Chapter 108 - 0108: I Hate You For Reducing Me To This

Chapter 108: Chapter 0108: I Hate You For Reducing Me To This

Elena’s Point Of View

I slammed the guest room door so violently the heavy mahogany frame groaned, the metallic click of the lock ringing through the air like a gunshot. My chest heaved up and down in desperate, ragged gasps, my lungs burning as if I had been running for my life through a forest of glass.

My hands trembled uncontrollably, cold sweat slicking my skin, my throat utterly raw from the venomous words I had thrown at Lilian downstairs.

Even now, the echo of my own voice... shrill, unrecognizable, rang in my ears, mocking me for how quickly I had unraveled in front of her.

Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect.

As if tonight hadn’t already ripped my skin off in front of the city’s entire corporate elite at that godforsaken gala, now I was trapped, cornered like a wounded animal in my own home by her. That plastic, failed-surgery mannequin of a woman, preening and smug, the mistress who had been planted right in the center of our living room like some obscene, twisted centerpiece.

I could still see her lips curling into that syrupy, victorious smile, as though she had won a prize she had been coveting for years.

I pressed my back flat against the cold wood of the door, my legs buckling beneath the heavy weight of my emerald silk gown until I slid down, my spine scraping the door until my rear hit the floor. The chill of the hardwood seeped through the fabric, grounding me in a moment I desperately wanted to escape.

My hands shook as I pulled my phone out of my clutch. My thumbs flew across the illuminated glass, fast, desperate, pressing down hard... Block.

Jaxx’s number vanished from my screen in a single, cold flash. Just like that. Clean. Final.

Or at least, it was supposed to be final.

My vision blurred into a dizzying smear of gold hall lights and dark shadows, my pulse thumping an erratic, deafening beat against my eardrums. Blocking his number was supposed to feel like reclaiming my power. It was supposed to feel like clawing back even the smallest, most pathetic shred of my stolen control.

But my body... God help me, my traitorous body was completely betraying me. My fingertips still tingled with the ghost of his touch, and some shameful, hidden part of me mourned the loss the instant I hit that button.

I hated myself. I hated the way my skin still burned with the electric, terrifying memory of his calloused fingers tracing my cheek in the car. I hated the way my stomach churned with that filthy, dark thrill when his low, dangerous voice pushed me straight over the edge.

He made me feel alive. He made me feel wanted, dangerous, real. And God forgive me, Graham had never, ever made me feel like that... not even in the earliest, most golden days when I still believed every word out of his mouth was gospel.

"Disgusting," I choked out, spitting the word at the empty room as if it might scrape the shameful longing off my tongue. My voice sounded foreign... hoarse, broken, stripped down to raw nerve. "I am so damn disgusting."

I squeezed my eyes shut, slamming my head back against the door frame, forcing air into my crushed chest. He’s not worth it. Jaxx is a predator. He’s not worth your marriage. He’s not worth the last bleeding shreds of dignity you’re trying to stitch together with torn fingers. I repeated it like a mantra, desperate for it to sink past skin and bone and actually take root somewhere inside me.

Then, my mouth twisted. A sound tore out of me... a sharp, broken, bitter laugh that cracked hollow against the high ceilings.

"Marriage?" I whispered, the word dissolving into a venomous sneer. "What marriage? What the hell am I even trying to protect here?"

The memories crashed over me like tidal waves, vicious, unrelenting, and dripping with iron.

I saw Graham’s arrogant smirk the afternoon he brought Lilian through the front gates, looking me straight in the eye as he called her his cousin. The cousin who was suddenly floating around my home in sheer robes. The cousin who sat in my living room with her bare feet up on my antique tables, her belly visibly swollen with the child I couldn’t give him.

I remembered how my hands had shaken around my teacup that day, how I had smiled through gritted teeth because some foolish, desperate part of me still needed to believe him.

I felt the scorching humiliation of the family dinner three weeks ago... the way my mother-in-law’s palm had cracked hard across my face when I refused to pass Lilian the serving dish, the sting blinding me while Graham just sat at the head of the table. Watching. Silent. Cutting his steak like I wasn’t bleeding right beside him.

I remembered the clatter of silverware, the way no one at that table had so much as flinched, as though my humiliation were simply another course being served.

The laughter kept spilling out of my mouth, shaky, unhinged, spiraling wildly until it broke into an ugly, guttural sob. My body folded completely in half over my knees, my fingernails clutching violently into the plush carpet, tearing at the fibers as my emerald dress bunched up around my thighs.

Hot, scalded tears burst from my eyes, streaming down my face in blinding rivers, washing away every last trace of the pristine corporate queen I had pretended to be all night.

Somewhere beneath the grief, a small, exhausted voice whispered that I had been playing a role for so long I barely remembered what my real face looked like.

I clutched at my lower stomach, my arms wrapping around my bare waist as though I could physically hold my shattered organs inside my body. But I was unraveling. Thread by thread, piece by piece, dissolving into the floorboards.

Then the truth landed with the sickening weight of a lead coffin. I said it out loud, repeating it like a dark, desperate confession to the empty room:

"My marriage was ruined the day he shoved his dick into another woman. The day he brought his mistress under my roof and lied that she was his cousin. The day he took my barren womb and used it as a weapon against me, crowning her swollen belly under our family chandelier. The day he sat back and watched his mother strike me like a dog and offered no defense."

The tears weren’t a surprise anymore; they were a currency I kept spending every single night until I was entirely bankrupt.

