Chapter 181 - 0181: I Regretted It

Chapter 181: Chapter 0181: I Regretted It

Elena’s Point Of View

The door clicked shut behind me with a heavy, satisfying thud... the sound final, irrevocable, like the slamming of a cell door after a lifetime sentence in a velvet-lined prison.

For six years, I had lived inside that prison, smiling for cameras, performing devotion I didn’t feel, and now, in the space of a single evening, its walls had crumbled around me.

The tall, broad-shouldered operative holding my luggage moved with liquid grace, stepping ahead to open the door of the heavy matte-black SUV idling at the bottom of the stone driveway. His movements were smooth, effortless, practiced, as though he’d executed high-risk retrievals a thousand times before.

I imagined he probably had. Nothing about this rescue felt improvised; every motion carried the precision of a man who understood danger intimately and had long since stopped fearing it.

The cool leather seats creaked softly as I slid into the back, the crisp air conditioning washing over my flushed, feverish skin. The scent of the interior hit me immediately... a blend of expensive leather, clean modern luxury, and an underlying trace of something unmistakably masculine: dark spice, cedar, and raw power. It filled my nose and cleared the lingering stench of Graham’s cologne from my lungs, and for the first time in hours, I could breathe without wanting to gag.

It wasn’t Graham’s car. It wasn’t his sterile, pretentious vehicle. It wasn’t him. And God, did that feel intoxicatingly good.

Roman slid into the driver’s seat, his massive shoulders practically filling the front cabin, his big, calloused hands gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel like he owned the vehicle and the road beneath it. The engine roared to life... a deep, throaty rumble that vibrated through the chassis, through the floorboards, and straight up into my spine, shaking loose the cold paralysis that had gripped my chest for hours. I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding myself together until that vibration began working the tension loose, muscle by aching muscle.

I exhaled a long, shaky breath, my trembling fingers curling into the soft leather armrest as I leaned my head back against the headrest. The crushing weight of six years of agony, performance, and fear began draining out of me like water breaking through a cracked dam. My eyes burned, but I refused to let the tears fall, not until I understood exactly what I’d been pulled into.

"Thanks," I said, my voice hoarse and scraped raw from screaming at Graham, from fighting for my air, from years of swallowing bitter words I should have spat out long ago. "Thank you for what you did for me in there. For not letting him lay a hand on me."

Roman caught my eyes in the wide rearview mirror, his piercing emerald eyes gleaming with an amused, wicked spark under the dim cabin light. His lips quirked into a lopsided, cocky grin.

"Don’t mention it, sweetheart," he said, his deep voice carrying a light, easy banter that instantly eased the suffocating tension in the air. "Honestly, breaking into a pompous prick’s house and choking him out against his own marble fireplace is the most fun I’ve had all week. Though I have to say, boss man has got it bad for you."

I blinked, my brows drawing together in a faint frown. My fingers tightened around the seatbelt as I pulled it across my chest, the sharp click of the buckle sounding unusually loud in the quiet cabin.

"Boss man?" I repeated, my voice small, testing the words as though they belonged to a language I’d only half-learned.

Roman let out a low, booming chuckle that echoed warmly against the leather trim. "Jaxx," he said, shifting the heavy gear stalk into drive. The SUV lurched forward smoothly, tires crunching over the gravel driveway as we passed the ruined gates of the Sinclair estate.

Graham’s house... the house where I had wept, where I had taken painful injections, where I had bled in silence, began shrinking in the side mirror like a fading nightmare. I watched it go, half-expecting some part of me to mourn its disappearance. Nothing came. Only relief, spreading through my chest like warmth returning to frostbitten skin.

"You know exactly who I mean, Elena," Roman continued, casting another quick glance at me through the mirror as he merged onto the main road. "The man was practically vibrating through the phone for the last four hours. I thought he was going to tear his own steering wheel in half when you didn’t answer your calls."

I closed my eyes, letting my head sink deeper into the cool leather. The sound of Jaxx’s name sent a violent, electric jolt straight through my veins, twisting something deep and fiercely alive in the pit of my stomach... a feeling I hadn’t allowed myself in years, one I’d told myself I’d successfully buried.

"He was really that worried?" I asked softly, my voice barely audible over the low hum of the custom engine.

"Worried isn’t the half of it," Roman said, shaking his head with something like disbelief. "Jaxx Moretti doesn’t get ’worried.’ He gets destructive. The second Marcus reported you hadn’t stepped out of the house by four o’clock, Jaxx gave me explicit orders to breach the property. He told me if Graham so much as left a single red mark on your skin, I had full authorization to break every bone in the bastard’s body."

A soft, breathless gasp escaped my lips. "He said that?"

