Chapter 139 - 0139: You Can Do Better Than That

Chapter 139: Chapter 0139: You Can Do Better Than That

Elena’s Point Of View

"Who... who the hell are you?!" Lilian’s voice shredded the quiet stairwell, high and sharp, as if she’d finally remembered how to be loud.

Jaxx’s eyes burned into Lilian with a terrifying, shadow-filled darkness, the kind that made the air itself feel heavier, thick with a violence that hadn’t yet found its outlet. "You tried hurting my woman right in front of me," he said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate off the concrete walls, "and you have the nerve to ask who I am?"

Shock froze Lilian in place. Her hands hovered over her red velvet dress, trembling, as though she couldn’t decide whether to smooth the fabric or shield herself from something she couldn’t name. "Your... your woman?"

Her gaze darted frantically between Jaxx’s massive, imposing frame and my hands still clutched against his tuxedo jacket, as if she were trying to piece together a puzzle that refused to make sense.

Something like disbelief flickered across her face before curdling into disgust. "Elena? You... you’re cheating on Graham? With him? You hypocritical little bitch!"

A dark, bitter laugh spilled from my throat, raw and sharp against the concrete walls. It didn’t feel like my own voice... more like something that had been locked away for years, finally let loose after being starved of air for far too long. "My business and whatever I do in my private life isn’t any of your damn business, Lilian!"

Lilian’s shock instantly transformed into ugly, desperate spite. She threw her head back, laughing hysterically, the sound ringing out sharp and shrill, bouncing off the walls until it seemed to multiply, filling the narrow space with something almost manic. "Oh, that is rich! That is absolutely hysterical! Look at you, Mrs. High-and-Mighty Sinclair! Acting like you’re so pure, so refined, standing in front of the whole town looking down your nose at me... and here you are playing the saint while spreading your legs for another man in a service stairwell! You two-faced, lying bitch!"

Before another venomous word could leave her mouth, something inside me snapped free of its restraints, a wire finally cut after months of being pulled taut. I yanked myself out of Jaxx’s grip, stepped up two concrete stairs, and brought my hand flying across her face with every single ounce of strength left in my body.

CRACK.

The violent slap echoed like a gunshot through the stairwell, the sound so sharp it seemed to hang in the air long after my palm had connected, as though the walls themselves wanted to remember it.

Lilian’s head snapped sharply to the side, her golden curls tumbling over her face as she stumbled back against the brass railing, letting out a sharp gasp of shock and pain.

Her hand flew up to clutch her cheek, where a deep, burning red handprint was already blossoming against her pale skin, stark and undeniable, a mark that would likely outlast the night itself.

"I am nothing like you," I snarled, stepping up until my chest was nearly touching hers, my eyes flashing with a deadly, white-hot fury I barely recognized as my own. It frightened me a little, how natural the rage felt, how long it must have been waiting beneath my careful, polished surface.

"You crawled into my husband’s bed for money, status, and a name that isn’t yours! You chased a married man like a starving dog begging for scraps under a table! I endured years of emotional torture in a cold, dead house while you plotted to steal my life. Do not ever insult me by comparing my survival to your cheap, desperate ambition!"

Lilian panted violently, her eyes wide, watery, and brimming with sudden rage and shock, her earlier bravado crumbling by the second, like a mask sliding off a face that had never quite fit it.

I turned my head slightly toward Jaxx, pressing my palm flat against his broad chest to hold him back as he made a subtle move forward, his jaw tight with barely restrained fury, his whole body coiled like something ready to strike on my behalf whether I asked for it or not. "It’s okay," I whispered, my voice rough but steel-plated. "I can handle this."

I scrambled upright, shoving gently against Jaxx’s chest even though my knees wobbled like water beneath me. A fierce, blinding rage surged through me, hotter and far more intoxicating than fear, drowning out every ache in my body, every bruise Lilian had left on my pride long before tonight.

I yanked myself entirely from his arms, my spine locking rigid, and marched right up those concrete stairs with trembling, relentless legs, refusing to let my body betray the storm inside me.

Halfway up, I turned my chin up to face her. Lilian was still frozen at the top landing, her smugness completely cracked, her chest heaving behind her red dress like a bird trapped against glass, desperate and fluttering and suddenly very small.

"You think you’re untouchable because you’re carrying his child?" My voice shook at first, but it grew louder, sharper, and heavier with each step I took, gaining conviction I didn’t know I still possessed, as if every year of silence had been saving itself for this exact moment. "You humiliated me in public. You tried to murder me in private in a dark stairwell... do you honestly think I won’t return the favor, Lilian?"

