Chapter 199 - 0199: She Will Always Be My Wife

Chapter 199: Chapter 0199: She Will Always Be My Wife

Graham’s Point Of View

The air in my home office hung thick, heavy, suffocating, as though the very walls were slowly closing in on me. I’d been locked in here for three whole days, the heavy velvet blinds drawn tight against the outside world, the lights dimmed to a pathetic shadow, the only sound the low, buzzing hum of my computer tower and the relentless tick, tick, tick of the antique clock on the wall.

I hadn’t eaten. I barely remembered sleeping. Every hour blurred into the next, marked only by the slow emptying of another bottle.

Somewhere beneath the haze of whiskey and exhaustion, I knew I’d become a stranger to myself, a man I wouldn’t have recognized a week ago, but the knowledge slid off me like water, unable to penetrate the fog of my own ruin.

Time felt as though it had completely stopped. The entire world outside seemed frozen over, locked in ice while I rotted in this one airless room. I was trapped in a suffocating nightmare I couldn’t wake up from, and some distant, rational corner of my mind knew I should shower, should answer my phone, should at least pretend to function... but that part of me had gone quiet days ago, drowned out by something louder and far more desperate.

I’d built my entire identity on control... on being the man who never lost, who always closed the deal, who bent the world to his will with nothing more than a look and a signature. Now I couldn’t even control my own hands.

Elena left me.

The words echoed inside my skull, a relentless, pounding rhythm that matched the sharp, throbbing pulse behind my temples. It didn’t make any damn sense. It couldn’t. She was mine. She’d always been mine.

From the moment I’d first laid eyes on her years ago... all fire, sharp tongue, and unyielding defiance, to the day I’d slipped a five-carat diamond ring onto her finger, to every single agonizing, beautiful second in between, she belonged to me. I had built an empire with these hands, had bent boardrooms and governments to my will, and yet none of it had ever mattered half as much as the way she used to look at me across a room.

I remembered the first dinner we’d shared, how she’d challenged every assumption I made about her, about myself, about what I thought I wanted from life. No one had ever spoken to me the way she did... without fear, without flattery, without the suffocating deference everyone else offered a man of my position. I’d fallen for her before I even understood what falling meant.

And now?

Now she was actually gone.

My heavy office door burst open, and Carter, my long-time business manager and closest confidant, stepped into the room. He took one look at the pitch-black shadows and the alcohol bottles littering my executive desk, and he let out a heavy, tired sigh, the kind reserved for a man who had run out of patience days ago.

"Graham, man, you can’t keep hiding in here," he said, his tone cautious, hands raised in a placating gesture as he stepped over a pile of scattered documents. "Your legal team has been calling your cell non-stop for forty-eight hours. The board is asking questions about why you canceled the quarterly investor meeting. You need to pull yourself together."

"Get out, Carter," I spat, my voice raspy, stripped entirely of its usual smooth polish.

"Look at yourself!" Carter pressed, stepping further into the dim room, his eyes sweeping over the wreckage of my composure with something close to pity. "She served you, Graham! It’s over! The divorce papers were delivered directly by her process server on Monday. You can’t just pretend she didn’t throw a full legal battle in your face. You have to sign them, or brief your lawyers to negotiate a settlement before this hits the tabloids!"

"I said GET OUT!" I roared, slamming my palm onto the polished mahogany desk with a thunderous crack that made Carter flinch backward toward the doorway. "Do not speak her name in my house! Do not tell me what the fuck to do with my own wife!"

"She’s not acting like your wife anymore, Graham!" Carter yelled back, losing his composure entirely, his voice cracking with frustration. "She moved out! She cut off the joint accounts! She hired Marcus... the biggest shark in the entire state! She wants out!"

"SHE IS MY WIFE!" I screamed, the veins in my neck bulging, my face flushing a dark, dangerous red. "She belongs to me, Carter! Do you hear me?! Elena is mine! My name is on her skin! My ring is on her hand! She doesn’t get to just pack up her things, hire some high-priced legal mercenary, and decide we’re fucking done! I am her husband, and I will be damned before I let any human being strip her away from me!"

Carter stared at me, genuine fear flickering in his eyes at the unhinged, violent possessiveness raw in my chest... fear I had never once seen directed at me in the fifteen years we’d known each other. He swallowed hard, backed slowly out of the threshold, and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving me alone once more in the suffocating silence.

My chest heaved as I stared down at the crisp white envelope sitting in the center of my desk. The divorce papers glared up at me like a personal challenge, like a spit in the face, like an unforgivable betrayal from the one person I had trusted completely. My fingers twitched violently. My jaw clenched so tight I felt the enamel on my back teeth strain under the pressure.

