Chapter 102 - 0102: Give My Regards To My Future Wife

Chapter 102: Chapter 0102: Give My Regards To My Future Wife

Graham’s Point Of View

The heavy drizzle had turned into a steady, suffocating downpour, slicking the concrete and turning the blood pooling beneath me into a dark ribbon. The orchestra inside the venue was nothing but a hollow, pulsing bassline bleeding through the brick, completely detached from the execution happening out here in the dark.

It felt obscene, almost blasphemous, that something so elegant could carry on just meters away while I lay dying by inches in the mud.

Somewhere in that gilded room, people were laughing over champagne, utterly oblivious to the fact that a man was being unmade in the alley behind them.

I lay trapped on my back, the rain stinging the splits in my swollen face. Jaxx’s heavy boot was planted firmly on my chest, pinning me to the gravel like a pinned insect. The barrel of his matte-black pistol pressed hard into my left temple, the iron freezing cold against my feverish skin.

Every breath I dragged in came shallow and desperate, my ribs screaming under the pressure of his weight. I could feel my own heartbeat pounding against the sole of his boot, as though my body were begging him to notice how close he’d already come to finishing the job.

He leaned down lower, his face inches from mine, smelling of tobacco, rain, and gun oil. There was something almost intimate about the closeness, a grotesque parody of brotherhood, the kind of nearness that should have belonged to shared blood and old memories, not violence and betrayal.

"You better be prepared, brother," Jaxx purred, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp calm that set every nerve in my body on fire, the corner of his mouth twitching upward into a dark, toxic smirk. "Because I’m not just going to take the Sinclair name out from under you. I’m taking your wife. Every piece of her."

My bloodshot eyes blew wide open. The absolute insolence... the raw, audacious violence of the statement, struck me harder than his fist had. A choking gasp escaped my throat as red foam bubbled over my split lip. The pain in my ribs suddenly felt distant, insignificant, drowned beneath a wave of pure, animal fury.

Somewhere beneath the rage, a colder thought took root: he wasn’t bluffing. Jaxx never bothered to lie when the truth could wound more.

"You... you bastard!" I roared, my voice cracking into a shredded scream that rattled against the brick walls. I thrashed against the crush of his boot, my leather dress shoes scraping uselessly on the gravel. "Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare touch her!"

"I’ll do more than touch her, Graham," Jaxx whispered, leaning in closer, his eyes gleaming with an unholy, mocking light. "I’ll make her forget you ever breathed."

"I will fucking kill you!" I spat, coughing violently as a smear of my own blood sprayed across his cheek. I tried to raise a bruised, trembling fist, but I had nothing left... no leverage, no air, only the thrashing panic of a man watching his world get dismantled. "If you so much as come close to Elena... if you look at her... I swear to God, Jaxx, I will hunt you down and tear you apart! She is my wife! Mine!"

Jaxx didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink as my blood dripped down his cheek. Instead, his smirk only widened, curling into something monstrous, as though my desperation were the very thing he’d come here to feast on, as though every broken word out of my mouth only confirmed how thoroughly he already owned this moment.

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his boot off my chest.

My lungs expanded in a painful, desperate rush, my head dropping back against the wet brick with a sickening thud. I lay there heaving in my ruined tuxedo, choking on copper and impotent rage as I looked up at him.

The rain kept falling, indifferent, washing pink rivulets of my own blood toward the gutter, as if the night itself wanted no part of what had just happened.

Jaxx stood to his full height, towering over me like a shadow cast straight from hell. He reached into his inner pocket, pulled out a pristine white silk handkerchief, and casually wiped the spot of my blood from his skin.

Then, with a slow, insulting flick of his wrist, he tossed the crimson-stained silk onto my chest like a funeral shroud. The small, careless gesture wounded something in me more deeply than the gun ever had... a reminder that to him, I was already a finished thing, a mess to be tidied away.

"Prepare yourself, big brother," he murmured, his tone smooth as velvet. "Because the game is already over. You just haven’t realized you lost yet."

He turned his back on me without a second glance, stepping smoothly toward the sleek, matte-black Continental parked in the private drop-off zone.

Before sliding into the driver’s seat, Jaxx paused, resting his forearm on the open car door. He looked back through the falling rain at where I lay broken in the mud, let out a low, dark laugh... rich and mocking, and flashed one last sharp, blinding smirk into the darkness.

"See you around, Graham," he called out softly over the drumming rain. "Give my regards to my future wife."

He slid inside, the heavy door shutting with a solid, airtight thunk that severed the noise of the night. The engine purred to life... a deep rumble, and the taillights cut through the black rain like two bleeding slits as he glided away into the city.

