The Seductive Pretty Boy of the Matriarchal World-Chapter 92: Not Yet in Love

Chapter 92: Not Yet in Love

Liora’s expression did not change at Serena’s abrupt shift in tone.

She crossed the room, sat down on the sofa, and by that simple act closed the subject completely.

She had not been wrong. Serena’s state of mind had been poor all day. In the past, whenever Serena worked, she possessed a level of concentration that made interruption nearly impossible. Once she turned her attention to company affairs, the rest of the world might as well not have existed.

Today was different.

No one needed to disturb her. She kept breaking away from her own focus for no clear reason, slipping out of concentration all by herself as though something kept reaching into her mind and tugging.

They said the person inside a situation was always the last to see it, while the bystander understood at a glance.

In Liora’s eyes, that old saying was proving painfully true.

She knew exactly why Serena was so unsettled.

Elias.

Her dear sister had fallen harder and faster than she herself realized, and seemed utterly unaware of it. Not only unaware. Even if Liora said it to her face, Serena would never admit it.

How could a woman like Serena Blackwood, a woman who stood above others by instinct and by right, ever acknowledge having developed feelings for her own possession? Even the suggestion would sound absurd to her. Rulers were not supposed to care for what they owned. Not like that. Not even a little.

Yet refusal changed nothing.

A fact remained a fact regardless of whether the person living inside it denied it with all her strength.

After dissecting Serena’s state of mind piece by piece, Liora settled deeper into the sofa and turned the blade inward.

Had she fallen for Elias too?

No.

Not yet.

Or rather, not fully.

She had kept warning herself from the beginning not to tumble straight into that abyss. Even if she did slip, she had told herself there ought to be some ledge, some buffer zone where she could catch herself before hitting bottom.

A small laugh escaped her, edged with quiet mockery.

This time, the ridicule was for herself.

At first she had been so certain. So composed. So convinced she would never step into that darkness at all. Now she had already dropped into it and was feeling secretly pleased with herself for not having sunk all the way to the floor.

It was pathetic.

Still, what else had she expected?

This was the price of playing flirtation games with Elias Kane.

Liora did not think she had lost unfairly. The outcome had almost been predetermined. What she wanted from Elias was obvious. She wanted him. His attention, his reactions, the thrill of trying to pin down something that refused to be pinned down. But what Elias wanted in return remained hidden from her.

That was where the real problem lay.

It was not money.

It was not comfort.

It was not even emotion in the ordinary sense.

From a purely rational perspective, she could almost believe he did everything simply because it amused him. That he was some elegant little devil wearing a beautiful human face, born with the sole purpose of tempting women into ruin for the sport of it, with no deeper reason underneath.

Yet her instincts rejected that explanation.

There had to be something.

Even if he truly were a demon walking among people, he would still have an aim of his own. Desire did not become less real simply because it was hidden well. It only became harder to name.

And she could not name his.

Their hands had been unequal from the start. Her cards were visible. His were not. Under those conditions, losing was the most natural thing in the world.

Even so, Liora had no intention of stepping away halfway through.

What gambler cut their losses cleanly and walked away once they were already deep into the game? That was not how gamblers were built. Sunk cost alone was enough to keep most people seated at the table long after wisdom told them to stand up.

And besides, what could be more entertaining than dancing with a devil?

The smile on Liora’s lips deepened.

She lifted her gaze and looked toward Serena, who still stood near the staircase with an unreadable expression darkening and clearing by turns, like a sky unable to decide whether to storm.

At least now Liora had the perfect warning sign in front of her.

As long as she kept watching Serena, she could stay alert. She could remember what losing control looked like. She could remain in that middle zone and keep herself from plunging all the way down.

There were many things in life a person could touch without being destroyed by them. Liquor. Smoke. Stimulation. Pleasure itself.

The danger began only when indulgence turned into dependence.

Liora had managed that distinction before. She had taken what interested her and left before it could own her. Switching the object of temptation from vice to Elias should not change that.

She still believed she could do it.

[Liora Voss favorability increased. Current favorability: 59%.]

In another part of the city, Sloane Sinclair stared at what remained of the phone with open disbelief.

"Seriously?"

The device had nearly been pulverized.

It had not been some cheap throwaway model, either. The phone had been custom-made, built to survive impact that would have destroyed an ordinary one several times over. Yet in Giselle Frost’s hands it had become little better than compacted scrap. Even many of the internal parts were beyond salvage.

Watching Giselle slide the SIM card into a brand-new phone with perfect calm, Sloane came to the sharp conclusion that the death of the previous one was almost certainly related to Elias.

