Chapter 143 - 0143: You Love Monsters, Don’t You?

Chapter 143: Chapter 0143: You Love Monsters, Don’t You?

Elena’s Point Of View

I gasped, my thighs clenching on instinct, my body betraying me even as my mind screamed at me to hang up, to run, to never let him see how much he affected me.

He knew.

He fucking knew.

"I want you to come to me, Elena," he murmured, his voice dropping to something raw, something primitive. "Right now. You’re angry. Humiliated. You’re probably shaking in that tight little dress, still tasting me on your tongue from the last time I made you come."

My breath hitched. I pressed my back against the cold stone pillar behind me, as if the solid weight of it could anchor me, could keep me from unraveling entirely.

My fingers dug into the rough surface, searching for something real, something that wasn’t him, wasn’t his voice sliding through the phone like smoke finding every crack in a locked room.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to feel nothing, but the traitorous ache between my thighs only sharpened with every word he spoke.

"Your husband doesn’t want you." His words were poison, sweet and deadly. "His mistress wore your dress. But me?"

His voice dropped even lower, filthy, raw.

"I want you ruined." The words slithered into my ear, hot and heavy. "I want you naked. I want you bent over my table, gripping the edge, screaming my name until your voice is hoarse."

I whimpered, my free hand clutching at the pillar for support, my body responding to his words like it was wired directly to his voice. Every syllable landed somewhere low in my belly, a slow-burning coal I couldn’t extinguish no matter how hard I tried.

I hated how easily he found that switch inside me, how he’d always known exactly where to press. I hated it more because some hollow, aching part of me had missed the way he made me feel utterly seen, even in my worst moments.

"I want to fuck the Sinclair out of you." His growl was almost a snarl. "I want to fuck the shame out of you."

I gasped, my thighs pressing together, my skin burning with need, with rage, with something so dark I didn’t even have a name for it. Shame and desire tangled together until I could no longer tell which one was winning.

Somewhere beneath the noise of my own pulse, I wondered when I’d stopped being able to tell the difference at all, and whether that loss had happened tonight or years ago, slowly, without my noticing.

"You’re disgusting," I whispered, but even I could hear the lie in my voice.

"And you’re soaked."

I hated him.

I hated that he knew me. That he could see right through me. That he could make me feel this way with just his voice, his words. I hated that some traitorous part of me had been waiting for this call all night, even before I knew it was coming.

Maybe I’d been waiting for it since the moment Graham let his mother speak, since the moment I realized no one in that room was going to save me but myself, and even that felt like a lie.

Maybe I had been waiting far longer than that, since long before tonight, since the first time Jaxx had looked at me like I was something worth wanting.

A ping sounded on my phone.

A location.

"Come over here," he growled, his voice a command, a threat, a promise. "Let me fuck the steam out of you."

I stared at the screen, my heart pounding, my breath ragged. My thumb hovered over the address, trembling, as if touching it again might seal some fate I hadn’t yet agreed to.

The city lights blurred through the tears still clinging to my lashes, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if I was crying from grief or from the terrible relief of being wanted, even like this, even by him.

Even knowing what he was, what he did to me, I couldn’t make myself put the phone down.

A second later, he added, "Don’t make me come get you, Elena." His voice was deadly now, serious. "Because if I do..." A pause, heavy and deliberate. "I’m not letting you leave."

The line went dead.

********

The heavy wooden doors of the venue felt like a fortress standing between me and sanity. Outside, the night air was biting, sharp enough to sting my raw knuckles and dry the last of my tears against my cheeks.

But inside the private entrance of the lounge, the atmosphere shifted to a smothering, dark warmth, one that pressed against my skin like a hand I hadn’t asked for.

I paused right at the threshold, my hand lingering over the brass handle. It was cold beneath my fingers, colder than I expected, and somehow that small detail nearly undid me.

I stood there longer than I should have, staring at my own reflection warped in the polished metal, barely recognizing the woman staring back.

