Chapter 140 - 0140: You Know Where To Find Me

Chapter 140: Chapter 0140: You Know Where To Find Me

Elena’s Point Of View

I closed my eyes for just a second, inhaling, trying to steady myself against the overwhelming, suffocating heat of Jaxx’s body pressed so tightly against mine. His fingers dug deeper into my waist, a possessive, electric grip that sent shivers straight down my spine.

Every nerve in my body seemed acutely aware of him, of the danger and promise coiled together in his touch. I hated how easily he did this to me, how a single touch could unravel weeks of carefully rebuilt composure.

"Shut up," I whispered, my voice trembling, though I tried desperately to lace it with poison. "Just stop talking nonsense."

Jaxx’s dark eyes flashed with dangerous amusement. He leaned in closer, his lips brushing the sensitive curve where my neck met my shoulder, his warm, whiskey-laced breath fanning over my flushed skin. "Nonsense, princess? You think this is nonsense?"

He chuckled, a deep, raspy sound that resonated straight into my chest. "Your heart is hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. You’re practically shivering in my hands, and it’s sure as hell not from fear."

"I said stop," I rasped, pressing my hands against his iron chest, though my strength felt completely drained. "You’re an arrogant, infuriating bastard."

"And yet, I’m the only one standing between you and the snakes," he murmured, his thumb stroking a slow, hypnotic circle over my hip. "You like the danger, Elena. You like that when I touch you, you don’t feel like a hollow ghost in this cursed mansion anymore."

For a moment I couldn’t answer. The truth of his words pressed against something raw inside me, something I refused to name. My throat tightened, and for one terrifying second I feared he could see straight through the armor I had spent years constructing.

"It’s... nothing," I said finally, my voice trembling before I forced it sharp and deliberate. "I’m just... wondering. How many years would it take for someone to be as stupid as you?"

His eyebrows shot up, sharp and incredulous, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his lips. "Really?"

I opened my eyes, meeting his gaze without flinching. "Really," I said, tilting my head, the faintest edge of challenge in my tone. "And if you don’t mind... I have to go. I need to see someone."

Jaxx let out a low, gravelly hum, his gaze dropping to my lips one last time before his hand slid down my waist to lightly trace the curve of my fingers. "Go on then, Bambina. Go play with your little husband," he purred, his voice dropping into a thrilling, dark whisper.

"Run along and finish your fight. But remember this... when you get tired of playing nice with hypocrites who break you, come find me. I’ll help you burn their entire empire to the ground."

For the first time since he had appeared, he stepped back, just enough to let me move. His hands fell from my waist, but the warmth of them lingered on my skin like a phantom fire. He let a slow smirk curl his lips.

"You know where to find me when you need me," he said, voice low, almost a purr, and without another word, he turned and walked away, his presence leaving a vacuum that made the stairwell feel suddenly empty, colder, quieter, yet impossibly heavy with what had just happened.

I watched him go, breathless, pulse still hammering, legs weak and trembling. My chest rose and fell in quick, uneven gulps.

Part of me wanted to chase him, to call after him, to throw myself into the chaos he brought with him, but another part... the part that was still Elena Sinclair, wife, survivor, woman in control, reminded me that there were other battles to fight.

I pressed my palm flat against the cool stone wall for just a moment, willing my heartbeat to slow, willing the heat of him to fade from my skin before I faced whatever waited downstairs.

I thought, not for the first time, how strange it was that the most dangerous man in this house was also the only one who ever made me feel seen.

I straightened my spine, shaking off the lingering heat of him like dust on my shoulders, and walked back down the stairs. Each step was deliberate, controlled, though my legs still felt unsteady, and by the time I reached the hall, my hands were trembling slightly, pulse still racing. I told myself it was adrenaline. I told myself a lot of things these days.

The grand doors of the hall swung open before I could even think, and Graham’s voice cut through the air, sharp, panicked, and furious all at once. "What did you do to Lilian, Elena?!"

I froze, heart stuttering in my chest. Beside Graham stood Lilian, clinging to his arm like a fragile, dying vine. Her red velvet dress was rumpled, her golden curls fell in artful disarray around her tear-stained face, and her small, delicate frame trembled violently.