Her cruel smirk faltered, turning into a bitter, panicked grimace, her confidence draining visibly from her face like color leaving a wound. "Stay back from me, Elena! Don’t you dare come near me! Graham will destroy you! He’ll throw you out on the street with nothing!"

"Let him try!" I snapped, closing the distance between us until there was nowhere left for her to back up, my own boldness startling me even as I embraced it, savoring the unfamiliar shape of it in my chest.

Before she could raise a hand, I reached out and grabbed a deep fistful of her silky blonde hair, yanking her head back so sharply that a loud yelp tore from her throat. Her eyes popped open in sheer horror.

With my other hand, I locked my fingers around her wrist, spinning her around and shoving her hard toward the open edge of the stairwell.

Her hips slammed against the cold brass railing, her balance giving way until her body teetered, hanging suspended over the steep drop.

Her knuckles turned ghostly white as she grabbed wildly at the handrail, her breath coming in ragged, panicked bursts that echoed her rising terror.

She screamed, a raw, shrill sound of utter terror that seemed to claw its way up from somewhere primal. "Elena! Let go of me! Graham will fucking kill you! I’m pregnant... you lunatic! You’re insane!"

I leaned close, my eyes blazing into hers, my hand pressing against her shoulder just enough to make her body dangle another terrifying inch over the abyss. My own heart pounded so loudly I could hear it over her screams, but I refused to let it show, refused to give her even a sliver of the power she’d once held over me.

"Then maybe you should’ve thought about that before trying to murder me!" I hissed, every syllable dripping with lethal venom, years of buried anger finally finding release like floodwater breaking through a dam. "You stood there and laughed about my empty womb! You called me defective! And then you put your filthy hands on my chest to push me down these stairs! Look at you now, Lilian! Look at where your arrogance brought you!"

Her dark eyes went wide, the pupils dilated with absolute, raw horror. The smirk wasn’t just gone... it was shattered into a thousand pieces, replaced by something far more honest: fear. Tears spilled over her mascara as she whimpered, "I... I’m sorry! Elena, please! I was crazy, I didn’t mean it! I swear I’ll never touch you again! I’ll stay away from Graham, I’ll leave the city, just please... don’t drop me!"

Her pathetic begging was pure music to my ears, ringing off the cold concrete walls, feeding something dark and satisfied deep within my chest, a feeling I wasn’t proud of but couldn’t quite bring myself to regret either.

"Do you have any idea how easy this would be?" I whispered, leaning in so close my breath brushed her pale, damp cheek. "I could drop you right now. Just a tiny slip of my fingers, and you’d lose the bastard, you’d lose your standing in the Sinclair household, and you’d lose every single thing you ruined my life to get."

Lilian sobbed, her body shuddering against the rail as she clutched at my wrist with her free hand, begging with her eyes in a way that might have moved me once, before everything she’d done to me, before every quiet humiliation she’d stacked like stones against my chest. "Please... Elena, please... the baby..."

"You’re lucky I actually have a conscience," I rasped, my voice dropping into an icy, deadly whisper. "Unlike you, I’m not a monster. I won’t lower myself to your filthy level just to get rid of trash."

I tilted my head, letting a cold, terrifying smile curve my lips, and made a sharp, deliberate motion as though I were about to release her hair.

Lilian shrieked at the top of her lungs, her heels slipping on the step as she violently recoiled. But instead of letting her fall into the drop, I yanked her back onto the solid landing, released her hair, and stepped away.

My chest was heaving with wild adrenaline, every single nerve ending in my body on fire, my hands trembling now that the worst had passed, the aftershock hitting harder than the fury itself had.

She collapsed straight onto the hard concrete, panting violently, clutching her rounded stomach with both arms, her eyes wide and bloodshot, trembling as if the ground beneath her had turned to dust.

Her smugness, her nasty little taunts, her poisonous confidence... all gone. Shredded into nothing, leaving behind only a frightened woman on her knees, stripped of every ounce of the venom she’d carried into this stairwell.

I stared down at her trembling frame, feeling a sharp, intoxicating satisfaction twist in my chest, though somewhere beneath it, a small part of me recoiled at how good it felt, unsettled by how easily the darkness had risen to the surface.

Power wasn’t always about brute force; sometimes it was about letting a cruel person realize just how fragile their wicked little world really was.

"Run," I said, my voice low, flat, and absolute. "Run before I change my mind and decide to finish what you started."

