Chapter 144: A Friend Who Pays

Whatever had happened on Giselle’s side was none of Elias’s business, and he had no interest in making it his business.

He had squeezed a fresh wave of favorability out of her, slept like a man with no conscience worth troubling, and woken up looking disgustingly well-rested. His skin had color. His head felt clear. Even the dull ache that usually lived behind his eyes seemed to have packed up for the morning and gone somewhere else to ruin another poor bastard’s day.

It was still early. He was not hungry yet, so he stayed in bed with one leg crossed over the other, stretched out against the pillows with the lazy confidence of a man recovering from a successful con rather than a moral failure. The room was quiet enough that the faint hum of the climate control felt deliberate, as if even the hotel systems knew better than to disturb him.

Elias narrowed his eyes in a smile.

"Do you remember Giselle’s face last night?" he asked.

[Of course.]

System Theta remembered it with painful clarity. Giselle Frost had argued with him, or at least she had tried to. The trouble was that arguing with Elias Kane required a level of psychological resistance most people did not have, and Giselle, for all her cold reputation, had been dragged straight into the pit he had dug for her.

System Theta replayed the scene in its own processing space, then immediately regretted doing so.

If it had been Giselle, and Elias had looked at it with those clean, wounded eyes and said something like, "I thought we were Besties. I thought you’d be happy for me. I didn’t expect you to target Serena like that," System Theta suspected its own core would have frozen on the spot.

That face of his had been shameless. Soft, clean, betrayed, and shameless all at once.

[She did appear emotionally destabilized.]

Elias laughed under his breath. "Emotionally destabilized? Don’t make it sound like a software problem. She was adorable."

System Theta scanned its memory of Giselle’s expression again, then silently disagreed. Giselle had looked like someone had reached into her rib cage, twisted something important, and then asked her to apologize for bleeding on the carpet.

It did not understand where the cuteness came in.

Elias blinked at the ceiling, still smiling. "A little virgin ice queen wants to pull me out of the abyss, but I’m determined to swan-dive into it headfirst. She was so angry she couldn’t even find the right words. How is that not cute?"

System Theta remained silent.

There it was. The host’s rotten little hobby.

The longer it observed Elias, the more System Theta understood why he was considered the agency’s ace operative. He approached every target with the same terrible fairness. He did not make the mistake of reserving sincerity for one person and performance for another. He did not confuse acting with feeling. He did not start believing the role just because the scene was convincing.

He played the part. He played it well. Then he stepped out of it with his pulse steady and his eyes clear.

System Theta was still a rookie system, but during training it had studied more than enough cases. Plenty of operatives had fallen in love with their targets. Some had chosen to remain in a mission world rather than return. The Intervention Division was not some cartoonishly evil institution that ripped lovers apart for the fun of it. Its benefits package was, objectively speaking, quite generous. In Elias’s case, the division’s reluctance was even easier to understand.

He was too good to lose.

Perhaps, somewhere above all the forms and mission reviews, the agency was secretly hoping he would finally fall for one of the targets and retire on his own.

Unfortunately for everyone who wanted that outcome, Elias’s will was a locked vault with teeth.

That was the real reason he had become an ace.

[One question,] System Theta said.

Elias tilted his head against the pillow. "Go ahead."

[Why did Giselle Frost’s favorability increase?]

It had wanted to ask last night, but Elias had gone to sleep before it could disturb him. System Theta had spent the intervening hours reviewing data, emotional markers, and behavioral inconsistencies. None of the numbers lied, but understanding the cause remained another matter.

Elias’s smile changed. "Guilt."

[Guilt?]

He tapped his fingers lightly against the back of his hand, considering the word. "Maybe guilt isn’t quite right. Regret is closer."

[Regret.]

"Do you know what Giselle thinks I am to her now?" Elias asked.

[A friend.]

"Exactly." His voice stayed loose, almost amused. "And Giselle Frost’s way of treating a friend is to help within her ability. The problem is that she’s the daughter of the Frost family, which means ’within her ability’ covers an obnoxious amount of territory. In her world, there are very few things she can’t fix if she actually decides to intervene."

He lowered his eyes to his own fingers, bending one slowly and then letting it straighten again.

"But while she was busy distancing herself from me, I fell right into Serena Blackwood’s abyss. That’s the story I gave her, anyway. As a friend, how could she not regret that a little?"

