Chapter 247 - 0247: What Do You Have That I Don’t Have?

Chapter 247: Chapter 0247: What Do You Have That I Don’t Have?

Lillian’s Point Of View

I didn’t remember pressing the elevator button.

I didn’t remember the long, suffocating ride down thirty floors, surrounded by polished steel and glass. The doors had opened at some point, people had probably stepped in and out, corporate voices had likely filled the small metal box, but everything felt muffled and distant, like I was moving underwater through a thick, heavy fog.

My body had simply carried me along, operating on some autopilot I didn’t know I possessed, while my mind remained trapped upstairs in that office, replaying the scene over and over like a wound that refused to scab. I couldn’t even recall crossing the lobby, couldn’t recall the faces of the people who must have glanced at me, this woman clearly unraveling in real time. None of it mattered. None of it had registered.

All I could hear was Graham’s voice ringing inside my skull over and over. Cold. Flat. Stripped of every single drop of warmth. I’d never heard him speak to me that way before, not even in our worst moments, and the shock of it had carved itself into my memory with brutal precision.

Two years of pet names, of murmured promises in the dark, and in one afternoon he’d erased all of it with a tone I didn’t recognize, a tone that made me feel like a stranger he’d caught trespassing in his life.

"Leave, Lillian."

"You’re a jinx."

The words kept replaying on a loop, each repetition driving the blade deeper into my ribs. I kept waiting for the pain to dull, for my mind to grow tired of torturing me, but it only sharpened with every pass, slicing fresh and raw. I wondered, almost absently, if this was what drowning felt like, this slow suffocation with no surface in sight.

By the time my feet carried me past the heavy security doors and into the underground garage, the air hit me differently down there. It was cool, damp, and heavy with the strong, stagnant smell of wet concrete, engine oil, and exhaust fumes. The dim fluorescent tubes hanging overhead flickered slightly, humming a low, irritating buzz that vibrated straight through my teeth.

The sheer ordinariness of the place felt obscene, as if the world had no right to carry on so mundanely while mine was collapsing. Somewhere above me, people were still answering emails, still sipping lukewarm coffee, still living lives that hadn’t just been gutted open on an office floor.

My heels clicked against the smooth floor as I kept walking aimlessly. One sharp step. Then another. Then another. The echo bounced off the pillars, mockingly loud in the massive, cavernous space. I didn’t even know where I was going or where I’d left my keys. Somewhere beneath the panic, a small, distant part of me registered how pathetic I must look, wandering lost among the parked cars, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Let the cameras see. Let the whole building watch me fall apart; I had nothing left to protect.

The tote bag was still clutched tightly in my right hand. My designer purse hung heavily from my shoulder, the thick leather strap digging painfully into my collarbone, but I barely registered the physical discomfort. Every nerve in my body had rerouted itself toward the ache in my chest, leaving no room for anything else, not even for the small, ordinary pains a body usually complains about.

My chest was tight. Dangerously tight. Like someone had wrapped a steel band around my lungs and was slowly cranking it shut. I pressed a hand to my sternum, half expecting to feel the metal there, cold and merciless, half wondering if this was how a heart actually broke, not with a dramatic crack but with this slow, suffocating pressure.

I stopped dead in my tracks, right in the middle of the empty driving lane, surrounded by rows of silent luxury sports cars. My eyes dropped slowly to the bag in my hand.

The stupid canvas bag.

The stupid, carefully packed food flask inside it.

I stared at it for a long, agonizing moment. My throat burned like I’d swallowed glass. I remembered standing in my kitchen that morning, humming to myself as I layered the dish just the way he liked it, convinced that small gesture might finally tip the scales in my favor. I had even debated the garnish, had smiled at my own hopefulness while sealing the lid. How foolish that memory felt now, how unbearably naive, how far removed from the woman standing in this garage with mascara running down her face.

"I cooked for you," I whispered hoarsely to the empty air. My voice was a thin, ragged rasp that echoed faintly off the cold concrete walls.

A small laugh escaped my lips, but it sounded completely broken, hollow, and humiliating.

