Chapter 138 - 0138: You Were Never A Plan

Chapter 138: Chapter 0138: You Were Never A Plan

Elena’s Point Of View

My grip on the delicate stem of my glass tightened so hard I genuinely feared the crystal would shatter in my hand. The cold metal of my wedding band dug painfully into my ring finger, crushing the skin beneath it.

For a horrible, suffocating moment, my lungs locked up entirely. I couldn’t breathe... not because her words were surprising, but because of the violent, agonized ache that immediately followed them, spreading through my chest like poison finding its way to my heart.

The brutal, unrelenting reminder of my empty womb. The cold, sterile memory of the doctor’s office, the fluorescent lights, the pitying look on the specialist’s face as she delivered news that had shattered something fundamental in me.

The absolute truth that Lilian was carrying the life I had wept a thousand tears praying for, the life that had slipped through my fingers year after year despite every prayer, every treatment, every desperate hope I’d clung to in the dark.

I remembered the nursery I had never dared to paint, the crib I had never let myself buy, the names I had whispered to no one but the ceiling above my bed at three in the morning.

All of it rose up now, a graveyard of small, private griefs, and Lilian was standing in the middle of it wearing my husband’s child like a trophy.

But I refused to let her see a single crack in my foundation. I wouldn’t give this creature the satisfaction of watching me bleed, not after everything she had already taken.

Instead, I forced a slow, deliberate, razor-sharp smile to curve my red lips, drawing on reserves of composure I didn’t know I still possessed. "Congratulations," I said softly, my voice dropping into a low, deadly register.

"Though, as a word of advice, children tend to inherit their parents’ worst qualities. Let’s pray for the boy’s sake that he doesn’t inherit your mind, or he won’t be worth keeping around for very long."

Lilian’s smug smirk wavered for a fraction of a second, her dark eyes flashing with sudden rage before she recovered, taking another step into my personal space, close enough that I could smell her cloying perfume... something sweet and overripe, like fruit left too long in the sun. "You sound so pathetic and bitter, Elena. How long are you going to keep standing here in your pretty dress, pretending you don’t care that he doesn’t want you?"

I met her burning gaze without flinching, my voice as steady as a heavy iron blade despite the storm raging beneath my ribs. "And since when, Lilian," I whispered, leaning in just enough so only she could hear me, "did I ever give you the impression that I was still interested in Graham’s pathetic, low-life activities?"

Silence stretched between us like a pulled wire, taut and trembling, ready to snap.

Lilian’s smirk faltered completely this time. Her eyes narrowed into angry slits, and for a moment I thought I saw something like fear flicker across her face before vanity swallowed it whole.

Just then, two prominent female associates from Graham’s firm walked past us, holding cocktails and laughing about something unrelated. Lilian’s expression shifted instantly back to bright, innocent charm, the transformation so swift it was almost admirable in its practiced cruelty.

She reached out, sliding her arm casually around the shoulder of one of the women as if she were the guest of honor.

"Oh, hi ladies!" Lilian announced loudly, her voice carrying easily over the violin music, drawing the immediate attention of half a dozen surrounding guests. "Allow me to introduce myself properly. I’m Lilian. The woman carrying the next Sinclair heir!"

The associates froze in horror, their eyes darting wildly between Lilian’s visible belly and my stone-cold face, clearly unsure whether to congratulate her or flee the scene entirely.

"It happened, you see," Lilian continued, her voice ringing out with horrific, deliberate clarity, "because poor Mrs. Sinclair here..." She turned her gaze back to me, her eyes glimmering with pure, unadulterated malice. "...simply couldn’t give Graham a family. Her body is completely broken."

Gasps rippled through the small crowd that had gathered, like a current running through water. Polite, uncomfortable coughs filled the heavy silence that followed. Whispers erupted instantly behind raised hands, spreading outward in ripples I could feel against my skin like physical blows.

Somewhere to my left, a woman I vaguely recognized as a senator’s wife pressed a hand to her chest in theatrical sympathy, though her eyes glittered with something closer to hunger for gossip than genuine concern.

