Chapter 142 - 0142: Already There, Baby

Chapter 142: Chapter 0142: Already There, Baby

Elena’s Point Of View

The night air hit me like a physical blow as I stormed out into the parking lot, my breath coming in sharp, uneven gasps that burned my throat.

Behind me, the mansion glittered with light and laughter, a party still in full swing, oblivious to the wreckage I’d left inside.

Somewhere behind those glowing windows, people were still sipping champagne, still gossiping behind manicured hands, still pretending they hadn’t just watched my entire life crumble in real time.

The valet called after me, his voice muffled by the deafening roar of blood pounding in my ears.

"Ma’am! Your car..."

Screw the car. I needed air. I needed space. I needed to breathe before I exploded into a thousand jagged pieces on the pristine cobblestones.

Every step away from that house felt like tearing a stitch from an open wound, but staying inside a moment longer would have killed me faster than the cold ever could.

I could still feel the eyes on me, dozens of them, hungry and pitying in equal measure, and I hated every single one of those people almost as much as I hated myself for caring what they thought.

My vision began to blur, hot tears welling up in my eyes until the world turned into a smeared, glittering mess of streetlights and luxury vehicles. I blinked rapidly, trying to fight them back, but they spilled over, hot and relentless, pouring furiously down my cheeks in blinding streams.

I couldn’t even see where I was walking anymore, but I didn’t care. I stumbled forward, my heels catching on the concrete, my ankle twisting painfully beneath me. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. If I stopped, I might shatter completely, right there in front of everyone who had watched me be humiliated only minutes before.

My mind kept replaying the scene on a vicious loop... the pity in some faces, the poorly hidden delight in others, and Graham simply standing there, letting it happen.

He hadn’t even reached for me. He hadn’t said a single word in my defense. He’d just stood there, hands in his pockets, letting his mother’s voice slice me open in front of two hundred witnesses.

My fist swung out and slammed against the rough stone wall of the building with a sickening crack. Pain exploded through my knuckles, radiating up my arm, but it was nothing compared to the agony ripping through my ribs, nothing compared to the image burned into my mind of Graham’s face, cold and indifferent, as his mother tore me apart in front of everyone we knew.

I wanted the physical pain to drown out the other kind, the kind that lived somewhere deeper than skin and bone, the kind that no amount of bruising could ever touch.

I slammed my palm against the wall again. And again. Each strike felt like the only language my grief understood, the only way to translate the wreckage inside me into something I could actually feel.

My knuckles split, and still I welcomed it, because at least it was a pain I had chosen, a pain that made sense, unlike the senseless cruelty I’d just survived.

"I hate you," I sobbed into the dark, the words tearing out of my chest like jagged glass. "I hate you, Graham! I hate you so damn much!"

The force of the grief hit me all at once, a suffocating, crushing weight that shattered what was left of my spine. Suddenly, my legs gave out completely. They wouldn’t move. They felt like lead, like water, utterly useless.

My knees buckled, hard, hitting the pavement as my hands flew to my chest, my fingers clawing helplessly at the satin over my heart, as if I could physically hold myself together, as if there were still something left inside worth saving.

The cobblestones bit into my knees through the thin fabric of my gown, but even that sting felt distant, muffled beneath the roar of everything else breaking inside me.

It felt like my heart was literally tearing in two, aching with a heavy, physical agony that made me double over on the cold ground. A raw, ugly sob ripped from my throat, the kind of sound that clawed its way out from somewhere dark and hollow inside me, shuddering through my entire frame as I wept uncontrollably in the shadows of the estate.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, curled in on myself, the cold seeping through the fabric of my dress, my mascara surely a ruined mess down my face.

I didn’t care anymore. Let the world see. Let it see exactly what they’d done to me. Let them all remember this moment the way I would never be allowed to forget it. Let them remember the sound of a woman breaking, since apparently that was the only performance of mine anyone cared to watch tonight.

And then, my phone rang.

The sharp, insistent vibration against my thigh cut through the haze of my agony. I squeezed my eyes shut, my chest heaving as I reached down with a trembling, slick hand to pull the screen into the light.

For one wild, foolish second, some small and stupid part of me hoped it might be Graham, calling to apologize, to explain, to fix the unfixable.

I blinked through the curtain of my tears, wiping at my face with the back of my bruised hand, smearing black streaks across my knuckles.