"I cooked for you," I repeated, shaking my head slowly as fresh tears spilled over my lashes, tracking dark lines through my makeup down my cheeks.

My grip tightened around the fabric handle until my knuckles turned completely white. Then, with every ounce of helpless, bitter rage building inside my gut, I whirled around and hurled it. The bag flew straight across the lane and slammed hard into a heavy metal industrial garbage bin near the support column. It landed with a loud, violent clang, the flask inside smashing heavily against the metal lining, the sound almost satisfying in its finality.

The sharp sound shattered the quiet garage, ringing out like a gunshot.

My chest rose and fell sharply as a gasp tore out of my throat. My hands flew up into my hair, my fingers tangling in the styled locks, gripping so tightly my scalp burned with sharp pain. The physical pain almost felt like relief, a distraction from the deeper wound I couldn’t reach, a wound with no edges I could press against to make it stop.

"Ahhh!"

The scream ripped out from the absolute bottom of my lungs before I could stop it. Raw, unhinged, and ugly. My voice bounced off the concrete ceiling, returning to me from every corner of the dark garage, as though the building itself wanted to mock me with my own despair.

My breathing came fast now, ragged and shallow. My head tilted back as I squeezed my eyes shut, my face flushing hot with humiliation and fury. I felt utterly exposed, as though the cameras mounted in the corners were broadcasting my unraveling to the entire building above, as though strangers in offices far removed from my life were watching me come apart and shaking their heads in quiet judgment.

"Elena!"

The name exploded out of my mouth like venom, burning my tongue on the way out.

"That bitch!"

My hands tightened harder in my hair, pulling until my knuckles throbbed. Even just thinking her name made my blood boil, turning my skin hot with pure hatred. Two years of smiling through gritted teeth, two years of pretending to admire her, came rushing back all at once, curdling into something uglier than I thought myself capable of feeling. I remembered her laugh, warm and unguarded, and hated myself a little for remembering it so clearly.

"Even though you’re gone!" My voice cracked, breaking on a sob that turned immediately back into a snarl. "Even though I got what I always wanted!"

My chest heaved violently as I began pacing in a tight, desperate circle, the soles of my heels scraping sharply against the grit on the floor.

"You’re still there!"

I pointed an angry, trembling finger at the empty space in front of me, like she was standing right there on the concrete, quietly judging me with those calm, infuriating eyes of hers. I could almost see her, serene and untouchable, and the image alone made me want to scream until my throat gave out. She had always carried herself that way, I remembered bitterly, as though nothing could ever truly touch her, not even betrayal.

"You’re still inside his head!" My voice echoed again, loud and shrill. "Still inside his life!"

I let out another frustrated, animalistic scream, dragging my hands down my face, smearing tears and ruined foundation across my skin.

"How?!"

The single word came out raw and torn from my throat.

"How are you still doing this to me?!"

A laugh tore out of me... sharp, manic, and completely void of humor.

"Unbelievable." I shook my head again, my pace quickening, turning back and forth now like a trapped animal in an iron cage. "Graham was supposed to divorce you."

My voice trembled with a lethal mixture of fury and despair.

"That was the plan." I jabbed my finger into the dark air, accusing the phantom standing before me. "He promised me!"

My chest tightened until I couldn’t draw a full breath.

"Do you hear me? He promised!"

But he didn’t do it. Day after day. Week after week. For months he kept stringing me along, holding my hand in dark corners while making excuses, constantly whispering that damned word in my ear. Soon, Lillian... Soon.

I’d clung to that word like a lifeline, building an entire future on its flimsy promise, never once questioning why it kept slipping further out of reach, never once asking myself what kind of man kept a promise just out of grasp for years.

I stopped pacing abruptly.

My breathing slowed just a fraction as a darker, far more sinister realization settled deep into the pit of my stomach.

"He didn’t do it," I muttered to myself, my teeth grinding together so hard my jaw ached. "And now..." A bitter, wet laugh escaped me as I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. "Now you’re the one serving the papers."

I shook my head slowly, staring at the concrete floor.

"And he still won’t sign."