My mind dragged me backward against my will, pulling me six years into the past, throwing me into the golden glow of our wedding day. The vows came back like a hymn twisted by static. I could hear my own voice... so much younger, so much softer, filled with the kind of foolish, reckless brave that doesn’t yet know what it feels like to be completely destroyed.

I could almost smell the gardenias from my bouquet, almost feel the late-summer sun warming my shoulders through the lace of my gown.

"I, Elena, take you, Graham, to be my wedded husband," I had said, my voice trembling with pure, unadulterated hope as I held his hands at the altar. "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."

I had meant every single syllable. I had spoken them with the total, naive purity of someone who believed love was an impenetrable armor... someone who thought fidelity was a sacred shield we would both wear against the world.

I had looked up into his handsome face, the soft candlelight flickering across his sharp jawline, and I believed with every drop of my soul that I was staring at a man who would protect me, cherish me, and fight for me until his last breath.

His eyes had softened then, melting into a look so tender it had nearly undone me in front of two hundred guests. He had reached up with a gentle hand, brushing a stray lock of dark hair from my forehead, his thumb tracing my jawline with a smile that made the promise feel real.

"I, Graham, take you, Elena," he had replied, his deep voice calm, steady, unwavering - rehearsed like absolute truth. "To be my lawful wife. To stand by your side in plenty and in want, in hardship and in ease, in laughter and in tears. I promise to be your rock when the ground shifts beneath you, your shelter when the storm comes. I don’t care if we never have a child, Elena. As long as I have you, I have everything I will ever need."

A fresh wave of agonized weeping tore through my throat at the memory of those words. I remembered the overwhelming warmth that had bloomed in my chest that day. I remembered how the guests had softly sighed, how my mother had wept into her handkerchief. I had held onto that single sentence like a holy relic carved in marble: As long as I have you, I have everything.

Later, in the quiet, sun-drenched mornings of our honeymoon in Amalfi, he would pull me flush against his bare chest, press his lips between my ribs, and whisper as I drifted off to sleep, "I don’t care about an heir, El. As long as I have you, that’s more than enough."

I remembered the salt air drifting through the shutters, the lazy hum of boats on the water below, how safe I had felt wrapped in the certainty of his devotion.

I had believed him. God help me, I believed him like his words were gospel... because who wouldn’t drown in that kind of mercy? I had wanted to believe him so desperately that I folded all my deepest insecurities, all my terrifying fears of failure, into those syllables and called it peace.

"Don’t worry, baby," he used to murmur, his breath warm against my ear in the dark. "As long as I have you."

God, what a terrifying liar love makes you willing to be.

For six long years, I repeated those words to myself like a quiet prayer in the dark. On nights when the silence between us in our grand mansion grew so thick it felt like glass. On mornings when the agonizing ache of monthly failure pressed heavy on my womb.

On afternoons when I sat in cold doctor’s offices, staring at blank medical tests with shaking hands and burning eyes. I reminded myself over and over: He doesn’t care. He said he doesn’t care. He has me. I am enough.

But now... now those exact words taunted me. They twisted into jagged knives that shredded my soul to ribbons.

Because what kind of monster declares "you are everything" only to replace you with a cheap, gold-digging whore in the very same house where those vows were spoken? What kind of cowardly bastard smiles at his pregnant mistress while the wife he swore to protect sits in the corner of her own home, drowning in quiet, suffocating humiliation?

My mind flashed violently to our second anniversary. Graham had dragged me onto the balcony overlooking the estate, pulling me close, wrapping his heavy arms around my waist, laughing like we were the only two people in the universe who understood the joke.

He had kissed me slowly, tasting of dark wine, and whispered, "You and me, El. That’s the whole damn thing." I remembered the string lights strung across the garden below, the distant sound of laughter from our guests, how utterly certain I had felt that nothing could ever touch us.

And every single time I believed him, I surrendered another piece of myself. I surrendered my pride, my voice, my boundary after boundary, until there was nothing left of Elena except the hollow shell sitting on this floor.

My nails dug frantically into the carpet, my knuckles turning stark white, my lungs struggling for air as if I were breathing through thick wet wool. I wanted so badly to crawl backward through time. I wanted to run back into the safety of the young girl who had once trusted those vows... the girl who had believed in the gentle, poisonous sentences he offered.

But that girl was dead. She was a nameless ghost, an old, shattered photograph in a frame that no longer existed.

The memory of those wedding vows wrapped around my ribs like an iron chain, tightening, crushing my chest until I couldn’t draw a full breath. They weren’t holy. They were venomous. They were a blade forged specifically to gut me from the inside out.

And still, the tears flooded out, scalding my skin, because I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t reconcile the gentle, loving man who stood before me at the altar with the cold, cruel monster standing downstairs. I couldn’t reconcile his whispered "as long as I have you" with the agonizing image of him standing in our hallway, pressing his hand against Lilian’s bare, swollen belly, smiling as if she were the ultimate trophy he had been waiting for all along.

"I hate you!" I screamed into the empty, dark room, my voice shattering into ragged, raw pieces as I beat my fist against the hardwood floor. "I hate you, Graham! I hate you for dragging me through this absolute filth! I hate you for parading your whore under my roof! For watching me burn alive while you poured more oil on the fire!"

I pulled my knees tight against my chest, burying my wet, ruined face into my arms, my whole body convulsing as the darkness swallowed me whole.

"I hate you for reducing me to this..." I sobbed, a sharp, broken scream tearing out of my chest, echoing off the bare walls. "For reducing me to nothing more than a pathetic laughingstock and a punchline in my own fucking home!"