[Cover Character: Giselle Frost.]

Elias Kane was supposed to be done.

He had survived too many beautiful disasters, too many obsessive women, and too many games where love was just another name for ownership. He knew how to play innocent. He knew how to play desirable. He knew how to turn sweetness into a weapon and vulnerability into a trap.

All he wanted now was a clean exit.

Then he woke up in a near-future world built on female power, old money, public elegance, and private cruelty.

Here, powerful women do not need to shout to be terrifying. They sign contracts. They buy silence. They smile for cameras, donate to hospitals, fund universities, and ruin lives with perfect manners.

And Elias has landed directly in their line of sight.

A cold CEO who mistakes possession for care.

A woman who smiles softly even when she is about to ruin someone.

A campus goddess wrapped in wealth, beauty, coldness, and quiet cruelty.

A doctor who can open the mind and leave damage no one else can see.

Every one of them wears perfection beautifully. Every one of them knows how to lie. Every one of them is capable of ruining him without ever raising her voice.

This time, Elias is not walking into a messy romance plot he can outplay with patience and a better performance.

He is walking straight into a inescapable cage built from contracts, surveillance, coercion, and desire sharp enough to cut. One wrong step, and he will lose more than his freedom. He will become something to keep, control, and ruin.

Unfortunately for them, Elias has never been as helpless as he looks.

He understands women like this. He understands hunger dressed up as tenderness, cruelty dressed up as protection, and obsession dressed up as love.

All he wants is to survive, cash out, and disappear.

Unfortunately, the women circling him have started wanting something else.

By now, Elias understands the rule better than anyone.

The cruelest women do not corner you.

They draw you in.

They make you step closer on your own.

Then they close their hands and call it fate.

[Extra Tags: No Yuri, No NTR, Reverse Rape, Cunning Main Character, Matriarchal World, Absued Main Character, Cold Main Character, Physically Weak Main character, Manuplative Main Character, Cunning Main character, etc.]

The next day, Elias sat at the dining table, eating dessert made by one of the top private chefs in the world, and fell into a long silence.


'I feel like Serena and I can still keep seeing each other later. Without her, where am I supposed to eat something this good?'


[System Theta: Didn't you say last night…]


Last night, the host had clearly laid out a detailed follow-up plan. Now that Serena Blackwood's route was cleared, who would he target next? Seraphina Hale had finished filming overseas. When would she return to the States? When would he arrange a chance encounter?


System Theta had listened to all of it.


And now, after one dessert, his mind had changed?


[System Theta: That is not what you said last night.]


Elias laughed. 'I was just saying things. Also, I said I could keep seeing Serena later. I didn't say I'd keep living here.'


He scooped up the last bite of dessert.


Chapter 283 - Chapter 283: A New Self