My throat burned like I had swallowed acid. The humiliation was a hot, suffocating wave crashing over my head, dragging me under before I could gather the strength to fight back to the surface.

"Oh, but please don’t judge sweet Elena!" Lilian added smoothly, her voice dropping into an insulting tone of faux sympathy that made my blood boil in my veins. "It’s truly not her fault, poor thing! Some women are built to be mothers, and other women are just... biologically defective. They just aren’t built for certain basic female roles. But don’t worry, everyone! I’m more than happy to step in and handle what she was too broken to achieve."

The room seemed to spin around me, the chandeliers blurring into streaks of gold light. I tasted copper in my mouth... I had bitten down on the inside of my cheek so hard that blood was pooling on my tongue, warm and metallic.

My fingernails dug red crescents into the palm of my free hand, the small pain grounding me when everything else threatened to unravel.

Somewhere beneath the roaring in my ears, I registered the absurd detail of the string quartet still playing, oblivious, as though the world hadn’t just tilted on its axis.

Around us, the atmosphere shifted violently, like a tide turning against its expected course. The crowd wasn’t looking at me with pity anymore; they were staring at Lilian with open, searing disdain, their earlier fascination curdling into something closer to disgust.

"Is she serious?" a high-society matriarch whispered loudly behind her diamond-encrusted fan, her lip curling in disgust. "No shame whatsoever. Openly flaunting a filthy affair right in front of Mrs. Sinclair at a public gala?"

"It’s repulsive," another woman muttered, shooting Lilian a venomous glare. "Honestly, Mrs. Sinclair is far too lenient for allowing Graham to keep his mistress around, let alone letting her run her mouth about carrying his bastard. If I were Elena, I would have had security drag her out by her hair."

"A mistress barking at the legal wife like she’s won a prize," an older board member scoffed, shaking his head with visible contempt. "Tacky. Cheap. Absolutely shameless."

Lilian’s face flushed pink as the low murmurs of judgment hit her from every direction, but before she could open her mouth to spin another pathetic lie, I took a step forward, feeling something inside me shift from wounded to weaponized.

I didn’t cower. I didn’t hide. I stood tall, my spine locked, my eyes pinning her like an insect mounted on a board, ready for display and dissection.

"Are you done?" I asked, my voice ringing out across the quieted circle, crystal clear and utterly ice-cold.

Lilian blinked, her fake smile straining at the edges. "Elena, I was just..."

"You were just reminding everyone in this room exactly what you are," I interrupted, stepping directly into her personal space until she was forced to tilt her chin up to look at me. "A cheap, desperate side-show. You talk about my marriage, Lilian, but let’s get one thing straight so you never make the mistake of embarrassing yourself in public again."

The room went dead silent, the kind of silence that has weight and texture. Even the violinists in the background seemed to fade into white noise, their music dissolving into insignificance against the tension crackling in the air.

"You think you’ve won something?" I chuckled softly, a dry, mocking sound that cut through her confidence like a butcher’s knife through tender meat. "You think carrying his child makes you special? Sweetheart, you were never the main plan. You were never even a plan. You are nothing more than a glorified backup option because the main door was locked to him."

Lilian’s jaw dropped slightly, her eyes widening with genuine shock this time. "Graham loves me..."

"Graham uses you," I shot back, my tone dripping with effortless contempt. "He uses you to soothe his fragile ego because I stopped pretending to care about him months ago. You think you’re holding his heart? You’re holding his mess. You’re the place he goes when he wants someone weak enough to applaud his lies."

Her hands tightened over her stomach protectively, her painted knuckles turning white against the red velvet of her dress. "I’m having his heir, Elena! I get his name, his estate, his..."

"You get my hand-me-downs," I sliced right through her screech, refusing to let her finish. "You get the scraps left under my table. You get a man who looks at you and sees an incubator, not a wife. And as for Graham? You can keep him. Take him. Please."