Lilian didn’t hesitate. She scrambled frantically on her hands and knees, scrambling backward like a frightened crab before finding her feet.

She nearly tripped over the hem of her own red gown, practically throwing herself through the exit door as she fled into the night, not once looking back, not even a fractured glance over her shoulder.

I stood alone on the top landing for a second, my heart hammering against my ribs, the silence suddenly deafening after so much noise. I closed my eyes, taking one long, ragged breath, letting the rhythm of triumph settle into my blood like a slow-burning fire, warm and unfamiliar and strangely comforting.

And then... that familiar, heavy presence shifted behind me.

Jaxx.

He didn’t make a sound, yet I felt him before I even opened my eyes, some instinct in me attuned entirely to his nearness, as though my body had learned his frequency without my permission.

He walked up the stairs with that slow, dangerous confidence, every step heavy, deliberate, and entirely commanding. My stomach tightened, a wicked mixture of pure relief and something far hotter prickling along my bare shoulders.

He stopped just two steps below me, his dark eyes scanning the empty doorway where Lilian had vanished, before settling completely on me, studying my face as though searching for cracks he intended to mend himself.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice a low, gravelly growl that made the tiny hairs on my arms stand straight up.

I exhaled sharply, still trembling... less from fear now and more from the leftover adrenaline humming under my skin, refusing to fade quietly.

I turned around to face him, crossing my arms over my chest, my voice carrying a quiet incredulity. "How... how do you manage to be everywhere I am?"

He smirked, that infuriating, cocky tilt of his lips that somehow always made my heart do a dangerous flip in my chest despite everything that had just happened. "Destiny, baby," he murmured, slow and teasing. "Or maybe I just don’t like letting precious things get broken."

I rolled my eyes, the heavy tension breaking just enough for a small, exasperated laugh to escape my throat, surprising even myself. "Even though you’re an absolute asshole," I muttered, shaking my head as I looked down at him, "you saved my life down there. Thank you."

His smirk widened, turning into something far more dangerous, something that made my pulse stutter before I could stop it. His presence shifted, and before I could even take a step back, he closed the remaining space between us in a single stride.

His large, warm hands reached out and clamped around my waist, his fingers encircling my sides and pressing me gently but firmly back against the wall of the stairwell, the cool concrete a sharp contrast to the heat radiating from him.

My breath hitched instantly. A wave of heat licked straight up my neck, chasing away the last remnants of adrenaline and replacing it with something entirely different, something far more dangerous than anything Lilian could have thrown at me.

"Just ’thank you’, princess?" Jaxx murmured, his voice dipping into a husky, heavy register that vibrated right through my ribs. His dark gaze drifted down, lingering heavily on my wine-red lips before slowly rising back to lock onto my eyes. "You can do better than that."

I gasped softly, my eyes widening in shock as my heart began to race like a runaway drum. My hands shot up against his chest in instinctual protest, pushing against the firm, immovable wall of his chest, though it was utterly useless against his strength, and some traitorous part of me didn’t truly want it to work, didn’t want to be anywhere else but exactly here.

"Are you insane?" I whispered breathlessly, my eyes darting toward the stairwell door. "Let me go! What if people see us together? What if Graham walks in here right now? You’ve already done enough damage by calling me your woman in front of Lilian!"

His eyes darkened into pitch black, a low, dangerous chuckle escaping the depths of his throat, rumbling against my palms still pressed to his chest. "And who the hell cares if they see?" he growled softly, leaning in until the tip of his nose brushed against my temple. "Let your pathetic excuse of a husband walk through that door. Let the whole damn gala watch. I don’t give a shit about them, Elena. All I see is you."

I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him he was out of his mind, that he couldn’t just corner me in a dark stairwell and make my pulse short-circuit with a single touch. But no real words came out.

My tongue felt thick, my voice completely swallowed by the sheer intensity of his grip, by the scorching heat radiating through his clothes, and by the predatory promise in his eyes that made rational thought nearly impossible.

Jaxx leaned even closer, his warm, whiskey-laced breath fanning against the sensitive skin just beneath my ear. His fingers tightened just a fraction around my waist, pulling me flush against his hard frame until there wasn’t a breath of air left between us, until I could feel the steady, powerful thud of his heartbeat matching the frantic rhythm of my own.

"Speechless already, huh?" he said, his smirk widening against my neck, his eyes glinting with pure amusement and raw, unadulterated desire. "That’s a first for you, Bambina."