I watched him go, unable to do anything but lie there and let the humiliation sink into my bones alongside the rain. Every second that passed felt like another inch of ground surrendered, another piece of my life quietly stolen while I lay powerless to stop it.

The dark exhaust and the scent of cigarette smoke curled into the wet night like a victory flag, and Jaxx’s silhouette melted into the shadows until he was just a memory in the shape of a man. My hands tightened on the wet gravel without my permission, fingers balling into fists until the knuckles cracked and screamed in pain.

Fury heat-stung behind my eyes... hot and stupid and immediate, the kind that made rational thought impossible.

That bastard. That filthy, illegitimate bastard. How dare he? Who the hell did he think he was, barging into our night, beating me like a dog in the dirt, and talking like he owned the very air Elena breathed?

My face throbbed where his fist had hit me... a dull, agonizing ache that burned deep in the facial bones and made bright spots of light flare at the edges of my vision whenever I tried to turn my head. I tasted heavy copper when I licked my split lips.

The blood had already dried crusty in the corner of my mouth; the skin over my cheekbone tingled with the hot, swollen map of his knuckles. Somewhere beneath the physical pain lived a deeper ache, one I refused to name... a fear that had nothing to do with bruises and everything to do with the woman still standing inside that glowing hall, unaware of what had just been declared against her.

I let out a low, ragged groan, the sound more like a wounded animal than a man who commanded a multi-million dollar corporation.

"You’ll pay for this, Jaxx," I muttered to the empty, rain-slicked night, even as I felt completely ridiculous and pathetic saying it out loud to no one. The words were small, fragile, and utterly inadequate, but I needed them there, desperately clinging to them like anchors in a storm.

I stared at the place where his car had disappeared into the dark, as if I might will him back with my gaze just to shoot him. The hall’s high-arched glass doors glowed in the distance, the high-society gala still pulsing inside with polite laughter, classic strings, and the soft, elegant clink of crystal champagne flutes.

The contrast between that warm, glittering world and the cold gutter I occupied felt almost like a cruel joke designed specifically for me.

Elena’s grand event. Her crowning achievement. Their toasts and speeches were still in progress inside, the kind of polished, moneyed noise that makes rich people forget the violent underside of life for a few hours. She had worked for months to make tonight perfect, and I had spent it bleeding in an alley while her name was used as a weapon against me.

I knew I should go back in. I should wipe the blood off my collar, walk back onto that marble floor, play my role as the powerful husband, confront her, demand answers, and drag her home. Some part of me even wanted to, if only to see her face and read the truth there before Jaxx’s poison could root any deeper in my mind.

But another part of me, the part still reeling from humiliation, dreaded what I might find in her eyes... recognition, guilt, or worse, indifference.

But the sickening ache in my ribs, the blood pooling in my boots, and the way the streetlights swam in nauseating circles when I blinked stopped me cold. My legs felt thick and heavy, like lead pipes that belonged to someone else.

I dragged myself up against the brick wall, coughing up a wad of red, and stumbled toward my car instead. The path across the executive lot felt endless, as if the night had stretched itself out specifically to humiliate me. My boots crushed gravel underfoot; each crunch sounded disproportionately loud in the quiet rain.

My breath came in shallow, panicked hitches, the cold air burning my throat, though doing little to clear the blinding rage searing through my skull.

I reached my Mercedes, unlocked it with shaking hands, and practically collapsed into the leather seat. I slammed the heavy door shut. The sound cracked behind me like a gunshot... a sickening echo of the punch that had dropped me.

In a sudden, unhinged explosion of panic and rage, my palm collided with the steering wheel in a single, angry slap so hard the center horn coughed violently and the entire steering column shook. I pressed my bleeding forehead flat against the cold leather wheel and let out a choked sound somewhere between a curse and a quiet, pathetic sob.

For a moment, I allowed myself that weakness, knowing no one could see me fall apart inside the dark cocoon of the car. It was the only place left in the world where I didn’t have to be strong.

What was Jaxx doing here?

The question clawed its way back into my brain, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t swallow it down.

Elena doesn’t even know him, I thought frantically, my heart hammering against my sore ribs like a trapped bird. She doesn’t know he’s my half-brother. She wouldn’t even know his name! She would never have invited him!

The dark tint of the windshield threw my reflection back at me... a pale, cut-up, broken version of the man who had stepped out of the house this evening. I barely recognized the swollen stranger staring back, and for a moment I wondered if this ruined face was simply the truth of me, finally surfacing.

Why would Jaxx come? The man had nothing to gain from our corporate milestone. He didn’t belong to our elite social circles. He was chaos in human form... a ruthless specter who operated in blood and shadows while we dealt in stocks and real estate.

Could Elena have ever, even unknowingly, opened the door for him?