I leaned down, my voice dropping into a dangerous, terrifyingly calm whisper that carried straight to her ears and the eager crowd around us, every word deliberate and precise.

"Take his lies, take his arrogance, take his bankrupt soul and keep him for all I care. I give him to you with my absolute blessing, Lilian. Because a trashy, shameless mistress who wears her affair like a badge of honor and a pathetic, weak man who cheats on his wife deserve each other. You belong together in the dirt."

Lilian gasped, her cheeks burning a violent, blotchy red as the surrounding guests let out hushed, sharp gasps of shock.

Several women openly smirked, nodding in agreement with my every word, their earlier judgment now transformed into something like admiration.

"So go ahead," I added, sweeping my eyes over her cheap crimson dress with total indifference. "Flaunt your affair. Bark all you want. Show everyone here that you have no dignity, no shame, and no self-respect. But don’t you ever dare stand in front of me and pretend you’re anything more than the woman who took my trash out for me."

Lilian stood completely frozen, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, utterly disgraced, humiliated, and stripped bare in front of the city’s most powerful elites, her earlier bravado nowhere to be found.

Don’t crack, I screamed at myself in the silence of my mind, fighting to hold my expression steady even as something inside me threatened to buckle. Do not give this monster the satisfaction of seeing your tears. Don’t you dare break here.

"If you’ll all excuse me," I murmured, my voice tight, clipped, and barely audible over the hum of the crowd. "I need some air."

I didn’t wait for a response. I set my untouched champagne glass down on a high table and turned on my heel, stepping away from the circle of staring eyes, each step feeling like it took more strength than the last.

I could feel dozens of gazes still clinging to my back like static electricity, but I kept my chin high until the crowd finally blurred into unrecognizable shapes behind me.

The very second I turned the corner out of the main hall and slipped past the heavy oak doors, the fake strength drained out of me all at once, like a puppet with its strings suddenly cut.

The smile completely shattered off my face, leaving something raw and broken in its place. My hands began to shake, small tremors racing up my arms until my whole body felt like it belonged to someone else, someone far weaker than the woman who had just stood so tall in that ballroom.

My heels clicked furiously, wildly against the marble floor as I navigated the winding, empty hallways, desperate to get away from the music, the eyes, the suffocating judgment, and the horrific ache in my soul that no amount of composure could fully suppress.

I found a heavy set of doors leading to a secluded, dimly lit service stairwell. I yanked one open, slipped inside, and let the heavy door slam shut behind me, cutting off the sounds of the party like severing a limb.

I leaned back against the cool, concrete wall of the quiet stairwell, pressing one trembling hand over my mouth as I inhaled sharp, ragged, angry gulps of air. My chest was heaving violently, each breath a small battle against the sob building in my throat.

Tears of pure, hot, suffocating humiliation finally burned past my eyelashes, but I rubbed them away furiously with the back of my hand, refusing to break even here, alone, where no one could see.

My pulse sounded like a war drum thumping in my ears, drowning out every other sound.

For one fragile moment, I let myself imagine what it would feel like to simply disappear, to slip out of my own skin and leave Elena Sinclair behind in that stairwell like a discarded coat.

Then... loud, mocking laughter echoed from the top landing above me, shattering the fragile privacy I’d thought I’d found.

"Oh, look at that. You actually ran away."

I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat.

Lilian was standing at the top of the concrete stairs, her eyes wild with humiliation and hatred, leaning casually against the brass handrail with her arms folded over her red velvet dress. Her lips were curled into that same cruel, disgusting smirk, though something more dangerous simmered beneath it now.

"I thought you actually grew a spine back there when you dared to open your mouth in front of everyone," she sneered, tilting her head as she slowly walked down two steps, studying me like I was a pathetic animal caught in a trap. "But look at you now. Hiding in a dark stairwell, crying like a beaten dog."