System Theta processed that and found it almost reasonable, which somehow made it worse.

[So because she regrets distancing herself, her favorability rose?]

"Not only that." Elias’s laugh was light enough to be cruel. "She also regrets that I don’t like her anymore."

System Theta’s response came a beat too fast.

[What?]

Elias glanced toward the invisible panel only he could see, his expression turning patient in the most irritating way possible.

[Does Giselle Frost truly regret that?]

"Why wouldn’t she?" Elias asked. "She isn’t actually a glacier. She’s a person. She has someone she likes, which means she knows what wanting feels like. In my eyes, once you strip away the Frost family name and that pretty face, she isn’t that different from any other woman."

He rolled onto his side and propped his head on one hand.

"Tell me, Theta. What woman wouldn’t feel at least a little regret when a beautiful young man stops liking her?"

System Theta had no biological instincts and still felt targeted.

Elias continued before it could answer. "She may not realize it herself. People rarely admit to ugly feelings when they can dress them up as principle. But your data doesn’t lie. Somewhere under all that control, she regretted that my attention moved away from her. Maybe she was even a little jealous of Serena."

Jealousy. Regret. Guilt. Friendship.

It was a nasty mix. Worse, it was effective.

System Theta finally understood.

Elias gave a pleased nod, as if it had passed an exam he had not told it was taking. Then he said, in the same bright tone, "Block all of Giselle’s contact methods."

[All of them?]

"All of them."

[Reason?]

"She wanted distance, so I’ll give her a proper romance-brained disaster to worry about." Elias sat up, his hair falling messily over his forehead. "Let her watch me run straight into Serena’s arms and panic herself sick."

Before this, that move would have meant nothing to Giselle. He had known that. Distance only hurt when the other person had already started believing she had a right to closeness.

Now, unfortunately for Giselle, she had.

Elias stretched, grabbed his phone, and swung his legs off the bed. "Time to get up, eat something, and go pretend to be a student."

By the time his first class ended, the campus had settled into its usual polished rhythm. Westbridge students moved between buildings with coffees, tablets, clean coats, and the kind of fatigue that came from being rich enough to overwork themselves efficiently. Elias had spent the lecture with his face calm, his notes passable, and his mind nowhere near the material.

The moment he stepped out into the corridor, System Theta spoke again.

[Host, you have received a message.]

Elias did not bother taking out his phone. "Read it."

[What did you do to Giselle? I’m warning you. If anything actually happens to her...]

Elias’s expression did not change. "That angle of attack. Sloane Sinclair?"

[Correct.]

"Block her."

[Immediately?]

"Immediately." Elias moved with the flow of students toward the stairs. "Everyone who refuses to bless my beautiful doomed romance with Serena can get out of my contacts."

System Theta obeyed.

For a few minutes, there was peace.

Then the peace died.

[Host, host. Another message.]

Elias’s brow tightened slightly. "From Sloane?"

[Different number.]

"Block it."

[The message contains an image.]

That made him pause.

"Hold on."

He took out his phone himself this time and unlocked it with his thumb. The campus hallway reflected faintly on the screen. A photograph filled the message thread.

Giselle lay on a hotel bed, pale against the sheets. Her silver hair spilled messily near her cheek, and the sharpness she usually carried had been dulled by exhaustion. Even unconscious, she looked expensive, like someone had dropped a priceless sculpture in the wrong room and then left it there for evidence.

The accompanying text was brief.

Naomi Vale: She spent the whole night boxing and passed out from exhaustion.

Elias failed to hold back his laugh.

It slipped out before he could stop it, low and quick, and a few nearby students glanced over. Fortunately, none of the women currently trying to ruin his life were standing within range. He lowered the phone and coughed once, wiping the amusement off his face with professional speed.

Then he typed back.

Elias Kane: Who is this?

The reply came quickly.

Naomi Vale: You saw me the night you clung to that plane like a lunatic.

Elias looked at the message for a moment.

Right. Naomi Vale.

They were not close. They were not even mildly familiar. She had been there, drunk and entertained, when his life had briefly turned into an airport safety violation.

He hovered over the block option.

Naomi Vale: You’re good. Really good. You pushed Giselle into this state.

His thumb stopped.

That tone.

Elias’s smile returned, slower this time.

System Theta noticed the pause.

[Host?]

Elias did not answer right away. He read the message again, then narrowed his eyes with interest. "Doesn’t that sound familiar?"

