The Seductive Pretty Chapter 104: The Price

Chapter 104: Chapter 104: The Price

Chapter 104: The Price

Yvonne Quinn gave a small nod. "All right. I understand."

Mira Perry assumed that was the end of it.

Usually that was how these things went. Dr. Quinn asked one question, received the necessary answer, and then moved on. The food would be thrown away, the admirer would remain outside her orbit, and the night would continue in the same clean order it always did.

So when Yvonne held out her hand and said, "Give it to me," Mira froze.

Her eyes widened at once. "You’re going to eat it? But it could have..."

Yvonne’s tone did not change. It stayed calm and even, as neat as the white coat resting without a wrinkle on her shoulders.

"Yes."

That was all.

The single word was enough to make Mira realize she had already stepped over the line. She was not here to advise. She was not here to question. If Dr. Quinn wanted something done, then her role was simple. She only needed to do it.

So she said nothing else and handed over the bag.

Back in the office, Yvonne took out the large takeout box and set it on her desk.

Some of the chili oil had leaked during the trip. A red sheen clung to the lid and had stained part of the packaging, making the whole thing look greasy and misplaced against the pale walls, the spotless desk, and the controlled sterility of the room.

Yvonne did not appear bothered.

She opened a drawer, took out a pair of gloves, and put them on with steady care.

Her hands were famous.

They were beautiful by any ordinary standard, with long fingers, smooth skin, and nails kept in perfect condition, but that was not why people remembered them. They remembered them because those hands had opened bodies, cut where they needed to cut, and closed what should have been fatal. They remembered them because she had never lost a case on the table. Somewhere along the way, people had started calling them the hands of God.

Only Yvonne knew how false that title was.

These hands had saved hundreds of lives. Even so, the thing they most wanted to do was not save. What lived deepest in her nerves was not mercy but destruction. Sometimes, in the quiet corners of her mind, those same hands wanted to take a person apart piece by piece and see what remained once every clean separation had been made.

She opened the lid.

Not a single drop of oil splashed out. Her movements were so controlled that the whole action looked mechanical.

The smell spread almost immediately. It was rich, hot, and sharp with spice, enough to cut through the hospital air. Inside sat a lobster coated in red oil, glossy and aggressive, the sort of food that announced itself before anyone had taken a bite.

So this was the meal Elias had brought because he thought she had not eaten.

The choice was clumsy.

Before now, he had clearly never brought food to someone like this, or perhaps to anyone at all. Otherwise he would have known better than to send something so messy, so oily, so completely at odds with this room.

It was not a good choice.

And yet Yvonne’s expression did not change. She pulled out her chair, sat down, and looked, for all the world, like a doctor calmly preparing to begin a precise procedure.

A little over ten minutes later, Mira was called into the office.

The window had been opened. The strongest part of the smell had gone, but the air still carried the lingering heat of chili and spice.

"You finished it?"

Yvonne neither confirmed nor denied the question directly. She only said, in the same light voice as before, "Please take this out for me."

"Of course."

Mira picked up the bag and left the office.

Only after the door had shut behind her did the full strangeness of it settle in. Dr. Quinn had actually eaten food sent by a stranger. Or at least that was what it looked like.

As Mira walked down the hall, she replayed what she had seen. Yvonne’s lips had been clean. There had been no grease left on them, no disorder in her appearance at all. That alone felt almost impossible given what had been in the box.

She looked down at the bag in her hand.

After a moment’s hesitation, she opened it.

What she saw inside made her stop walking.

The lobster had been dismantled completely.

The claws, the legs, the shell, every piece had been separated with exacting care. None of the shell had been crushed or split wrong. Nothing had been torn apart messily. Each section looked as though it had been opened along its correct line by an expert hand. On one side of the container sat the stripped shell, intact enough to read like anatomy. On the other sat a neat mound of white lobster meat, clean and complete.

It did not look like someone had eaten dinner.

It looked like someone had performed surgery.

A small chill ran down Mira’s back.

At that exact moment, System Theta’s voice rose inside Elias’s mind.

[Yvonne Quinn favorability increased. Current favorability: 10%.]

Elias was pleased.

Not ecstatic, not careless, but pleased. The progress was solid, and solid was good enough for now.

What he did not understand was why Yvonne still refused to see him.

He knew she had been in the office the whole time. If she had actually left, the favorability feedback would not have come so quickly. The speed of the response made that much obvious.

So the situation became stranger the more he thought about it. She had accepted the food. She had eaten it. The favorability had gone up. Yet she still would not see him.

Shy?

