The Seductive Pretty Boy of the Matriarchal World-Chapter 38: Her Rival’s Intrusion

Elias Kane blinked slowly, processing Serena Blackwood’s words with that familiar detached amusement. She wasn’t wrong—he really was lying beneath her right now. The distance between them just happened to be several feet of cold marble and shattered glass, not the intimate press she’d implied.

But Giselle Frost couldn’t see any of that. To her, those words carried a heavy, suggestive weight that would twist straight into something far more damning. Elias felt a spark of genuine excitement flare in his chest. He had been waiting for this exact moment—the day these elite women finally turned on each other like sharks in the same tank. In the fantasy worlds he’d survived before, their fights had always been flashy spells and explosions, dazzling but never as raw or satisfying as fists meeting flesh and power clashing in the open.

This was his chance. He had to seize it.

Without warning, Elias surged upward, lunging for the phone still clutched in Serena’s hand. "Give it back—"

The move caught her completely off guard, but her reflexes were lightning-fast. She shot to her feet, whipping the device high above her head where he couldn’t possibly reach. Elias refused to quit. He wrapped both arms around her limb and dropped his full weight, trying to drag her arm down through sheer stubborn leverage.

Serena’s gaze turned to ice. With one brutal flick of her arm, she flung him backward. He hit the floor hard.

"Ugh..." A low, muffled grunt escaped him—the sound thick with real pain.

Serena looked down. Elias had landed squarely in the densest patch of glass shards. Both palms were undoubtedly pierced; nothing else could have dragged a noise out of him after everything she had already done to him in bed without a single protest.

Not a flicker of sympathy crossed her face. Only cold calculation. She turned her attention back to the phone.

"Serena Blackwood."

The voice on the line dropped several degrees colder, clearly having caught Elias’s pained sound. It even carried a sharp edge of rebuke. "What exactly did you do to Elias?"

A college girl still in school daring to speak to her like that—and over Elias, no less. Serena had never felt anger quite this sharp, yet the hotter it burned, the more terrifyingly calm she became. Her tone stayed perfectly even. "The Pinnacle Club, eighteenth floor. Want to know what I did to him? Why don’t you come see for yourself?"

"Of course... assuming you have the nerve."

The moment the last word left her lips, she ended the call with a decisive tap—an unmistakable taunt wrapped in velvet.

"She’ll come," Liora Voss said coolly, the only one in the room who still seemed untouched by the storm.

Serena exhaled. "Victoria Frost gave her that kind of arrogance, but she clearly doesn’t know her place—daring to test me."

She tossed Elias’s phone onto the table with careless disdain and crossed the room in one stride, looming over the young man still trembling on the floor from pain. She seized his collar again and hauled him upright. His face had gone deathly pale, as if he might slip away right there.

Liora stole a quick glance and saw the damage: both of Elias’s hands were slick with fresh blood, multiple shards embedded deep in the soft flesh of his palms.

He had played with fire and burned himself. Spectacularly.

"What happened between you and her?" Serena demanded, eyes locked on his, dark and murderous.

Elias tilted his head back to meet her stare. His eyes were wet, yet his expression stayed stubbornly defiant, refusing to yield even an inch. The tears looked purely physical, nothing more. "That’s... my private business," he rasped, voice breaking in fragments. "It has nothing... to do with you..."

Serena suddenly reached toward his face. He flinched, eyes slamming shut on instinct—only to feel a tiny, precise sting beneath his lid. When he opened them again, she was flicking away the sliver of glass that had been lodged there.

She treated the shard like trash, then treated him the same way—tossing him aside with the same casual flick.

Elias staggered backward, barely catching his balance.

Serena strolled to the table, picked up the last untouched glass of red wine, and drained it in one smooth motion. The liquid glistened on her lips and slowly bled the worst of her fury away.

Inside, she reminded herself: Elias was just a counterfeit. She should not lose control over him. She could not afford to.

So she settled back into her chair, crossing one long leg over the other with elegant poise. "Tell me exactly what happened with her," she said mildly. "Even if you slept with her, I won’t hold it against you."

In her mind there was only one possible explanation for any entanglement between Elias and Giselle Frost. Sex.

Of course her rage wasn’t rooted in betrayal. He was a plaything; his death wouldn’t even sting. No—the real line was possession. Nothing that belonged to Serena Blackwood could ever be touched by another woman. From start to finish, he was hers alone. That was the only rule that mattered.

Elias studied her blank, unreadable face.

Bullshit.

If he actually admitted to sleeping with Giselle, he had zero doubt she would hurl him off the eighteenth floor right then and there, current favorability or not.

Better to let her dig on her own. The surprise would be worth it.

"That’s my private business," he answered. "I don’t owe you an explanation." He dragged an arm across his eyes, smearing tears and wine, and started toward the table to retrieve his phone. He kept as much distance as possible, but the instant he came within reach Serena rose, snatched him, and yanked him straight into her arms.

"Let me go!"

The taut string inside him finally snapped. Elias exploded into frantic struggle—fists, elbows, knees—thrashing like a wild animal. For a split second even Serena struggled to contain him. Forcing him down would mean real injury, and she refused to look that uncontrolled.

"Stop moving." Her voice was glacial, laced with lethal promise. "Or do you want Marlene Bennet dead?"

She had switched targets. Arthur Hale had been the first threat; now it was his foster mother.

Serena saw the truth clearly: no matter how flawed Marlene was, as long as Arthur still breathed, Elias had a family. He would never let it shatter.

Sure enough, Elias froze instantly, the fight draining out of him as if she had flipped a kill switch. It took him a long moment to speak again. "You said... you wouldn’t break the law..."

Serena almost laughed. He actually believed her.

The same old foolishness—but it cooled the last of her rage beautifully.

Even if he had latched onto Giselle Frost, he would never escape her grip.

"As long as you behave, your parents stay safe and sound. Now... don’t move."

She took one of his bloody hands and gently unfolded it. The palm was a mess—four jagged shards buried in the tender flesh, the sight enough to turn most stomachs.

Serena began pulling them out one by one with clinical precision.

She felt zero guilt. In her eyes he had brought every second of this on himself. Removing the glass wasn’t mercy; it was another layer of dominance, another reminder of exactly who held the leash.

No matter how much it hurt, he was not allowed to flinch. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Elias didn’t. He clamped his teeth down on his lower lip until it bled, body shuddering violently with every tug, but not a single sound escaped him.

At that exact moment—

Bang!

The door exploded inward.