Chapter 270: Warm Outside, Cold Inside

Elias narrowed his eyes as if he had not heard her clearly.

"We’re what?"

"Besties," Giselle Frost repeated.

Her voice stayed calm.

The word had barely left her mouth when Elias laughed.

The sound was bright and clear, pretty enough to make the air itself feel like it had been struck. His black eyes curved like crescents, loose strands of hair falling across his forehead, and for one brief second there was something almost gentle in his gaze, like moonlight caught behind glass.

Then the laughter stopped.

Elias bit down lightly, his teeth flashing white. The corner of his mouth lifted into something vicious. It looked like a smile from a distance, but up close, there was no warmth in it at all. Only mockery. Only contempt.

"Who the hell is Besties with you?" he said. "I would never have something like that."

His eyes swept over Giselle, and the disgust in them was open, clean, and cruel.

"Especially a female Bestie. That’s disgusting."

The words hit one after another.

Female Bestie.

Something like that.

Disgusting.

Each one poured over Giselle with such casual malice that even the air seemed to go still.

It was often said that children, when left without guidance, could do terrible things more easily than adults. Their minds were too clean to understand the weight of good and evil. Their kindness could be pure because they did not know how to fake it. Their cruelty could be just as pure because they had not yet learned where to hide the knife.

The Elias standing here now had that same childlike clarity in his eyes.

And what came out of him was not innocence.

It was malice in its rawest shape.

Even Serena Blackwood’s eyelid twitched when she heard him.

In Serena’s eyes, the Elias standing in front of her now could not be described as merely heartless. That word was too soft. He was cruel in a way that almost felt clean, cold enough that even the woman who had arranged this could feel the edge of it.

But Serena would never pity Giselle.

She had never been a person with much talent for sympathy. Besides, Giselle was her rival, or had been until moments ago. Pitying a rival after watching her lose was a waste of a perfectly good victory.

What surprised Serena was that Giselle’s face barely changed.

She only saw Giselle’s chest rise once, hard and fast, as if something inside her had been hit. Then even that movement settled. The frost returned. The stillness returned.

Giselle looked at Elias for a long time.

It was not the look she gave Serena. Not anger. Not accusation. She seemed to be searching his eyes for the soul she knew, trying to find even one familiar trace beneath the surface.

Naturally, she found nothing.

Those eyes held only a child’s clear brightness and an undiluted disgust. Even the disgust was pure. No hesitation, no buried guilt, no crack that proved the real Elias was still looking out from somewhere inside.

"Elias," Giselle said, her voice controlled, though the words began to come faster. "Don’t you feel anything wrong with yourself? When you look around you, nothing feels strange? When you look at Serena, your body doesn’t go cold? You don’t feel afraid?"

Serena’s expression changed.

Giselle did not give anyone time to interrupt.

"Elias, this isn’t the real you. The person beside you doesn’t love you. She’s lying to you. She’ll only hurt you. She’s the reason your life became this dark in the first place."

"Hmph."

Elias let out a cold, dismissive sound through his nose.

"What are you even talking abou..."

His voice stopped.

The change came too fast.

His brows pulled together sharply, and the color drained from his face. It looked as if a needle had been driven straight through his temple and into the center of his skull. Pain twisted his expression. His whole body began to tremble where he stood, first in small shivers, then in violent, uncontrollable shakes.

Serena’s heart lurched.

She rushed to him and wrapped her arms around him at once.

"Eli, what’s wrong?"

Elias did not answer.

He could not.

His hands flew to his head, fingers digging into his hair as if he could tear the pain out by force. His breathing broke apart.

"Make her leave," he forced out. "Make her leave!"

"Yes. Yes, all right." Serena’s head snapped toward Giselle, and all the softness vanished from her face. "Get out. While I’m still calm enough to let you walk, get off my plane."

The command was absolute.

Giselle still did not move at once.

Faced with Serena’s merciless order, her expression remained almost empty. She looked like someone who had lost access to ordinary emotion. She only watched as Serena turned back to Elias, pulling him tightly into her arms, lowering her head to murmur comfort beside his ear again and again.

The private jet’s cabin was built for expensive silence.

Thick carpeting swallowed footsteps. Polished fixtures reflected warm light. The leather seats were arranged with enough room for comfort and enough privacy for sin. Outside the oval windows, the afternoon sun poured over the tarmac in a flat gold sheet, but inside, everything was chilled, sealed, controlled.

A perfect little cage.

And at the center of it, Serena held Elias as if he belonged there.

The bodyguards had already rushed forward. They moved to obey Serena’s order and remove Giselle from the cabin.

