanted someone in your bed. The thing you could dress up, show off, throw away, and call back whenever you wanted."
The words were crueler because he spoke them about himself.
"Even now, that’s what I am to you," Elias continued. "You still see me that way."
His eyes lowered.
"I should not blame you. I should blame myself. I’m the one who let myself become this."
"Eli."
Serena’s voice shook around the name.
"No," she said. "It isn’t like that."
She shook her head, once, then again. The refusal looked unfamiliar on Serena. She had spent so long making decisions for other people that simple denial seemed to catch in her throat.
"You are not a thing," she said. "You were never a tool to me."
Her fingers curled near her sides.
"I only..." Serena stopped. In front of Giselle, Liora, the bodyguards, and the staff waiting near the garage exits, the words seemed harder to force out than any threat had ever been. "I wanted you. I wanted you too much. That’s why I wanted to sleep with you. It wasn’t because you were useful."
She swallowed.
"The things I said when I was angry, they were anger. You know that. People say things without thinking when they lose control. You’re doing it now too. You’re hurting, so you’re saying things you don’t mean."
Elias shook his head.
Serena’s breath caught.
He shook it again, slowly enough to make sure she understood.
"They aren’t angry words."
The garage seemed to fall silent around them.
Elias’s face emptied.
The distress did not leave it. It only hardened into the same look Serena had seen the day she told him to leave the Blackwood residence. There was no accusation in his expression now. No visible hope that someone would correct the past. He looked as though he was recounting something that had already happened and would never change.
"On the day you threw me out," he said, "I slept with someone else."
Giselle turned toward him so quickly that her silver hair swung across her shoulder.
Elias felt her eyes on him.
He looked at her.
A weak smile touched his face, pale enough to make the tears pouring from his eyes look brighter.
"I did," he said. "I really did."
His voice began to shake.
"I’m cheap. Of course I’m cheap. A man who let a woman he did not even know touch him, what else could he be?"
His tears fell harder.
"Cheap and dirty."
The last words seemed to take the strength out of him.
His knees buckled.
Elias dropped to the concrete floor and covered his face with both hands. His shoulders trembled. The sound that came from behind his palms was broken and muffled, the desperate sound of someone trying not to sob while failing.
"So I’m already this dirty," he choked out. "Please let me go."
He bent farther over himself.
"Please."
Serena’s mind filled with ringing again.
This time, every word reached her with horrifying clarity.
Elias was begging.
Elias, who would rather bite down on pain than admit he needed help. Elias, who had fought her even when she held all the power and he had almost none. Elias, who had used every sharp thing he could find to keep one scrap of dignity for himself.
He was kneeling on the floor and asking her to let him go.
What had she done to him?
What had she done to the boy she cared about?
Serena began to shake.
Her legs gave way. She dropped to her knees too, then moved toward him on them, crossing the short distance across the garage floor until she could pull him into her arms.
Elias cried against her shoulder.
Serena held him tightly, as if loosening her grip even a little would make him disappear.
"No," she whispered, her voice rough with grief she refused to show as tears. "You’re not dirty. I care about you, so it doesn’t matter. None of it does."
Elias’s arms came around her with sudden force.
Then he cried openly.
His whole body shook against her, the sobs seeming to pull out every grievance he had held inside. Serena stroked his back without thinking, her hand moving in slow, soothing passes. It was a reflex, one of the few gentle things she knew how to do without turning it into possession.
Regret burned through her.
So did relief.
No matter how badly she had hurt him, he was in her arms again. She had him back. He had not gone with Giselle. He had not walked through the garage doors and into a life Serena could not reach.
Serena lowered her mouth near his ear.
"Come home with me," she whispered. "Come on, sweetheart."
A few feet away, Giselle had become perfectly still.
She watched Serena cradle Elias on the garage floor while he cried into her shoulder. She watched the woman who had engineered the suffering hold him as if she had the right to comfort him. She watched Elias accept it.
No anger rose first.
The feeling was colder.
Everything Giselle had carried into this building seemed to have been dumped into ice water. Her anger at Serena, her certainty that Elias needed rescuing, the days spent pulling records and following the trail around Marlene and Arthur, all of it went numb inside her.
The cold reached her hands.
She began to tremble.
Not with the pain of losing someone.
With something close to laughter.
She had misread him for so long.
What was there to save?
He had been begging Serena to release him, then allowed Serena to gather him back up with a few words. He had made himself smaller, dirtier, more broken, and Serena had taken the bait with both hands.
It was disgusting.
And she had been stupid enough to believe he was someone worth fighting for.
Stupid enough to stand here, ready to fight Serena’s security for him.
A thin, bitter smile threatened at Giselle’s mouth.
She did not let it form.
[Giselle Frost’s favorability has decreased. Current value: 40%.]