A violent surge of pure, white-hot anger rushed through my veins, consuming the pain and replacing it with something fiercer. "Get out of my face, Lilian," I spat out, my hand clenching into a tight fist at my side. "Don’t confuse my departure with weakness. I said everything I needed to say to your face. I simply refuse to spend another minute breathing the same air as you."

"Ohhh!" Lilian cooed mockingly, clapping her hands together in a slow, dramatic rhythm that echoed loudly off the concrete walls. "Bravo! Look at you, still clinging so desperately to your little fake dignity! Sweet, pathetic, barren Elena... sitting on a high horse while clinging to a dead marriage where everyone knows you’re nothing more than an ugly, temporary placeholder!"

"Shut up," I whispered through gritted teeth, my whole body trembling with the effort of restraint.

"Tell me, Elena," she purred, taking three more steps down toward me, her dark eyes gleaming with pure malice. "Do you even remember what it feels like to be wanted? Do you still try to warm Graham’s bed at night, hoping he’ll look at you? Or did he stop touching your cold, broken body the exact second his hands felt mine?"

My whole frame went rigid, my jaw locking so hard my facial muscles ached with the strain. A blinding urge to leap up those stairs and claw that insufferable smirk right off her face screamed in my mind, but I stood completely frozen on the step, my nails digging deeper and deeper into my bleeding palms, the pain a distant thing compared to the fury consuming me.

Lilian reached the step directly above me, leaning down until her breath brushed against my ear, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that sliced straight to my soul.

"You know what I was just thinking, Elena?" she whispered, a chilling, terrifying smile spreading across her face. "If I were to give you a little shove right now... right down these concrete stairs... people would just call it a tragic, horrible accident. A drunk, jealous wife missing her footing. You’d break your pretty neck, you’d be gone forever, and by tomorrow morning, I’d be the perfect, grieving Mrs. Sinclair, holding his heir in my arms."

The sheer madness of her words hit me like a bucket of freezing ice water, and for one horrifying second I couldn’t process what I’d just heard. My blood ran cold. "What... what are you talking about?"

Before the words could fully leave my mouth, Lilian’s hands slammed violently against my chest with stunning, vicious force.

"Die, you bitch!" she hissed.

I gasped, my footing instantly vanishing beneath me as the world tilted violently upside down. The dark, sharp edges of the concrete steps rushed up to meet me at terrifying speed.

A blood-curdling scream lodged dead in my throat... I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing my arms for the brutal, bone-crushing impact, for the sickening snap of my spine, for the darkness that was about to swallow me whole and end everything I had ever been.

Instead of hard concrete, I slammed with sudden, staggering force into something impossibly hard, broad, and unyielding, something that felt more like salvation than collision.

Strong, heavy arms wrapped around me like steel bands, catching me with a strength that seemed almost impossible.

My fall was instantly halted mid-air. A familiar, overwhelming scent instantly swept over my senses... dark spice, expensive single-malt whiskey, tobacco smoke, and rich leather, a combination that somehow felt like safety even before I understood who held me.

My eyes shot open in absolute shock.

Jaxx.

He was standing on the landing below, his massive, broad-shouldered frame acting as an unmovable wall between me and disaster. His iron grip was wrapped tightly around my waist, holding me effortlessly inches above the cold marble floor as though I weighed nothing at all.

His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles in his cheek were throbbing, and his dark, dangerous eyes were burning down into mine with a terrifying, fierce intensity that seemed to see straight through every wall I’d built that night.

For one long, breathless heartbeat, the entire world stilled. The stairwell vanished. The gala disappeared. It was just me, trembling violently in his arms, my chest heaving, my breath hitching, my frantically pounding pulse echoing against the broad wall of his chest as though searching for a matching rhythm.

"Gotcha," Jaxx growled softly, his low, gravelly voice rumbling deep against my back, carrying a warmth that contradicted the fury still simmering in his gaze.

Then, a high-pitched, hysterical voice shattered the heavy silence.

"Who... who the hell are you?!" Lilian screeched from the top of the stairs, her face turning pale with sudden, blinding panic.