She looked hollowed out, mascara smudged beneath her eyes, her collarbone jutting sharp above the neckline of a dress that suddenly felt like a costume from someone else’s life.

What the hell are you doing, Elena?!

The voice in my head was a scream, sharp and desperate.

Why did you come here?! Look at yourself! Your skin is still burning from your mother-in-law’s insults, your knuckles are bleeding from punching a stone wall, and you ran straight into the arms of a predator! Turn around. Go back to your car. Go to a hotel. Do not do this.

My chest heaved, a sharp shudder wracking my body. I took a step back toward the street, my heels scraping against the pavement.

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t let Jaxx see me like this... broken, undone, pathetic, a woman held together by nothing but spite and adrenaline.

But as I took that step back, the memory of Graham standing there, spineless, letting Matilda tear my dignity to shreds while Lilian cradled her stomach, flashed behind my eyelids like fire. A cold, suffocating terror gripped me, squeezing the breath from my lungs.

If I went to a hotel tonight, I would be alone with the silence. I would be alone with the ghost of six years of wasted devotion, alone with every question I didn’t want to answer. I would have to look at my own bare hands and wonder what, exactly, I had left to show for all that sacrifice.

I would have to face the woman in the mirror without anyone else’s cruelty to blame for how empty she looked.

My feet moved forward against my own will. I couldn’t be alone tonight. Not tonight, not with the wound still so fresh it hadn’t even begun to scab over.

The security man at the door didn’t stop me. He barely glanced at me, his expression unreadable, professionally blank, before speaking into his earpiece and nodding once, as though my arrival had already been expected, already been arranged.

The ease of it chilled me almost as much as the cold air had, a quiet confirmation that Jaxx had known I would come long before I did.

"This way, ma’am. He’s waiting."

I swallowed hard, my heels clicking faintly against the dark marble floor as I followed him up the private stairwell. Every step felt like walking deeper into a cage I was eagerly locking behind myself, and still I didn’t stop climbing.

Some small, exhausted part of me had already surrendered long before I reached the top.

The security guard opened the heavy oak door to the private suite and stepped aside, his gaze fixed forward, giving me nothing... no judgment, no pity, no warning.

Before he could even show me fully into the room, before the guard could close the door behind me, the sheer reality of where I was crashed over me. My breath hitched violently, and for one wild second I considered turning back.

I could still hear the echo of my own heels on the marble behind me, a countdown to a decision I’d already made hours ago without admitting it to myself.

Jaxx was standing near the center of the dimly lit room, a crystal glass in his hand, his sharp silhouette cast against the glowing city skyline behind him. He looked carved from shadow and ambition, utterly unbothered, utterly certain I would come.

The moment his dark, piercing eyes locked onto mine, the dam holding back my tears completely shattered.

I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care how weak I looked, how pitiful, how utterly ruined. The tears poured freely down my cheeks, hot and unstoppable, washing away the last remaining embers of my pride.

"He... he humiliated me, Jaxx," I choked out, my voice breaking into a painful, ragged cry that echoed off the high ceilings.

I took a trembling step into the room, clutching my aching chest as if it were the only thing keeping my heart from falling out onto the floor.

"After all our years together... after six damn years of giving him everything! Six years of putting up with his coldness, taking those horrible injections, going through every invasive, nightmare doctor’s visit just to try and give him a child! I gave up my life, Jaxx! I sacrificed my sanity for that family!"

A violent sob shook my frame, making my shoulders heave as the tears blinded me completely. I could barely see him anymore through the blur, only the outline of him, still and steady, while I fell apart in front of him.

Some distant part of me marveled that he hadn’t moved at all, as though he understood that any sudden motion might shatter whatever fragile thing was happening inside me.

