Chapter 121 - 0121: What Are You Doing To Me, Elena?

Chapter 121: Chapter 0121: What Are You Doing To Me, Elena?

Jaxx’s Point Of View

The whiskey glass sat heavy in my hand. Heavier than it should have been. Or maybe it wasn’t the glass at all - maybe it was me. My chest. My damn heart, hammering too fast, like it was trying to tear its way out of my ribs with brute force alone.

The high-rise penthouse suite lay dark, plunged in shadows, saved only by the toxic, violent wash of city lights bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling glass. Neon purple and bloody crimson smeared against the polished hardwood floor, pulsing like a slow, dying heart in the silence.

I’d told myself I wanted quiet tonight. No noise. No company. No useless, eager women trying to warm my bed. Just the bottle. Just the raw, tearing burn in my gut that no amount of liquor seemed able to touch.

But the quiet was louder than a fucking riot.

I tossed the glass back, tilting my head until my scalp pressed into the leather armchair, letting the amber liquid scorch my raw throat. I wanted it to burn out the memories. I wanted it to wipe my slate clean. And still, it wasn’t enough to drown her out.

Her.

Elena.

"Fuck," I cursed, dragging a rough, calloused palm down my face, pressing hard into my eye sockets until blinding stars burst behind my eyelids. Three fucking torturous weeks had passed since that night, since I’d seen her... really seen her. Standing in the rain, battered, holding onto her broken dignity like a rusty weapon, refusing to let it slip from her grip even as everything else in her life crumbled. And yet she clung to me like smoke trapped in my lungs. Like a fever under my skin that refused to break.

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" I muttered, my voice sharp, ragged, bouncing off the dark glass of the empty room.

It was supposed to be nothing. She was supposed to be nothing. A passing distraction at most, a pathetic little flicker that would burn itself out the second I turned around and walked away. But she wasn’t. She never was, not from the very first moment I’d laid eyes on her.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her.

I saw the way her lips trembled when she spoke my name, like it was a secret she was terrified to swallow. I saw the stubborn, unyielding set of her jaw, even when raw fear was eating her alive from the inside out. I saw the dark, purplish-black bruises she tried so frantically to hide under cheap, high-collared shirts... bruises that made my hands twitch with a sudden, murderous urge to rip someone’s spine out.

I saw, too, the flicker of something softer beneath all that armor, something that made me want to tear the whole world apart just to keep it safe.

And then there was Graham.

Graham.

My jaw clenched so hard my molars groaned under the strain. Graham’s diamond ring sat on her fragile finger. Graham’s legal last name was tied to her flesh. Graham... that soft, entitled, worthless bastard who had everything he didn’t even deserve, who probably didn’t understand the treasure he held in his careless hands. And yet somehow fate... cruel, twisted, sadistic fate, had thrown Elena right into his path instead of mine.

Clang!

The heavy crystal glass slammed against the marble table before I even realized I’d let it drop. Amber liquid spilled instantly, dripping down the dark stone in slow, thick trails, pooling onto the floorboards. I stared down at it, my knuckles burning white, my breath coming in ragged, shallow rasps.

Was it because I hadn’t touched her yet?

The thought slid into my brain uninvited, ruthless and vile. My lips curled into a bitter, dangerous sneer. No. No, that couldn’t be it. It couldn’t just be about sex. I’d touched a thousand women before. I’d had more than I could bother to count.

Their names, their faces, their needy moans, their sweet perfumes... they all blurred together into a grey, meaningless smudge until none of them mattered. None of them ever stayed, and I’d never once cared enough to notice their leaving.

But her. Elena.

She wasn’t in my bed. She wasn’t in my arms. She’d never given me a damn thing except sharp looks and terrified breaths. And still, she completely occupied my mind, filling every corner of it until there was no room left for anything else.

