Chapter 101
Jaxx’s Point Of View
He went pale in a way that even his dark purple bruises couldn’t hide. The last lingering microscopic drop of his corporate bravado bled out of him piece by piece until he was just a broken man on his knees, desperately counting the cost of his next breath.
I straightened up slowly, adjusting the cuffs of my bespoke jacket, and studied his face. My satisfaction was obvious, shameless, and absolute.
The dark glee that creased the corners of my mouth wasn’t joyful in a normal way, it was the cold, adult appreciation of a master plan falling perfectly into place, of a threat landing precisely where it was meant to rot.
I saw it clearly then: all the tiny, pathetic human flaws that had made Graham Sinclair crumble so easily. His vanity. His corporate delusion. The absurd arrogance that made him believe a ring on a finger and a legal document meant anything in the real world. I had stripped all of it away, leaving him down to the bare, brittle bone.
“You look good with fear, Graham,” I said softly, smoothing down my collar. “It really suits you. It’s the most honest you’ve ever looked in your entire life p>
I took a slow step around his slumped body, my heavy boots crunching softly on the wet gravel.
“You’ve always been so loud,” I continued, my voice lazy with an almost affectionate cruelty. “Loud mouths always need quieting eventually. You were just unlucky enough to stand directly in my way p>
He blinked rapidly, a tiny flick of furious embarrassment re-igniting deep in his eyes for a split second before fading back into terror.
“You think… you think you can just buy her?” he gasped out, his chest heaving as he tried to keep his balance on the pavement. “You think money and threats can make a woman like Elena forget who you are p>
“I don’t buy,” I said flatly, my eyes locking back onto his with dead, unblinking intensity. “I take. I arrange. I manipulate the pieces until the world becomes small enough for whatever I want p>
I let the words linger, heavy and dark.
“And right now? I’m thoroughly enjoying watching you realize just how small and insignificant you’ve always been p>
He tried to rise again, but the motion was flailing, pathetic, and utterly unbecoming of a man who commanded boardrooms an hour ago. His hands scraped uselessly against the cold pavement, his fine leather shoes slipping in his own blood.
I didn’t stop him. I stood right there, towering over him, letting him feel the full, crushing weight of me looking down on him. It fed something deep in my chest… quiet, steady, and insatiable.
“Have you suddenly gone mute, big brother?” I asked, my tone dropping even lower, quieter this time, as if we were two old friends sharing a dark secret in the alleyway. “Or do you have anything left to say against it p>
He coughed… a dry, ugly, hacking sound that tried and failed to masquerade as composure. Blood had crusted dark along his split upper lip, and his breath came in ragged, shallow pulls that rattled his ribs.
For a fraction of a second, his face twisted into an ugly knot of bruised pride, confusion, and a pathetic shred of leftover defiance. But the bravado was threadbare, torn to ribbons.
“She’s my wife, you fucking asshole,” he managed to force out. His voice was raw, ragged, but sharp enough to cut through the heavy sound of the falling rain.
The words came out like a prayer and a threat rolled into one desperate sentence. There was anger there, yes, but underneath it lay something far thinner… a fragile, brittle hope that simply naming his legal ownership over her might somehow act as a shield to protect him from me.
Naming her didn’t make Elena his. It never had. Hearing him say the word “wife” sounded like a bitter child claiming a stolen toy by scribbling his name on it in crayon. It was pathetic, petty, and entirely insufficient to stop what was coming.
A small, delighted laugh slipped out of my throat, rich and dark.
A slow, wicked smirk tugged at my mouth, completely unbidden. I took my time shaping it, letting it turn into something that tasted like absolute triumph and pure cruelty in equal measure.
“You keep saying that,” I said, my tone flat, calm, and utterly ruinous. “’She’s my wife, she’s my wife.’ But let me ask you something, Graham p>
I leaned in just an inch, my eyes narrowing into razor blades.