"And I was nothing more than an afterthought," I wept, my voice dropping into a desperate, hollow whisper. "I stood there in front of half the city, and his mother called me defective. She called my womb non-existent, Jaxx! She laid my deepest, most painful trauma bare for everyone to gawk at and pity me! And Graham... Graham just stood there! He let her rip me apart! He protected her! He protected his mistress and her child, while he treated me like I was a piece of trash he couldn’t wait to sweep under the rug!"

I buried my face in my trembling, blood-stained hands, my knees threatening to give out again as the agonizing words kept pouring out of me, each one scraping my throat raw on its way out.

"He looked me in the eyes and told me not to take it to heart! He cared more about the damn headlines tomorrow than the fact that my entire soul was bleeding out on the floor! I meant nothing to him. All those years... I was just a placeholder. An empty, useless shell..."

Jaxx didn’t interrupt me. He stood entirely still, his posture rigid, his knuckles white around his glass as he listened to every agonizing word tearing out of my throat.

His dark gaze never left my face, watching the tears track down my flushed skin, absorbing every ounce of my heartbreak in absolute silence.

There was something almost reverent in the way he watched me fall apart, as though my ruin were something sacred, something he’d been waiting to witness. I would later wonder if that stillness was restraint or hunger, but in that moment it felt like the only steady thing in my entire collapsing world.

For one strange, fleeting instant, I thought I saw something flicker across his face that almost resembled tenderness, though I couldn’t be certain, and I didn’t trust myself enough that night to name it.

Finally, after the quiet settled back into the room, broken only by my sharp, trembling hiccups, he downed his drink in one brutal gulp. The glass clinked sharply as he set it down on the table, the sound final, like a verdict.

He stepped closer, his boots heavy against the floor, stopping just inches away from where I stood shaking, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off him despite the chill still clinging to my skin.

"What are you doing here, Bambina?"

His voice was a challenge, a dare, a question he already knew the answer to. I opened my mouth, tears still leaking from the corners of my eyes, but nothing came out at first.

Because I didn’t know. Because I shouldn’t be here. Because this was completely wrong. But my feet had moved anyway, carrying me straight into the one place I swore I’d never return to.

Every rational thought I owned had screamed at me to stay away, and every one of them had lost.

And he watched, patient as a predator who already knows the chase is over.

"Was it the way he touched her?" His voice was soft, deadly, like a blade dragging across bare skin. "Or the way he looked at you like you were the damn help?"

He stepped even closer, closing the final inch of distance between us until the overwhelming heat of his body radiated toward me, wrapping around me like a fever I had no interest in breaking.

"Or maybe," he murmured, his fingers brushing lightly against the back of my trembling, bruised hand, "you just missed me. Missed what I do to that tight little body of yours."

I should’ve slapped him. I should’ve turned on my heel and walked right out the door. But my lips parted instead, my breath ragged, my heart burning with a dark, terrifying fire that had nothing to do with Graham anymore. Every reason I had to leave dissolved the instant his skin met mine.

"You’re a monster," I whispered through my lingering tears.

His hand came up... not to touch gently, but to tilt my chin up firmly, his thumb grazing my bottom lip just enough to press against my teeth, making me shiver violently.

Our eyes locked, and in his I saw nothing but hunger, patient and absolute.

"And you love monsters, don’t you?" he whispered, his mouth so close to mine I could feel the scorching heat of his whiskey-laced breath against my lips.

I should’ve denied it. I should’ve pushed his heavy chest away. But my body betrayed me completely. My lips parted further, my breath hitching as his fingers traced down the sensitive skin of my throat, his touch burning through me like wildfire, erasing every rational thought I had left.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a small, weary voice whispered that I would regret this come morning, but I silenced it, choosing instead to drown in the only thing that made the pain stop.

"Please..." The word escaped me, broken, desperate, a surrender to the chaos I’d walked willingly into.

His dark eyes turned to pitch black, his grip tightening around my throat just enough to remind me who was in control, just enough to make my pulse pound beneath his fingers.

"Fuck me."