"Word for word," Roman said smoothly, taking a slick right turn that pushed us onto the open highway. "He wanted to drive an armored truck through Graham’s front gates himself. I had to talk him down just so we didn’t end up on the national news. I’ve worked for Jaxx for a decade, Elena. I’ve seen him dismantle rival syndicates and ruin billionaire executives without shifting his posture. But you? You make him completely unhinged."

"I don’t make him anything," I whispered, though my heart was hammering a wild, erratic rhythm against my ribs. "We have a complicated history."

"Complicated?" Roman barked out a short, amused laugh, shaking his head as though I’d said something wonderfully naive. "Sweetheart, when a man like Jaxx Moretti mobilizes a full tactical team and standby legal counsel just to get a woman out of a bad marriage, that’s not complicated. That’s possession. That’s a man who has been waiting years to take back what he thinks is his."

I turned my face toward the window, looking out as the bright city lights began streaking past in long, golden ribbons against the darkening evening sky. I let the silence stretch, unwilling to give Roman the satisfaction of a response I didn’t yet understand myself.

What he thinks is his...

The words hung in the air, thick and heavy with history. As the SUV glided down the highway, the steady hum of the tires against the asphalt pulled my mind backward, sweeping me away from the present and dragging me down the long, shadowed corridors of time into memories I had spent years trying to bury under the quiet, respectable life I had built with Graham.

Ten Years Ago... High School

The high school hallway had been a suffocating battleground of noise and cheap scents: the stale odor of floor wax, copper lockers, old textbooks, and teenage sweat. Doors slammed shut like distant gunshots, and high-pitched laughter echoed off the tiled walls like cruel mockery. I had hated that hallway, hated the way it swallowed anyone who didn’t already belong to its unspoken hierarchy of popularity and power.

And there he was.

Jaxx Moretti.

He leaned carelessly against the wall beside the double doors of the cafeteria, one leg crossed over the other, wearing a black leather jacket that looked far too expensive for a high school senior. His thick, dark hair fell into his eyes, casting shadows over a sharp, sculpted jawline that already looked like it belonged to a dangerous man rather than a boy of seventeen.

His full lips curved into that signature, lazy smirk that made every girl in the hallway hold her breath, and made my stomach flip violently upside down despite every rational instinct telling me to look away.

He was dangerous. Everyone in the school knew it. He was cold, wealthy, ruthless, and entirely untouchable... the kind of boy whose name mothers whispered in warning, the kind of boy who broke hearts with a bored glance just to watch them shatter into pieces on the floor. Rumors trailed him like smoke: fights he’d started and finished within seconds, girls he’d discarded without a second glance, teachers who seemed almost afraid to discipline him.

And God help me, I couldn’t stop looking at him.

I had been clutching a heavy stack of Advanced Literature textbooks against my chest, trying desperately to walk past him without drawing his attention. I was the quiet girl... the girl who kept her head down, got top marks, and tried to exist without making a ripple in the world. Invisibility had always felt safer than being seen, and I had spent years perfecting the art of it.

As I passed him, his dark, piercing eyes flicked up and caught my gaze across the crowded hallway. His eyes were so intense, so impossibly dark, that they burned into me like live coals, tearing through my carefully constructed defenses until I felt completely exposed, as though he could see straight through the quiet-girl armor I’d spent years building.

My breath hitched in my throat. Panic flared in my chest. I jerked my eyes away instantly, my face flaming hot, my blood rushing so loudly in my ears that I was convinced he could hear my heart hammering against my ribs.

I fumbled with my armful of books. The top textbook slipped from my trembling grip, clattering loudly against the linoleum floor right at his feet.

Mortified, I froze, unable to move, certain the entire hallway had turned to witness my humiliation.

Then came his voice... low, rough, a deep baritone that cut straight through the surrounding noise like a sharp blade.

"Hey, Bambina."

I turned slowly, deliberately, trying with every ounce of my soul to pretend I wasn’t dying of embarrassment inside.

He was already standing directly in front of me, imposingly tall, so close that the heat of his body washed over me, carrying the distinct, intoxicating scent of his cologne: dark spice, expensive tobacco, and something wild and forbidden that I would spend years failing to forget.

"You dropped this," he murmured softly.

He held out my heavy Literature textbook. His long, calloused fingers brushed deliberately against mine as I reached out to take it. The momentary touch sent an electric shiver shooting up my arm, anchoring me to the floor as surely as if he’d taken hold of me completely.

"Thanks," I managed, my voice a fragile whisper, completely swallowed by the roar of my own racing pulse.

He didn’t move back. He stayed right there, invading my personal space, his gaze slowly tracing the curve of my flushed cheeks, dipping down to my trembling lips, before locking back onto my wide eyes.

"You know," he purred, his voice dropping an octave lower, thick with dark, velvet humor, "if you keep looking at me like that, Bambina, I might start thinking you actually like me."

