Chapter 274: Not a False Accusation

The woman in front of him went rigid.

Elias had not even touched Serena Blackwood. Her body had not moved. Nothing dramatic had happened on the surface.

Yet she looked as if lightning had struck her straight through the spine.

Elias burst out laughing.

"Look at her face."

System Theta saw it too. It captured, with painful clarity, the faint green cast that seemed to pass across Serena’s expression.

Had its data gone wrong again?

But System Theta had no time to check. Elias could laugh. It could not. Panic ran through its voice.

[System Theta: Host, w-what are you doing?!]

Why had he suddenly blown himself up in front of Serena?

Had Yvonne Quinn actually hypnotized him?

No, impossible. That made no sense. If Yvonne’s hypnosis had really worked on Elias Kane like that, the Bureau could have shut down half its disaster files years ago.

System Theta looked at Serena’s expression again.

Her face had definitely gone green.

And those eyes...

If Serena killed Elias in the next second, System Theta would not even be able to call it unexpected.

While the system was busy panicking, Elias made it worse.

He kicked off the slippers Serena had just put on him. His bare little feet swung out and tapped against her lower stomach with a force that was neither light nor heavy. His soft pink lips pushed into a pout, and his dark eyes filled with something that almost looked like hurt.

"Big sister," he said, sounding wronged, "say something. Don’t you love it when I meow for you?"

Serena was hit so hard by that sentence that for a moment, everything in her mind collapsed.

The amount of information inside those few words was too much.

Even Serena, with all her pride and calculation, could not hold her composure against it at once.

She did not wonder whether she had misheard. The Blackwood residence was too quiet at night. The kitchen was even quieter. There were only the two of them there, and the stillness was so complete a dropped pin would have sounded offensive.

She could not have misheard.

More than that, Serena was not thinking properly.

For a moment, she nearly lost the ability to think at all. Elias’s small bare foot nudged her back to awareness, and the only thing she could do was clench both hands into fists, fighting herself with everything she had so she would not do something impulsive, something that might hurt him.

Because the Elias in front of her now, the Elias after hypnosis, truly loved only her.

If this had been the Elias from before...

Serena herself did not know what she would have done.

Her nails pierced the tender skin of her palms. Blood welled from the wounds and slid between her fingers, dripping onto the polished floor below.

Elias lowered his gaze to her clenched fists.

The backs of Serena’s pale hands were tight enough for veins to stand out. Her anger was obvious. Any normal person would have backed away.

Even like this, she did not touch him.

She really...

Elias almost wanted to cry from how moved he was.

A woman this patient made him curious. Truly curious.

How far did her bottom line go?

The corner of Elias’s mouth moved faintly. A trace of a smile flashed and vanished. Then his expression became even more wounded.

"Do you have some other cat outside or something?"

As he spoke, both of his bare feet kicked Serena at once.

This time, the force pushed her back one step.

[System Theta: !!!]

Serena slowly raised her head.

Her eyes were dark as spilled ink. The words came out from between her teeth, each one forced through control so tight it sounded like it might snap.

"I don’t like it. From now on... don’t meow anymore."

"Oh."

Serena’s tone was that stiff, so Elias’s attitude naturally cooled too.

He lowered his head, but inwardly clicked his tongue.

She could really endure.

No wonder people said a broad chest held a broad heart.

Elias jumped down from the kitchen island and started looking for his slippers on the floor without saying another word. After he found them and put them on, he turned to leave.

Serena blocked his way.

Elias lifted a hand and pushed her once. She did not move.

He raised his head and glared at her, his voice suddenly sharper.

"Move."

The word cut through the quiet Blackwood residence like lightning.

At some point, mist had gathered in his eyes.

Seeing him like that, Serena seemed to lose all strength. Her clenched hands loosened suddenly, and she stepped aside.

Elias brushed past her without hesitation.

His tone was full of dissatisfaction, but a faint tremor of tears hid inside the words.

"If you don’t like it, then you don’t like it. Who did anything to you? You said the company had an emergency, so I came back with you. Did we even stay in the Maldives for two days? I didn’t even get mad, so why do you get to be mad? If the company upset you... am I the company? I didn’t even know..."

The more he spoke, the more wronged he sounded. The crying in his voice grew thicker, but his steps never stopped.

By the time his figure disappeared near the stairs, his voice faded with him.

Hmph.

Let guilt eat you alive.

She liked playing with hypnosis?

Then he would properly teach Serena Blackwood that the kind of plot that worked in dirty little fantasy scripts did not work in reality.

The person who had clearly started crying moments ago now walked with a smile curving at his lips. He entered the bedroom, climbed into his bed, and lay down like nothing had happened.

Before System Theta could say anything, Elias spoke first.

’Shh. You’re not allowed to ask anything. Rest.’

[System Theta: Oh...]

System Theta felt genuinely wronged.

It had so many questions.

Elias placed both hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, reviewing the sudden idea he had just used.

Yes.

It had been sudden.

When System Theta told him Liora was eavesdropping, the idea had simply come to him.

Question: was it possible that Liora Voss, that thrill chasing, reckless woman who enjoyed danger for dessert, had revealed some part of her relationship with him in front of Serena before?

If so, what kind of name would she give him?

Something Serena would not understand immediately.

Something that fit him too well.

If Elias had guessed correctly...

Little Kitten.

Cute. Ambiguous. Perfectly tailored to him.

A simple reasoning problem.

He only hoped that when those two sisters started fighting, they would not wake him up.

With that thought, Elias turned over comfortably. His body curled up like a sleeping child, and he closed his eyes with a smile.

At the kitchen doorway, Serena slowly lowered the hand she had lifted by instinct, the one that had wanted to catch Elias before he left.

Her ability to think had returned somewhat.

She now understood where Elias’s words had come from.

Yvonne had used replacement based hypnosis.

That meant every sentence Elias said, every action he made, had to have a source somewhere in the past. It was not creation out of nothing. It was substitution. Redirection. A rearranged map with old roads leading to Serena’s name.

Serena remembered very clearly that she had never roleplayed with Elias like that.

She had never made him dress like a little kitten.

She had never made him meow.

So who had he once played cat for?

The answer did not require thought.

Serena knew she should not blame Elias.

At least, she could not blame the current Elias.

The current Elias was a new person. Clean, simple, innocent. Most importantly, he loved her with his whole heart.

The person she needed to find was someone else.

Serena exhaled slowly.

Just thinking of those three words made her head buzz.

Little Kitten.

A faint pain spread through her skull, deep and sharp, as if something were trying to tear through from the inside.

So she had not wronged anyone.

She had not suspected the wrong person.

If anything, she had trusted them too much.

Trusted Elias.

Trusted Liora.

Trusted her own sister.

Serena took out her phone.

Upstairs, in her bedroom, Liora had just finished washing up.

Her phone lit up suddenly on the nightstand.

She walked over and glanced down.

Serena: Garden. Now.

Her right eye twitched again.