She looked so pale, so impossibly broken, like a bruised lily tossed into a storm. Something in me recoiled at the sight, not from guilt, but from the sheer theater of it, the practiced perfection of her suffering. I had seen enough performances in this house to recognize a masterful one when it stood in front of me.

"Graham... please, don’t be angry with her," Lilian whimpered, her voice carrying a soft, heartbreaking quiver that instantly drew murmurs of pity from the surrounding crowd. She clutched her rounded belly with trembling hands, tears spilling over her long eyelashes. "Well... Graham, I’m sure she didn’t mean to. I... I know she’s hurting because of the baby... because I can give you what she couldn’t..."

She let out a soft, shuddering gasp, hiding her face against Graham’s tuxedo chest as if she couldn’t bear to look at me. "I went to the stairwell just to apologize to her, Graham! I wanted to beg for her forgiveness, to ask if we could somehow live in peace for the sake of your family! But... but she lost her mind! She screamed at me... she grabbed my hair and dragged me right to the edge of the stairs! I begged her, Graham! I fell to my knees and cried for our child’s life, but she just smiled like a demon and threatened to drop me!"

Graham’s face twisted into a mask of pure, murderous rage. My pulse thundered in my ears, but I refused to let it show. "She was asking for it," I said finally, voice low, steady but laced with icy clarity. "She humiliated me. She tried to kill me. I... I stopped her."

Graham’s eyes narrowed, scanning me, reading me. Panic, fury, disbelief, confusion, all mingled across his sharp features. "Stopped her? Elena... what exactly did you do?!"

"I made sure she understood consequences." I stepped closer, heels clicking against the floor, pulse still quick but steadying, voice calm, razor-sharp. "That some actions... have a price. And she won’t forget it anytime soon."

"Look at her!" Graham roared, his arm tightening protectively around Lilian’s waist while she sobbed softly into his shoulder, playing the helpless victim to absolute perfection. "She is shaking! She is carrying my heir, Elena! You dragged a pregnant woman by her hair over a stairwell?! Are you completely insane?!"

"I defended myself," I said, stepping fully into his line of sight, shoulders straight, spine rigid with authority. "I don’t play the victim anymore. Not for her, not for anyone. She chose to cross me, Graham. I chose to teach her a lesson she won’t forget."

His hands clenched at his sides, jaw tight, nostrils flaring. The room seemed suddenly smaller, charged, every heartbeat between us loud, every breath thick with tension. He wanted to yell, to rage, to demand, but I didn’t flinch.

Right now, nothing he could say or do could shake me. I had spent too many nights shaking already, too many years folding myself smaller to fit into the shape he wanted. Not anymore.

Something had broken loose in me tonight, something I suspected had been cracking for a very long time.

Finally, he exhaled sharply, voice dropping low but trembling. "Elena... you can’t just..."

"I can," I cut him off, calm, deliberate, eyes locked on his. "And I did."

The hall went pin-drop silent. The crowd that had gathered... staff, distant relatives, and high-society sycophants who had no business being here but smelled gossip, all stared at me as though I had set the place on fire. Graham’s face turned a shade darker, his lips pressed into a hard line.

"What are you saying?" he snapped, voice raised. "Elena, are you out of your mind?!"

I took a slow breath, squaring my shoulders. My palms still tingled from where I’d had Lilian by the hair, my pulse still thudded in my throat, but my voice came out even and cool. "What I’m saying, Graham," I replied, "is that your mistress tried to kill me. And I defended myself."

Gasps rippled through the hall like a wave. Someone whispered, "Mistress?" Another hissed, "Tried to kill her?" Eyes darted between me and Graham, then to the stairwell behind me, as though the marble steps themselves might confess the truth.

Graham’s jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring. "Do you even hear yourself?" he barked. "You could have killed her, Elena! She’s pregnant..."

I stepped closer, cutting him off, my voice dropping like a blade. "And what if she had killed me first, Graham? What would you have said then? That I should have stood there and let her?!"

Before he could answer, the crowd parted and a figure emerged. Matilda Sinclair. Graham’s mother. Her heels clicked like gunshots against the marble, her pearl earrings swaying with each deliberate step.