I reached for the document, my hand trembling with an uncontrollable mix of rage and terror as I pulled the thick packet free. The paper felt ice-cold beneath my fingertips, almost mocking in its crispness, as though even the document itself understood how thoroughly it had gutted me.

This couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t be.

I unfolded the sheets, my bloodshot eyes wildly scanning the cold legal terminology, the heavy red stamps, the finality written into every paragraph. My name. Her full name. The date of filing. The demands. Each line felt like a blade slipping quietly between my ribs, methodical and precise, as though some faceless lawyer had taken pleasure in carving away everything I’d built with her.

Irreconcilable differences. Full division of marital assets. Immediate termination of marriage.

The formal words blurred together as my vision turned red, the reality of her decision crashing over me like a tidal wave. It felt as though someone had dumped a bucket of freezing water over my head, choking the air from my chest, tightening my heart in an iron vise. My fingers curled inward, violently crumpling the sharp edges of the paper, the sound of tearing cardstock cutting through the dead silence of the room like a gunshot.

"Irreconcilable differences?" I muttered, a terrifying, hysterical chuckle escaping my throat before hardening instantly into a snarl. "Differences?! You swore an oath to me, Elena! You sat across from me at the altar and looked me in the eye! You don’t just walk out because things got rough!"

No.

This wasn’t happening.

This was never going to happen.

She was mine.

And no court document, however official, however final, was ever going to change that.

A guttural, animalistic growl tore from deep inside my throat, raw and agonizing, as I surged up from my leather chair. It crashed backward onto the floor, the wood splitting against the floorboards, the sound echoing violently through the empty mansion and vibrating through my very bones.

My hands clamped into tight, bloodless fists, my knuckles turning stark white, my entire body shaking with a fury so blinding it felt like boiling acid in my veins.

How dare she?

How dare she pack up her life and walk away from me?

How dare she act as though our years together meant nothing, as though I were some bad habit she could simply drop overnight?

I snatched the crumpled divorce papers off the desk, my vision swimming in blood-red rage, my breath coming in short, sharp, ragged gasps that scraped against my throat.

The heavy-duty industrial shredder sat in the corner of the office, silent and cold, its dark metal mouth waiting as though it had been anticipating this very moment. I stormed toward it, my movements jerky and unhinged, every ounce of my usual corporate control dissolving completely into pure madness.

"Fuck this!" I snarled, my voice a deep, dangerous rumble that shook my chest. "Fuck her lawyers! And fuck every single word written on this trash!"

I slammed the power button with my thumb. The motor whirred to life with a loud, mechanical, grating hum that filled the room like a second heartbeat.

Without a fraction of hesitation, I shoved the thick stack of legal documents into the feeder. The heavy steel blades grabbed the paper, chewing through the pages with a fierce, crunching bite, reducing her demands, her signatures, and her court filings into useless, shredded confetti. The sound was insanely satisfying, a sharp, rhythmic crunch that mirrored the violent, destructive rhythm pounding inside my skull.

"As far as I’m concerned," I spat, my voice trembling with overwhelming, obsessive rage, "Elena is still my wife! She will always be my wife! And no fucking papers will ever separate us!"

The last sheet vanished into the mechanical teeth, the shredder spitting the remains out as thin, illegible strips of plastic and paper. I stood over the machine, my broad chest heaving, my hands shaking violently, my mind a chaotic, destructive storm of denial and wrath that refused to quiet, refused to let me breathe.

This wasn’t over.

She wasn’t over.

I was going to hunt her down, drag her back to this house, and make her realize that she belonged to me whether she liked it or not.

The rage didn’t stop there.

It couldn’t stop.

Because deep beneath the blinding anger, a terrifying, agonizing truth clawed at my soul: I was losing her. She was slipping through my fingers, and that was something my ego, my heart, and my sanity simply could not accept. My hands flexed into fists again, my fingers itching for something to destroy, something to break into pieces, something to bleed, something to hurt the exact way I was hurting inside.

I spun on my heel, my wild gaze sweeping across the dark office until it locked onto the silver-framed photograph sitting on the corner of my desk.

Our wedding day.

Elena wore that breathtaking lace dress, her radiant smile blinding, her bright eyes fixed on me, her small hand tucked deeply into mine as if she trusted me with her entire world. I remembered the weight of her palm against mine, the way she’d laughed when the photographer told her to stop smiling so hard.

I remembered thinking, in that exact moment, that I had finally won something money could never buy... a woman who looked at me like I was more than my bank account, more than my name, more than the empire I’d spent my whole life constructing.

And I’d lost her.

The realization hit me like a physical punch to the gut, the air leaving my lungs in a sharp, pained gasp.

"You think you can just erase me, Elena?!" I screamed at the photograph, my voice cracking with pure agony. "You think you can just give up on us?!"