"Fuck!" I growled, shoving violently away from the leather chair, the heavy legs scraping loudly across the floor. I began pacing across the sprawling suite like a rabid, caged predator, my bare feet silent against the cold wood while my thoughts screamed loud enough to fill the silence twice over.

My dark reflection caught in the glass wall, floating against the glittering city lights below, but I barely recognized the man staring back at me. Eyes pitch-black, hollow, haunted. Jaw locked so tight it looked carved from stone. Broad shoulders tense, coiled like a spring ready to explode into a war zone.

"Is it because she’s Graham’s wife?" I asked the empty room, my voice rough, gravelly, scraping against the edges of my throat.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just another twisted, sick part of my fucked-up head... the part that only wanted what was strictly forbidden, the part that thrived on crossing lines, tearing down boundaries, and dancing on dangerous edges. Maybe it wasn’t even about her as a person. Maybe I was just hooked on the thrill of stealing from Graham, on proving that even his own wife wasn’t safe from my reach.

But even as the thought left my mind, I knew it was a fucking lie.

It wasn’t about Graham. It wasn’t about the ring. It wasn’t about the cheap high of doing something forbidden. It was because she was Elena. And Elena wasn’t like anyone else in this miserable, corrupt world I’d built my life inside of.

I could still hear her laugh... that tiny, reluctant, almost broken laugh she’d let slip when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. A soft, fractured sound that had cracked open something dark and dormant inside my chest, something I didn’t even know existed until she’d pried it loose without even trying.

I could still see the way her sharp, intelligent eyes lingered on every room she walked into, always cautious, always calculating an exit strategy, like she’d been trained by monsters. Like she never let herself rest for a single second, not even when she thought no one was watching.

Because she couldn’t.

She was survival wrapped in sheer fragility. She was absolute defiance wrapped in fading bruises. And God help me, she was dragging me straight down into her hell, and I was going willingly, eyes wide open.

I reached out, grabbing the neck of the whiskey bottle from the counter. I didn’t bother looking for another glass. I ripped the cork out with my teeth, spit it onto the floor, and tilted the bottle straight back. The liquor splashed against my tongue, burning a hot trail down my esophagus, but nothing burned as hot as the thought of her lying in another man’s bed tonight, close enough to touch, impossibly far from reach.

"What are you doing to me, Elena?" I whispered, tilting my head back against the cold glass of the window, staring up at the dark ceiling as if it had answers for a damned man like me.

She wasn’t mine. She belonged to Graham, legally and publicly, bound to him by paper and vows I had no right to challenge. And still, every beat of my heart felt like an insult. My blood surged like liquid fire every time I pictured her face.

My hands physically ached to pull her close, to crush her against my chest, to peel away the dark fabric she hid behind and taste the raw, unvarnished truth under her skin.

I wanted to rip away the lies she lived in. I wanted to burn her world down and build her a new one out of the ashes, brick by brick, with my own two hands if that was what it took.

Was it obsession? Was it pure fucking madness? Or was it something far worse, something I couldn’t control no matter how hard I tried?

I slammed both fists flat against the cold marble counter, my head hanging low between my arms, my breath coming out in heavy, violent heaves.

"Jaxx..." My own voice sounded completely foreign to me - low, guttural, menacing. It sounded like a monster waking up in the dark. Someone I didn’t know. Someone I didn’t fucking trust anymore.

I shook my head, letting out a sharp, hollow bark of laughter that sounded almost insane, echoing off the glass like an accusation.

"No. It can’t be. Not me. Not over a girl."

But the truth gnawed at my gut, relentless, chewing through my pride until there was nothing left to hide behind. And I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was losing my fucking mind over her.

"Jaxx..." I growled again, my voice barely more than an animalistic warning to the cracked, shadowed reflection staring back at me from the window. My chest rose and fell as if I’d just clawed my way out of a fistfight. My knuckles were pale, pressed so hard against the stone they felt numb.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

I laughed again... low, bitter, devoid of humor. Wrong question. The real question was: what wasn’t wrong with me?