She started carefully, testing the edge of the subject. "So Liora took that boy away and..."

The rest never made it out.

Crash.

Sloane shot to her feet so fast her chair screamed against the floor. "Have you lost your mind?"

The ruined phone flew from Giselle’s hand before Sloane had even finished speaking. This time there was no surviving it at all. The body shattered apart on impact, pieces skidding across the floor in every direction.

The boys nearby lowered their heads at once and went quiet as death, pretending they had seen nothing, heard nothing, and certainly understood nothing.

"Nothing happened," Giselle said.

Her face remained as cold as ice.

That was what made it unnerving.

She had just thrown a phone hard enough to obliterate it, yet her expression was smooth and composed, as if the violence belonged to someone else entirely. Seeing Giselle like this disturbed Sloane far more than if she had screamed.

So she dropped the subject.

She did not bring up Liora again. She did not mention Elias either. Because for one frightening instant, she had the absurd thought that if she pushed too hard, the next thing Giselle threw might not be another phone.

Sloane knew Giselle would never do that.

Probably.

But certainty was harder to summon than it used to be.

Giselle had always been aloof, controlled, and almost absurdly proud. If Sloane had not seen the outburst with her own eyes, she would never have believed it possible. She could have recorded the entire scene and shown it to people who knew Giselle for years, and they would have assumed the video was edited.

Giselle ignored the wreckage and continued setting up the new phone. Her long pale fingers pressed the power button. The screen lit at once and booted quickly, the clean interface appearing in seconds.

Then the messages started flooding in.

One after another.

So many that even Giselle’s eyelids twitched.

Giselle, let me explain...

Giselle, please answer me...

Giselle, can you pick up...

Giselle...

Without hesitation, she locked the screen and shut it dark again.

If she kept reading, this phone might die too.

Sloane watched her and, sensing that Elias-related landmines were everywhere tonight, tried another subject instead.

"When are you going home?" she asked. "You’ve been gone long enough already."

"Thanks," Giselle said flatly.

Then she stood.

She did not answer the question. She did not even acknowledge it properly. She simply turned and walked out.

Sloane stared after her retreating figure and lowered her head with a slow, exhausted sigh.

Then, in a burst of temper so fast it almost startled even herself, she kicked the nearby table over.

The crash was violent.

Glasses, trays, and decorative pieces tumbled and shattered across the floor. In seconds the room had turned into a mess of broken fragments and scattered debris.

Even people with good tempers were still people. There was a limit to what anyone could absorb.

No one who had spent the last stretch of time dealing with Giselle could still be in a good mood.

"What a nightmare," Sloane muttered.

If Giselle had not been her friend, she would never have involved herself in any of this.

Just then her phone rang.

Sloane grabbed it at once, hope flaring irrationally for a second.

Could Giselle actually be calling to apologize?

The thought vanished as soon as it formed. Even if the sky split open and the earth caved in, Giselle Frost would probably still find a way not to apologize.

Then Sloane saw the name on the screen.

The color drained from her face.

The boys nearby watched their young mistress visibly soften, the anger disappearing so quickly it was almost absurd. Worse than that, something like caution entered her expression. Even fear.

Sloane answered immediately. "Mrs. Frost."

Victoria Frost’s voice drifted through the line.

"You sound unhappy."

Sloane felt her skin go cold.

She had done everything she could to smooth her tone before answering. How had it still been obvious?

Victoria sounded faintly languid, almost lazy, but just as Sloane’s anger remained present no matter how well she tried to hide it, authority remained in Victoria’s voice even when she spoke softly. The pressure of it was inescapable, the kind born from a life spent at the top until command became part of the bones.

"A little," Sloane admitted.

She did not dare lie.

"Is that so?" Victoria seemed to smile. "Then I suppose she’s the one being difficult."

Sloane panicked at once. "No, Mrs. Frost, Giselle, she..."

"That’s enough."

Sloane went silent instantly.

Victoria spoke again, calm and unhurried. "She has been getting rather full of herself lately. I will correct her."

"Mrs. Frost, she’s still young..."

But the voice that replied was no longer Victoria’s.

A male servant had taken the line, speaking with impeccable gentleness. "Miss Sinclair, I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?"

Sloane pressed her lips together and said nothing.

For Victoria Frost, that counted as ending the conversation.

"There’s nothing else," Sloane said at last.

"Understood."

She ended the call herself.

The room was still a wreck around her, glass and fragments glittering under the light, but none of it seemed worth caring about anymore.

Somewhere else entirely, in the privacy of his own world, Elias would have laughed himself sick if he had known that fifty-nine percent had become the last shred of dignity Liora still possessed.