[Like Liora Voss,] System Theta said carefully.

Elias snapped his fingers. "Correct."

Another woman who enjoyed watching fires, then.

A spectator with enough money to stand close without getting burned, or at least someone who believed she did. Elias already had one Liora-shaped problem in his life, and one was more than enough for most ecosystems. He had no interest in collecting another entertainment-seeking rich woman just because she had developed a taste for watching him ruin people.

He returned to the block menu.

Another message arrived before he pressed it.

Naomi Vale: I’m serious. I admire you. Don’t take this the wrong way. I really do want to be friends.

Elias stared at the screen.

Then he let out a flat, humorless breath.

"Where do these idiots come from?"

System Theta did not answer, though it had several possible statistical models.

Elias’s phone vibrated again, but this time the notification did not come from the message thread. It came from his bank.

He had linked that account ages ago and rarely used it now except to keep certain mission-related funds separated. The alert slid across the top of the screen with a line so clean and practical that it brightened his entire morning.

Incoming wire received: $125,000.

Elias’s eyes changed instantly.

His face did not merely soften. It opened. The irritation disappeared so completely that System Theta, which had no lungs, felt as if it had been forced to gasp.

This friend.

He would make this friend.

[Host, your expression changed very quickly.]

"Nonsense," Elias said, already tapping into the banking app to confirm the deposit. "I’m always sincere."

[That statement is not supported by available evidence.]

Elias ignored it.

The money was real. Clean, immediate, and already sitting in the account. No payment request, no contract clause flashing in front of him, no humiliating black-card condition asking him to kneel, smile, drink, bleed, or sign away three evenings and a portion of his dignity. Just a direct wire transfer from a woman who apparently believed friendship could be purchased.

She had excellent instincts.

That did not mean Elias would expose his own immediately. A man had to maintain some standards, even when someone dropped six figures into his lap with the subtlety of a brick through a penthouse window.

He returned to the thread.

Elias Kane: Who are you? And why do you know my bank account information?

On the other side of the screen, Naomi seemed to have been waiting for that exact question.

Naomi Vale: Naomi Vale. $125,000 to be friends. You don’t need to pay it back. If you return it, I’ll send it again.

There it was. Cleanly done.

No coy half-threat. No fake favor. No nonsense about accidental transfers or investment opportunities. She had removed the only practical inconvenience before he could use it as an excuse. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Elias admired efficiency, especially when it arrived in the shape of free money.

System Theta remained silent for a moment.

[Host, are you concerned this may be a trap?]

Elias almost laughed again. "Theta, I have tens of millions sitting under my name from other disasters. Even if I take this, ’greedy’ is not going to be the worst thing anyone can call me."

[That is not reassurance.]

"It wasn’t meant to be."

He leaned against the corridor wall while students streamed past, their conversations blurring around him. Someone nearby was complaining about an exam. Someone else was making lunch plans. In the middle of all that ordinary campus noise, Elias looked down at a message from a rich thrill-seeker who had just bought her way into his day.

The money itself was not the point. It helped, obviously. Elias had never believed in looking down on cash. Money was a tool, a shield, a knife, a leash, and occasionally a very comfortable mattress. But Naomi’s transfer told him more than her words did.

She was impulsive, but not stupid. She wanted access. She understood that Elias was more likely to answer a practical offer than an emotional one. She was entertained by the damage he caused and willing to pay for proximity to it.

A spectator, then.

Maybe a donor.

Maybe a headache.

He considered the risk for another few seconds, mostly for form. Then he typed.

Elias Kane: Thanks.

No hearts. No warmth. No promise. Nothing that could be dragged into a future argument and used as proof of intimacy. Just two clean syllables, polite enough to accept the money and empty enough to deny everything else.

Naomi’s reply came almost immediately.

Naomi Vale: So we’re friends?

Elias looked at the message, then at the bank notification still sitting in his recent alerts.

A second entertainment-seeking rich woman was annoying.

An entertainment-seeking rich woman who paid on time was a financial instrument.

He slipped the phone into his pocket and headed toward the dining hall with a lighter step.

"Sure," he said aloud, though there was no one near enough to think he meant them. "Why not?"

System Theta followed the logic and suffered through it.

[Host.]

"What?"

[Is this friendship?]

Elias smiled as he joined the moving crowd outside the lecture building.

"It’s close enough when the ATM has a personality."