Chapter 95
Elena’s Point Of View
“Tell him you’re done with his bullshit,” Jaxx commanded softly, his dark voice wrapping around my neck like a velvet leash. “Tell him to go to hell, throw his ring on the floor, and walk out those doors with me. Do that p>
His smirk bloomed slowly, deliberately… pure, unadulterated, lethal challenge, the kind that promised he already knew how this would end.
For a moment, the entire world stopped spinning. The air in the private suite turned solid, thick as lead. My ears roared with a violent, deafening rush… the sound of my own blood rebelling against every single word that had just spilled out of his mouth.
My chest constricted so fast, so tightly, it felt as though an invisible iron fist had closed around my lungs and squeezed. I could feel my pulse hammering in places I didn’t know a pulse could reach – my throat, my wrists, the backs of my knees.
Even my fingertips seemed to throb with it, some frantic, useless rhythm counting down to a detonation I couldn’t stop. My mind scrambled for footing, grasping for some rational thread to pull, but there was nothing solid left to hold.
Divorce Graham? Walk out into that glittering ballroom, face the cameras, the board, the press, and my husband… for him?
The proposition rattled inside my skull like an absolute insult. It was obscene. Vile. Poisonous. And yet some small, treacherous part of me turned the words over anyway, testing their weight, hating myself for even entertaining them for half a breath.
That small part of me… the one I usually kept locked away behind years of careful composure, leaned toward the idea like a moth drawn to a flame that would surely consume it. I despised her, that small traitorous sliver of myself, for daring to whisper that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t entirely wrong.
“What My voice cracked, sharp, ragged, and dripping with raw disbelief as I stared into his dark, unblinking eyes. “What absolute rubbish are you saying right now, Jaxx p>
Jaxx didn’t flinch. He just tilted his head, predator-slow, studying the frantic pulse jumping in my throat as though I were equal parts puzzle and prey… a delicate weakness he could taste on his tongue if he just reached out. There was no hurry in him, no urgency at all, and that patience frightened me more than any shout could have.
It was the patience of a man who had already won, who was simply waiting for me to catch up to a conclusion he’d reached hours ago. I hated him for that stillness almost as much as I hated myself for noticing how steady he made me feel, even now, even in the middle of this wreckage.
“You heard me perfectly, Elena,” he murmured, his thumb still resting near my jawline, cool against my feverish skin. “You’re smart. Don’t pretend your ears are failing you p>
Heat shot through me. not heat born of desire, not the lingering ember of the filthy, breathless encounter we’d just shared on the lounger, but a white-hot wave of rage, humiliation, and burning shame all colliding at once. My entire frame trembled, and it wasn’t from fear.
It was the violent tremor of a woman backed into a corner, pushed past her absolute limit, every muscle coiled with the need to either strike or shatter.
“Divorce my husband?!” I spat, my voice rising, shaking violently with a fury so potent it made my vision blur at the edges. “When did I ever tell you I wanted to divorce Graham? Huh? When did I sit down and ask for your permission or your opinion on my marriage? When, Jaxx? Tell me p>
I was shouting now, my voice echoing off the high, crown-molded ceiling of the suite, but he didn’t even blink. He just stood right between my legs, trapping me against the edge of the mahogany vanity table, enjoying every frantic breath I drew, as if my unraveling were the finest performance he’d witnessed in years.
His stillness was its own kind of cruelty, a wall against which my fury simply broke and receded, useless. I wanted to claw through that composure, to find whatever lay beneath it, if anything lay beneath it at all.
“You didn’t have to tell me, Bambina,” he drawled, his tone agonizingly soft, mocking me with its quiet patience. “Your eyes tell me every single time you look at him. Your shoulders drop three inches the second he walks into a room because you’re carrying the weight of a dying lie p>
“Shut up!” I screamed, grabbing his lapels and yanking him closer just so I could glare into his dark irises with all the venom I possessed. “You don’t know a damn thing about my life! You don’t know my marriage! You don’t get to sit here holding my silk underwear in your hand like a trophy and play therapist p>
“I don’t need to play therapist to see a woman who’s choking on her own life,” he countered smoothly, his grip on the black lace tightening slightly as he held it between our chests. “Look at yourself. Look at what it took to get you to breathe tonight. I had to drag you behind a locked door just to get a genuine reaction out of you p>
The sting of his words hit like a physical slap, but even as I opened my mouth to bite back another insult, the flashes came. Unbidden. Relentless. Slicing through my mind like rusted blades.
Graham’s voice, cool, distant, and utterly dismissive, echoed through the marble hallway of our empty penthouse: “Don’t wait up, Elena. The merger discussions are running late.” The sharp, metallic slam of the heavy front door. The scent of expensive, floral perfume clinging to the lapel of his suit jacket when he finally stumbled home at three in the morning… a fragrance that wasn’t mine, wasn’t anything I had ever worn.
