Chapter 214: The Winner
The voice was barely audible.
Giselle heard it anyway.
"Okay… I'll go back with you."
The words carried surrender, exhaustion, shame, and something even lower than shame. Something worn into the bone.
Giselle looked down at Elias.
He was crouched near the pavement with her coat covering him, head lowered, hands still clutching fabric that Marlene Bennet had almost torn away from him in front of half the campus gate. He looked as if someone had peeled the dignity off him in strips and left him kneeling in what remained.
Her chest tightened until it hurt.
Part of it was for him.
Part of it was disbelief.
Giselle had grown up in a world where cruelty wore expensive suits, signed contracts, smiled through dinner, and hired someone else to hold the knife. She had seen coldness. She had seen control. She had seen the kind of clean violence wealthy women used when they wanted the damage hidden.
But she had never seen this.