Before my brain could stop me, I snatched the heavy silver frame off the desk and hurled it across the room with every ounce of strength left in my body.

CRASH!

The frame shattered violently against the far brick wall. Glass exploded into a thousand glittering shards, spraying across the dark floorboards in a sharp, deafening explosion that echoed through the entire lower floor of the house. The photograph fluttered helplessly to the floor, the paper torn, the radiant image of us now sliced clean through by the jagged edges of the broken frame, our smiling faces separated forever by a crack neither of us had ever seen coming.

"Fuck!" I roared, my voice raw and broken, my hands curling tightly into fists once more.

My eyes landed on the desk again. I grabbed the nearest heavy object... a massive, solid crystal paperweight, a gift from some forgotten business deal, and sent it flying through the air with a brutal swing.

It struck the built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelf with a sickening thud, snapping a hardwood shelf clean in half. Dozens of heavy leather-bound books, awards, and delicate glass decor came crashing down in a chaotic, deafening avalanche of destruction, burying years of accolades beneath broken glass and splintered wood.

"Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!"

I swept both arms wildly across the top of my massive desk, sending everything airborne. Expensive fountain pens, crystal decanters, stacks of financial files, and my high-end laptop went flying across the room, slamming hard into the floorboards. The laptop screen shattered instantly on impact with a sharp, sickening pop, black ink bleeding across the display like a wound.

I didn’t care. I craved the absolute destruction. I needed the violence of it, needed something external to match the devastation churning inside me, needed to turn the invisible wreckage in my chest into something I could see, something I could touch, something that made sense in a way my own shattered heart never would again.

Because if I couldn’t fix my marriage, if I couldn’t force her back into my arms where she belonged, then what was the point of any of this wealth, any of this power, any of my life?

My breath came in ragged, desperate gasps, my entire frame trembling violently. Warm blood began to drip down my right hand, trickling from deep cuts caused by the sharp edges of broken glass I’d squeezed without noticing. I didn’t care about the blood. I welcomed the sharp, burning sting. The pain was real. It grounded me. It was proof that I was still alive, still feeling, still breathing, still fighting for what was mine.

I stumbled backward, my footing unsteady, until my bloodshot gaze landed on the floor-to-ceiling gilded mirror hanging on the wall beside the leather lounge.

My reflection stared back at me, wild-eyed, disheveled, completely unhinged. My hair had become a frantic, ruined mess, my expensive designer shirt untucked and stained with blood, my tie hanging loosely around my unbuttoned collar, my face flushed bright red with an unstable cocktail of fury, obsession, and absolute despair.

I barely recognized the man staring back... this wasn’t the composed CEO who closed billion-dollar mergers without breaking a sweat, the man magazines called ruthless and visionary in the same breath. This was something feral, something stripped of every polished layer I’d spent a lifetime perfecting.

I looked like a complete lunatic. A man pushed directly over the edge. A man who had lost his entire world.

And I had.

Because without Elena, I was absolutely nothing. The thought settled into my chest like a stone, heavy and undeniable, stripping away every illusion of control I’d clung to for three days straight.

The realization hit me like a high-speed freight train, my knees nearly buckling beneath the crushing weight of it. My hands curled into fists again, my bloody knuckles turning stark white, my breath coming in sharp, uneven, frantic gasps.

"No," I growled, my voice dropping into a low, terrifying, dangerous snarl.

I wasn’t going to lose her.

I couldn’t lose her. I would burn this entire city to the ground before I ever let her walk away from me for good.

I stormed toward the mirror, my own reflection mocking me, taunting me, reminding me of every mistake I’d made, reminding me of her empty side of the bed waiting for me upstairs, reminding me of all the nights I’d chosen boardrooms over her, deals over dinners, power over the one thing that had ever actually mattered.

My bare, bloody fist connected violently with the center of the glass.

CLANG!

The brutal impact sent a searing pain shooting straight up my arm, shattering through my knuckles. The glass cracked instantly, a massive spiderweb of fractures spreading outward from the point of impact. My reflection distorted into a hundred broken pieces, ruined, completely unraveled... just like me.

"NO!" I shrieked.

I hit it again.

And again.

And again.

The heavy glass shattered completely, razor-sharp shards raining down onto the floor with a loud, satisfying crash that matched the violent, chaotic fury tearing through my soul. My knuckles split wide open, warm blood dripping heavily onto the hardwood floor, but the physical pain registered only as a distant, dull throb beneath the overwhelming tsunami of my rage and possessiveness.

I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t stop.

Because if I stopped swinging, if I stopped destroying this room, I would have to sit in the quiet. And sitting in the quiet meant I would have to feel. And feeling meant accepting that she was gone. And accepting meant losing her forever.

That was something I refused to do.