I remembered lying awake counting the minutes, telling myself it meant nothing, telling myself I was imagining things, long after I’d stopped believing my own lies. I remembered, too, the particular ache of pretending to sleep when he finally slid into bed beside me, the careful stillness of my own body so he wouldn’t know I’d heard him come in at all. I remembered wondering, in the dark, when exactly I had become so skilled at disappearing inside my own marriage.
The subtle, pitying glances from my own household staff as they cleared the untouched dinner tables night after night. The quiet, hushed whispers in the executive boardrooms when they thought the CEO couldn’t hear them.
I had learned to walk past those whispers with my head high, pretending deafness, pretending I hadn’t built an entire second life out of pretending. I had become an expert at it, a woman fluent in the language of denial, fluent enough to fool everyone except, apparently, the man standing in front of me now.
And then… her.
The girl Graham had brought right into our social circles. Her spiky heels clicking over my pristine hardwood floors at the charity gala last month. Her laughter spilling through rooms that were supposed to be mine, supposed to be ours. Her wine glass left casually on my mahogany side table, her coat draped over my chair, her signature crimson lipstick stain mocking me from the rim of a crystal glass.
I had smiled through that entire evening, my nails carving crescents into my own palms beneath the table, and no one had noticed.
I remembered thinking, even then, that I had perfected the art of dying quietly in public. I remembered, too, hating myself a little for how easily the smile had come, how practiced, how automatic, as though some other woman entirely had learned to wear my face for me.
My throat closed up completely, my chest heaving as if glass shards were filling my lungs.
“I understand I choked out, the words forced past a wall of bitter bile. My hands loosened on his jacket, dropping slightly, trembling violently against his chest. “I understand that my marriage isn’t perfect. I know… I know things are drifting. I’m not blind, Jaxx. I’m not stupid p>
“Then stop acting like a martyr,” Jaxx cut in, his dark eyes narrowing into sharp slits of pure intensity. “Stop sitting at that table pretending to be his dutiful little corporate wife while he disrespects you in front of the entire city p>
“It’s my life!” I raged, my voice breaking on a pathetic sob that I hated myself for letting slip. “It’s my reputation! It’s my empire! I built everything I have with my own blood and sweat! I am not going to let it crumble! I am not leaving him!” I leaned in, my nostrils flaring, every muscle in my neck taut. “And I am definitely not leaving him for you p>
Jaxx’s expression flickered. Not with hurt. Not with disappointment. Not with a single shred of human vulnerability.
Instead, a darker, crueler amusement took root on his handsome face. He drank in my anger, my hyperventilating chest, my tear-filled eyes, as if it were fine wine, savoring every drop of my unraveling, and something in that hunger made me feel simultaneously seen and utterly violated.
It was the particular horror of being understood by someone who had no intention of being kind about it. I wondered, distantly, how long he had been watching me like this… long before tonight, long before the lounger, long before any of it.
“You think this is a proposal, Elena?” he mocked quietly, leaning down until his lips almost touched the shell of my ear. “You think I’m asking to play house with you p>
More flashes struck my mind, ruthless and unforgiving.
My mother’s sharp, disappointed voice, cold as a midwinter frost, echoed over the telephone: “A woman who can’t give her husband an heir isn’t a real wife, Elena. She’s just a placeholder. She’s a burden p>
I remembered gripping the phone so hard my knuckles had gone white, remembered swallowing the scream that had wanted to claw its way out of me, remembered how the dial tone had felt like a small mercy afterward.
I remembered, too, standing in front of the mirror that same night, searching my own reflection for whatever flaw had made me so easy to discard in my own mother’s eyes.
Graham’s mother, her eyes narrowed over a porcelain teacup, her lips curled into a sneer: “Barren. No wonder he strays. No wonder the boy looks elsewhere for comfort. A man has needs, dear p>
I had sat there in silence, sipping my own tea, smiling like a woman carved from porcelain herself, while inside I had been screaming, my composure a mask I’d learned to wear so well it sometimes frightened me.
The sting of those memories burrowed deep into my soul, like acid poured directly onto open wounds that had never been allowed to heal. I wanted to scream until the mirrors shattered. I wanted to reach into my own skin and tear those cruel words out of my flesh.
“You wouldn’t even have met me again if not for what Graham did!” The confession tore out of me… hot, jagged, and filthy. My nails dug into my own palms so hard I felt the skin break. My whole body shook with a shame so intense I thought I might throw up right on his expensive shoes. “Don’t you get it, Jaxx?! Desperation drove me to you! Desperation! Frustration! Revenge! Not love! Not choice p>