The screen glowed in the dark, a small, merciless beacon.

JAXX.

My heart thumped once, hard, like it was trying to escape my chest. My thumb hovered over the screen, my pride screaming at me to ignore it. To let it ring. To never give him the satisfaction of knowing he could affect me when I was at my absolute lowest, when I was nothing but a crumpled heap of silk and heartbreak on the pavement.

Some traitorous part of me, though, ached for the sound of his voice, for anything that might drown out the silence screaming inside my skull. I despised myself for it, for the way my body already knew what my mind refused to admit.

But my body betrayed me, as it always did where he was concerned. I swiped.

"Elena," he said, his voice a rasp, rough and dark, like whiskey poured over gravel, like my name was something forbidden, something filthy, something delicious he had no right to taste, and yet he tasted it anyway, every single time.

I didn’t even bother with a hello, my breath catching in a ragged, trembling hiccup that betrayed exactly how close to breaking I still was.

"What the hell do you want, asshole?" My voice was hoarse, broken, but sharp with venom, the only defense I had left.

There was a pause, a beat of silence so heavy I could feel it pressing against my skin over the speaker. Then came the kind of dark laughter that curled around my spine, hot and dangerous, like a promise of absolute ruin.

"I thought you said you’d never pick up my call again, Bambina," he said, his voice sin dipped in velvet, dragging over me like hot wax, burning everywhere it touched, finding every raw nerve I had left.

My throat tightened, a fresh wave of tears springing to my eyes as I squeezed them shut against the cold wall behind me. "You’re delusional."

"Am I?" His tone sharpened, dangerous, like a blade pressed gently against my jugular. "Or did I just remind your married cunt what it feels like to be wanted?"

I inhaled sharply, the words hitting me like a physical blow, my hand tightening around my aching chest as if I could shield myself from him even through the phone. "What do you want, Jaxx?" I hissed, my fingers clenching the phone so tight I was surprised the glass didn’t shatter in my palm.

"I want to strip away every single trace of that pathetic family from your skin," he growled, his voice dipping lower, darker, carrying a heavy, possessive edge that sent a shiver straight down my spine despite everything, despite the tears still wet on my face. "I want you naked. Writhing. Screaming. And begging me to stop when we both know you’ll never want me to."

Silence hung in the air, thick and suffocating. My breath caught, my stomach twisting with something dark, something hungry, something terrifyingly alive compared to the dead weight in my chest only moments before.

I hated how easily he could summon that feeling, how effortlessly he could reach past my grief and touch the one nerve that still responded to him, as though he held some map to the darkest rooms of me and had never once needed permission to enter.

"You’re sick, Jaxx," I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of my tears. "I am bleeding out here, and you’re still playing your twisted games."

"Only for you, Bambina," he said, his chuckle low and dark, vibrating through the receiver like a live wire, making my knees tremble even as I sat on the pavement, my dress ruined, my dignity in tatters. "Only. For. You."

I could feel him smirking, could picture the way his full lips would curl, the way his dark eyes would turn to pitch black with lust, with absolute possession, as though he already owned every broken piece of me scattered across that parking lot.

The image alone was enough to make my pulse stutter, traitor that it was, betraying me exactly when I needed my body to stay loyal to my heartbreak instead of him.

"You think I wasn’t watching you back there?" His voice dropped, razor-sharp and unrelenting. "That little scene in the hall? Watching that coward let his mother gut you while his little mistress smiled? How he paraded her like you were nothing? Bet you feel real small right now, don’t you?"

"Shut up," I choked out, a fresh sob bubbling in my throat. "Just shut the fuck up."

"Don’t pretend with me, Elena." His voice was a whip, cutting through my lies, my defenses, my fragile pride, stripping me down to nothing with just a handful of words. "You called it off, remember? No more deal. No more me. But guess what?"

A slow, heavy pause stretched between us, thick with everything neither of us wanted to say. "You’re still dripping for me."

My head fell back against the stone pillar, my body shuddering as I pressed the phone closer to my ear, helpless against the gravity of him, against the terrible pull he had over every fractured part of me.

Even now, even shattered and humiliated, some feral part of me leaned into his voice like it was the only warmth left in the world, like his cruelty was somehow gentler than the silence Graham had offered me instead.

"Go to hell..."

"Already there, baby," he said, his laugh a dark, seductive thing, curling into the night air like smoke. "But I’d rather drag you down there with me."