My stomach twisted violently, a cold knot of nausea washing over me as I remembered the dark possessiveness in his eyes when he spoke her name upstairs. That look had told me everything I didn’t want to know, everything I’d spent two years refusing to see, buried under every reassurance I’d forced myself to believe.

"What do you have that I don’t have?!" My voice echoed louder this time, shattering the silence of the basement. "What?!"

I spread my arms out wildly to the empty room, looking up at the dim lights.

"What’s so special about you?! What’s so damn special?!" I screamed into the cavernous space.

"Are you better than me?!"

The question hung heavily in the air, unanswered, hollow, mockingly quiet, as if even the concrete walls refused to dignify it with a response.

My chest rose and fell heavily.

"I’m carrying his child!" I yelled, my hand slamming protectively, desperately against the curve of my belly through my silk top. "The heir to the Sinclair family! The child he wanted!"

My voice cracked again, trailing off into a broken sob.

"I gave him something you never could!"

My eyes burned with fresh tears, hot and heavy, blurring the lines of the parked luxury cars around me.

"Yet he still looks at you like you’re the center of his damn universe!"

I started pacing again, faster, my breath coming in ragged hitches.

"Every day it gets worse." My voice dropped into a dark, vicious mutter as I stared at my own reflection in the tinted window of a black sedan. The woman staring back looked like a stranger, mascara streaked, eyes wild, nothing like the composed mistress who’d once believed she could outlast a dead wife. "His obsession with you."

My hands clenched into tight fists at my sides, my nails digging so deep into my palms that they nearly broke the skin.

"I see it."

My jaw clamped shut.

"He pretends he doesn’t care." I let out another humorless, dry laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over pavement. "But he does."

"He always did."

The realization made my stomach turn over violently.

"I thought once you were gone, everything would fall into place." My voice softened for a brief second, the exhaustion finally seeping through the anger, revealing the terrified, pathetic woman underneath, the one who had spent two years building a life on borrowed time. "I thought he would move on."

I stopped moving again, staring blankly down the long dark aisle of the garage.

"I thought he’d finally choose me."

Silence filled the garage, heavy and suffocating. For a moment, I almost believed the darkness itself was listening, weighing my confession with silent contempt, finding me wanting just as she must have, somewhere, in whatever remained of her.

Then the anger rushed back through my veins like a surge of hot gasoline.

"But no!"

My voice echoed violently again, ringing off the concrete support pillars.

"You’re still there!" I pointed straight up toward the low ceiling, toward the thirty floors of steel and glass above us where Graham was sitting in his air-conditioned office, staring at his phone. "He still defends you!"

My hands shook so violently I could barely hold them steady.

"He still won’t let go of you!" My breath came faster and faster, shallow and panicked.

"Why?!"

My voice cracked with pure, unfiltered desperation.

"What do you have that I don’t?!" I stared straight ahead into the dim shadows, my chest heaving, my voice rising until it was nothing more than a screech. "You’re nothing!"

My voice rose again, desperate to fill the void.

"Do you hear me?! You’re nothing!"

My throat felt like it was tearing apart, raw and bleeding from the noise.

"Just a barren bitch!"

The words came out vicious, laced with all the spite and jealousy I’d carried in my heart for two years while sitting at her dinner table, drinking her tea, smiling in her face while taking her husband. Every memory of her kindness toward me now felt like another insult, proof of how thoroughly she’d outclassed me without even trying, without even knowing there had been a contest at all.

"Yet you still won’t leave our lives alone!"

Hot tears ran freely down my face now, dripping off my chin onto my blouse, ruining the fine silk. My nails dug into my palms until the pain was all I could focus on, the only thing anchoring me to my own body.

"Even when you’re gone, you’re still ruining everything!"

My voice echoed violently through the empty underground garage, a horrific, desperate noise that shook my whole frame.

"I hate you!"

My chest heaved. My legs trembled under my weight, barely holding me up.

"I hate you!"

My voice cracked, turning into a ragged shriek that bounced off the walls again and again.

My fists clenched tighter and tighter until my whole body was shaking with the force of it.

"I hate youuuuu!"