He almost laughed at the idea.

That label had no business attaching itself to a woman like Yvonne Quinn.

He leaned back in the passenger seat and said, "Let’s go. Blackwood residence."

Lila Morgan had been holding herself back for several minutes already. At last she gave up.

"You went there to bring food to that doctor?"

Elias did not even look away from his phone. "What else would I be doing?"

For some reason that answer irritated her more than it should have. The irritation gathered until it sharpened into something uglier.

"Why her?" she asked.

This time Elias turned.

He smiled a little, and the reply came out without hesitation, as if the answer were embarrassingly obvious. "Why not? She’s beautiful, she has a great body, she’s rich, and she’s the kind of goddess countless people want. Taking someone like that down feels rewarding."

He said it the same way someone might talk about clearing a difficult level in a game.

Beat the stage, earn the satisfaction.

Lila’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Did he really treat chasing women like that?

Like points, trophies, milestones, victories to collect and set aside?

The more she thought about it, the more uncomfortable she became, as though some sour pressure had built in her chest and needed release.

So she opened her mouth and said the one thing she had clearly been waiting to say since the moment she saw him in Serena’s car.

"I saw everything you were doing."

Elias finally stopped scrolling.

He turned his head and looked at her properly, his expression flattening in a way that made him seem colder than before. "And?"

The instant Lila heard herself say it, the pressure inside her vanished. She let out a slow breath and felt strangely lighter.

That was what she had wanted.

She had wanted to throw it in front of him and see what he would do.

At the same time, another truth rose up so clearly she could no longer pretend it was not there. She wanted more than leverage. She wanted her turn. If other women could have him, why not her?

All of them were women in the end. Why should she be the only one standing outside?

So she went on. "Serena Blackwood probably doesn’t know about you and Liora Voss, does she? If I told her..."

Elias stared at her for a moment.

Then he laughed.

This was the first time Lila had seen him laugh that hard. His shoulders shook. The sound spilled out of him unchecked, and he nearly had to wipe at the corner of one eye before he could speak again.

"I really thought you were worried about something serious," he said. "Turns out you’re not worried. You just want to sleep with me."

The line was shameless. Worse than shameless. It ripped the cover off her real motive so cleanly that Lila felt heat crawl up her neck.

Shame hit first. Anger followed right after it.

Then she caught herself.

If he could say it that plainly, why was she the one flinching?

She set her jaw. "Fine. Yes. I want you."

His laughter died down.

He wiped away the little trace of wetness at the corner of his eye, and a light smile stayed on his mouth. "So you found something you think is a weakness. Now what do you want to do with it?"

Lila swallowed. "Take off the glasses."

Elias obeyed without argument.

He removed them and set them aside.

The change in his face hit her all over again. Without the glasses, the plainness vanished. His features were too clean, too bright, too deliberately hidden under ordinary styling the rest of the time. The sight of him knocked the last bit of hesitation out of her.

"Then..." she started.

She had not even finished deciding what command should come next when Elias cut in with a quiet laugh.

"I don’t especially mind." He twined a loose strand of gold hair around one finger as he looked at her. "But what about you? Are you prepared to pay the price?"

Lila blinked. "The price?"

"Of course." He kept playing with the strand of hair, his tone turning almost lazy. "I’m not free."

"I can pay you," she said immediately. "I can give you money."

That smile at his mouth sharpened just a little. "How much?"

Lila hesitated.

Then she clenched her teeth and forced it out. "A hundred thousand."

For her, that was not a small number. It was enough to hurt.

Elias rolled the amount across his tongue as if tasting it. "A hundred thousand."

Then he looked at her again.

"That’s too cheap. Not enough."

Lila opened her mouth, ready to raise it, but Elias spoke before she could.

"In your eyes, is your own life only worth a hundred thousand?"

She froze. "My life?"

The smile left his face completely.

What remained was not anger. It was something cooler and flatter, a detached calm that made his next words worse.

"Anyone who wants to have me pays for it. The people you place above your head are no exception. And if you want your turn with me, the price you’d have to pay..."

He let the pause sit there until she could feel her heartbeat in her teeth.

"...would be your life."

A violent shiver ran through Lila.

Fear came so fast it almost shorted out her thoughts. For one jagged second, instinct took over and her body tensed as if she might lunge or scream or do something equally stupid.

Then her eyes dropped.

Elias was holding his phone.

On the lit screen, one line was visible in plain text:

Recording in progress.

Reason returned all at once.

The blood drained from Lila’s face.

She understood immediately. Every word she had just said was sitting on that device now, intact and waiting.