My heart climbed into my throat. I knew what everyone said about him. I knew I should have taken my book, laughed it off with a polite nod, turned around, and walked away as fast as my legs could carry me.

I should have done anything except what I actually did.

I swallowed hard, lifted my chin, and looked directly into his dark, dangerous eyes.

"Maybe I do," I whispered, the confession spilling out before I could stop it, surprising no one more than myself.

Jaxx’s smirk deepened, turning into something dark, possessive, and terrifyingly handsome. He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, his warm breath fanning across my neck.

"Then you’re in serious fucking trouble, Bambina," he rasped.

And he had been right. Because from that exact moment on, no other man ever felt quite real.

Eight Years Ago... College

The heavy rain had been pounding violently against the glass window of my small dorm room, the sound rhythmic and comforting against the storm outside. The room was warm, filled with the scent of cheap hazelnut coffee, damp raincoats, and Graham’s crisp, clean aftershave... a scent I had come to associate with safety, even if it never quite managed to feel like home.

Graham was sprawled across my narrow twin bed like he owned the space, his white dress shirt rumpled at the elbows, his dark hair messy from running his fingers through it all night. We had been studying for our midterms, or pretending to, for hours, textbooks open around us like props in a play neither of us fully believed in.

I sat beside him, but my mind was miles away. I looked at Graham’s neat, handsome face. He was safe. He was respectable. He came from a good family, had clear ambitions, and treated me with a gentle, polite consideration that felt like a safe harbor after the turbulent storms of my past. Everything about him promised stability, the kind of quiet, predictable life I had convinced myself I wanted.

Yet even as I sat beside him, a quiet, haunting void lingered inside my chest... a hollow space that Graham’s polite affection could never quite reach, no matter how hard either of us tried to fill it.

"You’re not paying attention to a single word I’m saying, Elena," Graham murmured, his soft voice snapping me out of my thoughts.

He reached out, his cool fingers gently brushing my chin, tilting my face up so I had no choice but to meet his soft, hazel eyes.

"What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?" he asked, smiling softly, with the kind of patient warmth that made me feel guilty for the thoughts I refused to share.

I looked at him: his smooth skin, his perfect smile, his unblemished life. I wanted so desperately to feel that wild, consuming fire with him. I wanted to force myself to feel the explosive passion I had spent years trying to bury, to convince myself that safety could be its own kind of desire.

"Nothing," I lied softly, leaning forward. "Just thinking about you."

I pressed my lips to his. The kiss was soft at first, gentle and practiced. But then I pushed closer, wrapping my arms around his neck, pressing harder, deeper, acting out of a desperate, hidden hunger, hoping that if I kissed him hard enough, I could pour all the unspoken desires of my soul into him, hoping I could turn him into the man I secretly craved.

Graham let out a low growl against my mouth, his hands moving to grip my waist, pulling me down against his chest.

"Fuck, Elena," he muttered breathlessly against my lips, his hands smoothing down my back. "You’re going to be the death of me."

I smiled against his skin, pushing the dark shadows of my past away, burying the ghost of Jaxx deep beneath the surface, telling myself the burial would hold this time.

"Maybe I want to be," I whispered.

Six Years Ago... The Proposal

The upscale restaurant had been far too fancy, the ambient lighting dimmed to a soft romantic glow, the vintage red wine far too expensive. Smooth jazz played softly in the background as waiters in crisp suits moved silently between mahogany tables, and I remember thinking the whole scene looked staged, like something from a film I was watching rather than living.

Graham dropped down onto one knee on the polished hardwood floor beside our table. He held out a velvet box, a flawless solitaire diamond glinting brightly in the soft candlelight. His hazel eyes were bright, confident, full of clear, structured promises that I desperately wanted to believe in.

"Marry me, Elena," Graham said, his voice steady, sure, entirely untroubled by doubt. "Let me take care of you forever. I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll give you the world."

I looked at the ring. I looked at Graham. He offered me safety, a respectable name, a quiet life, a sense of belonging that I had craved my entire life. He was everything a sensible woman was supposed to want, and I clung to that word... sensible, like a lifeline.

I should have seen the subtle cracks behind his confident smile even then. I should have noticed the underlying coldness, the way his promises were tied to expectations, the way his mother’s approval weighed on every decision he made. But I chose not to look too closely, afraid of what I might find beneath the polish.

I was young. I was tired of feeling unsettled. I was deeply in love with the comforting dream of love, with the illusion of a secure, quiet future where my heart would be safe from dangerous men.

"Yes," I breathed, tears of hope filling my eyes as I let him slide the heavy platinum band onto my finger. "Yes, Graham. I’ll marry you."

And God, did I live to regret it.