“If she was really your wife… why the fuck did you cheat on her p>
Graham’s eyes snapped wide open.
For a heartbeat, his face was a canvas of pure, unadulterated shock, followed instantly by a wave of sickening shame, and then something that looked dangerously like raw, defenseless guilt.
He opened his mouth to retort.. to spit back a furious denial, to scramble for whatever scrap of dignity he had left, to attack me with a lie, but the only sound that scraped out of his throat was tiny, broken, and pathetic.
“You… you don’t get to he started, his voice cracking violently before falling completely silent.
The truth had a mean, vicious way of catching a coward right mid-sentence.
“You cheated,” I repeated, dragging out each individual syllable, tasting the absolute ruin of his pride. “You did it while you stood next to her at these exact corporate galas, smiling for the cameras. You whispered empty promises into the wrong ears in hotel rooms, and then you thought you could erase the disgusting echoes of what you did by buying her a bigger diamond, a better watch, and flashing a better set of veneered teeth p>
He scrabbled backward an inch, his bloody hands pressing into the wet gravel. His nostrils flared wildly as he fought for air. The skeletons hidden deep in his chest were rattling so loudly I could practically hear them breaking against his ribs.
“Shut up,” he rasped. It was meant to be a command, but it came out with the structural integrity of wet paper… desperate, pathetic, and entirely futile.
I crouched back down to his exact level, letting the harsh overhead streetlight carve deep, shadowy angles into his battered cheekbones. He looked so remarkably small up close, not just because I had beaten his body into the dirt, but because I had completely unmasked the hollow fraud underneath the tailored suit.
I liked the way that brutal revelation settled over his bruised face. I liked how uneven and small it made him look. It pleased me in a practical, deeply satisfying way.
“You had your fun, brother,” I whispered, my voice clean, smooth, and sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. “You took what you wanted because you were born with the right last name. You ruined things you didn’t have the soul to repair because you stupidly thought power gave you permanent permission. You took Elena, and you used her like a trophy to prove you were a real man, and then you tucked her away in a lonely house the second you got bored p>
He spat another spray of blood onto the concrete, a mindless, automatic reflex that had no heat left behind it.
“You don’t know a damn thing about my marriage he choked out.
“I know everything,” I cut in smoothly, slamming the door on his weak defense.
His bloody lips trembled. Pride is an extraordinarily fragile thing when it’s been hollowed out from the inside; it either devolves into pathetic hysterics or it absurdly refuses to break at all. Graham was teetering right on the razor edge between both.
“You think… you think any of that excuses what you’re doing?!” Graham sneered weakly, desperately gathering the last tiny scraps of his breath to try to hurt me back. “You think you’re any better than me, Jaxx?! What are you?! A thief? A ruthless fucking monster?! You think you can just waltz back into her life and p>
“I don’t think,” I cut him off, my voice dropping an octave lower, sharper, harder than steel. “I act p>
His hands curled into fists on the wet pavement, straining, before completely relaxing again as the sharp agony in his shattered jaw proved the futility of fighting back.
“You had the bed,” I said, every word dripping like slow poison into his open wounds. “You had the sacred vows, or at least the pathetic little charade of them you put on for the public. You had the right family name. You had the absolute safety of a title. You had every opportunity in the world to be better for her… and you threw it all into the gutter because you’re weak p>
The word ’better’ hung frozen in the cold night air between us, pointed straight at his throat like an executioner’s blade.
Graham swallowed hard. His desperate attempt at a devastating retort dissolved into a low, pitiful, animal groan. Pride is a stubborn bastard, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to save a man when he’s already at the bottom of the pit.
“You’ve had your chance, brother,” I repeated, even slower this time, letting every single word land, settle, and crush the hollow places he’d tried to fill with unearned arrogance.
I stood up to my full height, towering over his broken form as the rain washed the blood from my knuckles down onto his expensive chest.
“Now I whispered, my smirk spreading sharp, dark, and absolute across my face. it’s my turn p>