Before they could touch her, Giselle turned her head.

Silver hair swept across her face. A few strands fell over her forehead and cheek, hiding most of her expression. Only a narrow piece of one eye showed through.

That was enough.

Both bodyguards stopped where they were.

They did not take another step.

In that instant, Giselle looked like a wounded wolf. Not strong in the polished, effortless way the Blackwood women liked to appear strong. Not untouchable in the way her campus image sold her. She looked badly hurt, almost exhausted, and because of that, more dangerous.

One step closer, and she might bite with everything she had left.

Serena’s order mattered.

Their own lives mattered more.

"I’ll leave on my own," Giselle said.

Her voice was flat.

After that, she walked between the two bodyguards without looking at either of them.

She was almost at the cabin door when Elias, still held in Serena’s arms, suddenly lifted his head.

His cry tore out of him, hoarse and broken, like blood scraped through the throat.

"I never want to see you again!"

Giselle stopped.

Her hands, hanging at her sides, clenched suddenly into fists.

For a moment, her shoulders were so still they seemed carved from ice.

Then she started walking again.

She did not turn back.

The jet stairs waited under the open door. Giselle stepped down into the heat, one controlled step after another, until her heels touched the hard ground of the private tarmac.

For a few seconds, she only stood there.

Then she blinked.

Only then did she seem to come back to herself.

It had been such a short amount of time, but it felt as if she had crossed into another life and returned with nothing intact.

The sun hung above her, bright and pitiless. Heat spilled across the open air without mercy. The tarmac shimmered under it. Every breath carried the dense, baked scent of fuel, rubber, and summer asphalt. The world outside the jet should have been suffocatingly warm.

Giselle stood under all that sunlight and felt cold from the inside out.

A bone-deep chill spread through her body. It did not come from the air. It ran from her chest to her fingertips, through her spine, into the backs of her knees. Her body shook once, very slightly, too little for anyone far away to notice.

She turned her head and looked back at the private jet.

The door was still open.

From where she stood, she could see nothing inside. Only the smooth white exterior, the dark windows, the polished curve of wealth built to keep the world out. Yet she looked at it as if she could see straight through the aircraft’s body.

As if she could see Serena holding Elias.

As if she could see him pressed against the woman who had erased her from his eyes.

A car was waiting near the edge of the tarmac.

One of the Frost family vehicles, black, low, and expensive enough that airport staff gave it space without needing to be told. The aide by the rear door opened it the moment Giselle approached.

Giselle got in.

The door closed behind her, shutting out the heat, the noise, and the view of the jet.

Inside, the car was cool. Too cool. The air conditioning had been running hard, keeping the leather seats chilled and the glass faintly fogless despite the white heat outside. A dark-haired woman in the front passenger seat turned slightly, careful with her tone.

"Ms. Frost, do you want us to send people in?"

She had seen it at a glance.

Their young mistress had not brought the person back.

Giselle did not answer right away.

She leaned back into the seat, closed her eyes, and said lightly, "Turn off the air conditioning."

The aide froze for a beat.

She did not fully obey. Instead, she reached toward the climate control and raised the temperature a little.

"Ms. Frost," she said carefully, "we have more people than they do. If we send them now, there’s a strong chance we can bring him..."

Giselle opened her eyes slowly.

She turned her head and looked at the aide.

"You’re too loud."

There was no anger on her face.

The sentence itself was calm. Flat. Almost mild.

But the moment the aide met Giselle’s eyes, her mouth snapped shut.

A chill crawled through her chest.

She had once worked beside Victoria Frost. That was why she had been trusted with this assignment, why she had been sent to Giselle at the moment the younger woman needed help most. She understood the Frost family’s style better than most people. She understood patience. Authority. The kind of silence that did not need to raise its voice to make a room kneel.

And just now, for one second, she felt as if she had seen another Victoria Frost.

Giselle had failed.

Anyone could see that.

She had stepped onto Serena Blackwood’s plane and walked back out alone. She had not recovered Elias. She had not forced an answer. She had not even managed to make him remember her.

But there was no collapse in her.

No panic.

No dull, defeated slump.

Only a kind of calm that did not belong to ordinary people.

Women like Victoria Frost did not always win the first time. That had never been the frightening part. The frightening part was that if they truly wanted something, they could come back again and again, each time colder, better prepared, less willing to leave anything standing between their hand and the thing they intended to take.

In that moment, the aide put away the thin strand of contempt she had carried because of Giselle’s age.

She lowered her eyes with the same obedience she would have given Victoria herself.

Then she turned off the air conditioning.