Her face was set in a mask of rigid, aristocratic arrogance, the kind that came from decades of never once doubting her own righteousness.

She had always carried herself like a queen surveying a kingdom she alone had built, and tonight was no exception.

Her eyes locked on me, hard and glittering. "Enough," she said, her voice slicing through the whispers. "Enough of this spectacle."

Graham turned, startled. "Mother..."

She raised a gloved hand and he fell silent instantly, a grown man silenced by a single gesture, and I felt a fresh wave of contempt rise in my chest at how easily he still bent to her will. Her gaze never left mine. "What use are you to my family," she said coldly, "if you attack the woman carrying my grandchild?"

The murmurs around us grew louder. My heart hammered, but I kept my chin up, eyes steady, refusing to let even a flicker of doubt cross my face. "She tried killing me, Matilda," I said, voice sharp. "I only did what anyone would do."

"Don’t you dare call me Matilda," she snapped, her eyes narrowing into venomous slits. "You will address me as Mother!"

"Mother it is," I said, my voice trembling but turning to pure steel. "But that is if you actually deserve to be called one. Because a real mother doesn’t condone her son bringing a mistress into his home, and a real mother doesn’t protect a snake who tries to commit murder in cold blood!"

More gasps exploded across the room. A man near the back muttered, "She’s got guts."

Matilda’s lips curled in absolute disgust. "I know the Sinclairs to be shameless," I continued before she could cut me off, "but at least have some common sense."

The hall went utterly still. A single champagne glass fell from a server’s tray and shattered against the floor, the sound sharp as a gunshot in the silence. Even Graham’s eyes widened in sheer shock.

"How dare you?!" Matilda hissed, her face reddening with fury. "In my house?! In front of my son and our esteemed guests?!"

"I dare because I’m still alive," I said, each word clipped, my voice like steel. "Alive despite your son’s mistress trying to push me down the stairs. Alive despite being humiliated over and over while you all watched. Alive despite being treated like an unwanted, broken dog in this household. I dare, Mother, because no one else seems to think my life matters as much as hers!"

The crowd shifted uncomfortably, the tide of opinion visibly turning as people began muttering among themselves.

A woman whispered, "Did Lilian really try to push her?"

Another hissed, "Look at Elena... she looks completely shaken..."

Matilda’s eyes glittered dangerously. She stepped forward until she was just inches from me, her heavy, suffocating perfume choking the air between us, her voice dripping pure, lethal venom. "You think you’re brave, don’t you? You think you can stand here, insult me, insult my bloodline?"

"I’m not insulting," I said, refusing to step back even a single inch, though my knees threatened to buckle beneath me. "I’m stating facts. If your precious Lilian wanted protection, she should have kept her hands to herself."

Matilda’s face twisted into an ugly, cruel smile, her voice rising, sharp and cutting enough to tear through my skin.

"I should have known this is what we would get by bringing an outsider into our family. A bitter, jealous, barren creature!"

The word landed like a physical blow, and for a moment the room seemed to tilt around me. Old grief surged up from somewhere deep and buried, a wound I thought I had learned to hide well enough that no one could find it anymore.

I folded my arms, keeping my spine rigid, refusing to let the old wound show. "And yet here I am," I said quietly.

She tilted her head back and laughed once... cold, brittle, and echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "How would you understand, Elena?" she said finally, her voice shaking now, half with rage, half with cruel, calculated malice. "How would you possibly understand what it means to carry a child? How would you know what it is to protect a life inside you?"

The hall was dead silent, everyone straining to hear her agonizing words. I could feel dozens of eyes on me, waiting, hungry for my reaction, and I hated them almost as much as I hated her in that moment.

Somewhere behind my ribs, something ancient and painful clawed its way toward the surface, and I fought with everything in me to keep it buried.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised a hand, her eyes blazing with absolute triumph and malice.

"You can’t!" Matilda spat, leaning in until her poisonous whisper pierced straight through my soul. "You’ve never been pregnant before! You’ve never felt a heart beat inside you! You don’t even know what it feels like to be a real woman... because you’ve never felt a life inside you, and you’ve never lost one either! Not even a miscarriage!!!"