Chapter 102: Just Suspicion

On the walk back to campus, Elias kept one hand at his throat.

The skin there still held the memory of Serena’s mouth. The fine bumps that had risen from the involuntary shiver were only now fading, and as he rubbed absentmindedly over the spot, he replayed every second of what had happened in the car.

System Theta spoke with unusual caution.

[Host... do you think Serena Blackwood noticed?]

Elias gave a small nod as he kept walking through the stream of students. "Yeah. She noticed something."

The system sounded instantly alarmed.

[Then what do we do? What if Serena Blackwood decides to]

"Stop right there."

Elias cut it off before the panic could build into a full barrage.

"She noticed, so what? And she didn’t exactly find out anything. Suspicion isn’t the same as confirmation."

That was the truth.

Serena had definitely become suspicious about him and Liora. He had left too obvious a crack that time, and she had seen enough to start asking questions. Still, what could she really do with a suspicion like that?

She had even tested Liora in the car, and Liora had not slipped once. If anything, she had outplayed Serena so cleanly it was almost embarrassing. When it came to keeping a straight face, she was operating on an entirely different level.

If the other person had been anyone else, Serena might have acted on the suspicion alone. A woman in her position did not need much before deciding something was true. Status had a way of turning guesswork into fact.

But Liora was her sister.

Serena could not move against her on the basis of a vague feeling, not over something like this. She needed proof, and she did not have it.

More importantly, that suspicion had probably started dissolving the moment the test ended.

Liora liked women.

That much was obvious to Serena, fixed in her mind like a fact she had never once needed to question. There was no way Serena would willingly entertain the idea that Elias had enough pull to make Liora change course for him.

Her pride simply would not allow it.

Elias came to his conclusion and voiced it with quiet satisfaction. "Nothing happened."

System Theta seemed to breathe out in relief.

[That’s good...]

A faint smile touched Elias’s mouth. "When the time is right, I’ll let her know about my relationship with Liora myself."

[!]

The system went rigid again.

[Host, I know you’re the ace employee, but I am not an ace system. Please do not make things this exciting on purpose.]

Elias’s smile widened a little, though he did not answer.

At the same time, far from campus, Serena had already caught something else that felt off.

"Why are we heading for the parking garage?" she asked.

Liora turned the wheel lazily. "I had nothing better to do, so I thought I’d come see your company."

Serena looked at her. "You seem unusually free lately."

Liora nodded without any embarrassment. "I am."

Serena’s eyes narrowed just a little. "What about all those women of yours? Don’t tell me you stopped seeing every last one of them."

Liora snapped her fingers, crisp and bright in the quiet car, and smiled. "Correct."

This time Serena’s surprise showed. "Why? Because of your little kitten?"

"Yes."

Serena drew in a breath.

Liora heard it clearly.

By the time the car rolled into place and stopped, the smile in her peach-blossom eyes had not faded once. She unfastened her seat belt and said, with an air of amused self-satisfaction, "You make it sound impossible. Even a wild heart can settle down eventually."

Serena stepped out of the car. Her heels struck the concrete floor of the garage in sharp, clean beats. "I’m just getting more curious about this little kitten of yours. How much charm does she have if she can make you give up an entire forest?"

Liora got out and fell into step beside her.

Tall, elegant, striking in entirely different ways, the two women turned heads without trying even here, under the flat light of the garage. If they had been out on the street, every man nearby would have looked.

"Charm is hard to quantify," Liora said. "But if you want to talk about skill level, she might actually outrank me."

Serena gave that answer very little visible respect, though another face had already surfaced in her mind.

Elias.

Compared to someone like Liora, his stubbornness almost counted as a virtue.

"So she likes to play around too?" Serena asked as they approached the elevator.

"Yes." Liora tipped her head back slightly and looked up at the changing floor numbers above the doors. "That’s exactly why she’s managed to keep me hooked."

Serena let out a quiet, dismissive breath. "Is there anything money can’t solve?"

Liora looked at her instead of the elevator. "Has your little lover bowed his head for you yet?"

Serena fell silent.

After a moment, she said, "Your kitten doesn’t care about money either?"

"Oh, she cares about money." Liora’s gaze drifted slightly upward, and something softer passed through her expression, the look of a person remembering something they had already replayed too many times in private. "She cares about it a lot."

Then she smiled to herself and finished, "But she’s still the kind of woman money can’t buy."

The instant she said woman, something inside Serena eased all at once.

A weight she had not been willing to name finally lifted.

"Then go meet her parents," Serena said as the elevator doors slid open. She stepped inside, black-silk-clad legs carrying her in with crisp, practiced ease. "There’s always a way."

Liora entered after her and shook her head with what looked like mild helplessness. "That sounds illegal. I wouldn’t know how."

Serena pressed the button for her private floor and answered in the same cool tone she used for business, acquisition, and control. "Then think of another approach. Do whatever you can to win her. If someone from the Blackwood family can’t handle one woman, that’s embarrassing."

Something flickered in Liora’s eyes.

The elevator doors began to slide shut.

In that narrowing strip of mirrored light, Liora lowered her voice and said, "Understood, my dear sister."

[Liora Voss favorability increased. Current favorability: 60%.]

Across campus, Elias spun his pen between his fingers in one clean turn. Pleasure flashed across his face before he could hide it.

"Got her," he murmured.

The student beside him glanced over. "Got what?"

Elias smiled at the workbook in front of him and answered in a voice so mild it sounded almost innocent. "This problem. I finally got it."

By late afternoon, class was over.

Elias had just stepped outside when his phone rang. He answered it and heard a polite professional voice on the other end.

"Hello, we’re the movers Ms. Blackwood sent. We’re here to help transport your things."

Elias paused for half a second, then understood.

Right.

The move to the Blackwood residence.

Serena really was efficient when she decided something needed doing.

If this had happened earlier, before today, she probably would have called Liora over to help handle it personally.

That was exactly why she had not done it now.

Even if Serena no longer consciously believed anything was going on, suspicion had already entered the picture once. Because of that, she would instinctively avoid creating the conditions that might make such a thing real.

That was very much her style.

"Thank you," Elias said warmly, "but there’s no need. I can handle it myself. Don’t refund the payment. Consider it your travel fee for coming out."

He ended the call with easy politeness.

Honestly, it would have been ridiculous to let a whole moving team come in for this. He barely had enough possessions to justify one person carrying them, let alone several. Asking a group of movers to handle it would have been wasteful.

And waste, in this case, meant burning through money that might someday count as half of his divorce settlement.

System Theta spoke in a faint, complicated tone.

[You really do think far ahead.]

Elias ignored that.

He still needed dinner.

"Where’s Lila Morgan?"

With System Theta’s help, he picked her out of the crowd almost immediately.

She was standing off to one side, face empty in the way only a deeply tired employee’s face could be. The look in her eyes said she had already decided that once this assignment ended, she was going to retire from whatever chain of bad choices had led her here.

When Elias walked over, she looked at him like a woman staring at the final boss of her professional life.

"What do you want now?"

He crooked a finger at her. "Come with me."

About fifteen minutes later, Lila was carrying a mountain of bags.

Her face looked paler than before, and her steps had started to lose some of their force. Meanwhile Elias walked in front of her with his hands completely empty, light on his feet to the point that he almost looked cheerful.

Lila stared at his back and genuinely could not understand how a man could order women around with such natural ease.

There was no awkwardness in him. No guilt. No hesitation.

He used people the way some people used shopping carts.

Elias turned his head when he noticed she had fallen several yards behind. His lips parted in exaggerated surprise, and he even raised a hand to cover them as though her weakness had shocked him.

"That little bit already wore you out?" he asked. "Seriously, are you even capable?"

Lila felt the corner of her mouth twitch.

A phrase she had seen online recently surfaced in her mind, and the more she looked at him, the more it seemed to fit. Bratty little menace. The age was off, but in every other respect the label landed perfectly.

He lived to toy with women.

At last she asked the question that mattered. "Where are we even going?"

Elias turned fully this time.

He smiled at her with dazzling sincerity. "Food first."

For reasons Lila could not begin to explain, that answer gave her a small, sudden burst of happiness.

It was not a large feeling, and it irritated her on principle, but it was there all the same.