Chapter 253 - 0253: You Stupid Son

Chapter 253: Chapter 0253: You Stupid Son

Graham’s Point Of View

I was still sitting in my office long after Lillian left.

Same high-backed leather chair. Same heavy mahogany desk. Same damn suffocating silence that had been sitting in the room with me for hours like a tenant that refused to pay rent.

The city lights spilled in through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall behind me, stretching across the polished dark wood floor in long, amber streaks. They touched the edge of my rug, stopping just short of my leather shoes like they knew better than to come any closer... like even the light could sense the black mood hanging over me.

My fingers tapped once against the edge of the desk.

Tap.

Then again. Tap.

The rhythm felt hollow, useless, echoing in the vast, empty room. Then I stopped. The quiet wasn’t helping. It pressed heavily against my temples, turning my thoughts into a loud, frantic roar. It made everything I was desperately trying not to think about completely impossible to ignore.

Nothing was helping.

Not the financial files open in front of me, their printed words blurring into meaningless black shapes. Not the crystal tumbler resting to my right, the top-shelf scotch sitting untouched while the ice melted down into lukewarm, diluted amber. Not even the fact that I had been staring at the exact same page for the last twenty minutes without digesting a single line. The same paragraph. The same three sentences that might as well have been written in ancient hieroglyphics.

My phone rang.

I didn’t move.

Let it ring.

Whoever it was could go to hell. The world could wait. The board could wait. Everything could wait because I was entirely done dealing with another human being today.

If it was important, they would call back.

The shrill vibration cut through the quiet again. Persistent. Sharp. Annoying as hell against the glass desk pad.

I exhaled a long, heavy breath and leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking loudly under my weight. I stared up at the high ceiling for a few seconds, counting the small recessed spotlight bulbs, before finally reaching out for the device. My arm felt heavier than lead.

The screen lit up in my palm, blindingly bright in the dim, shadowed office.

Dad.

I let out a low, bitter sigh.

Of course.

Because clearly today wasn’t finished tearing meat off my bones just yet. The universe had decided I hadn’t suffered enough, hadn’t been backed into a tight enough corner. One more thing. There was always one more damn thing.

I let it vibrate once more. Twice. Three times. Each buzz felt like a physical slap against my knuckles.

I swiped the screen and brought the phone to my ear.

"Hello..."

"GRAHAM! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

I pulled the receiver an inch away from my ear, wincing as the raw volume rattled the speaker. Same booming voice. Same theatrical rage. Same grand entrance, as if every phone call were a dramatic cross-examination in a capital murder trial. I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a slow breath to gather whatever fragile thread of patience I had left.

"I’ve done nothing, father."

Silence stretched across the line. The heavy, dangerous kind of silence that usually arrived ten seconds before a hurricane hit land.

"Shut your mouth and stop telling me blatant lies!" His words cracked through the tiny speaker like a leather whip.

I rubbed my thumb over my temple, feeling a sharp, pounding tension building directly behind my eye sockets. Here we go. The exact same script we had performed a hundred times since I was old enough to stand on my own two feet.

"Father..."

"Do not interrupt me!" The command carried fifty years of unyielding, aristocratic authority.

I dropped my hand back down to the mahogany, my fingers spreading flat against the cool, dark wood. Some battles simply weren’t worth fighting when the old man had blood in his eyes.

"I’m not lying to you," I said quietly.

"Oh, you’re not lying?" His tone dripped with thick, dramatic disbelief. "You have the nerve to sit there and tell me you aren’t lying?"

"No. I’m not."

"Then explain to me why I am getting emergency calls tonight... calls, Graham, from high-level people who shouldn’t even know your personal cell number, let alone your damn name in this context!" Each word struck like a heavy wooden gavel hitting a courtroom desk.

I leaned forward slightly, my arm resting on the edge of the desk, my interest finally piqued despite the bone-deep exhaustion weighing down my limbs.

"What context?"

"Do not play stupid with me, boy!"

"I’m not playing anything," I kept my voice flat, dangerously level, refusing to give him the satisfaction of matching his screaming. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Then get your ass over to the Estate."

I went completely still, my posture straightening in the chair. Now that caught my attention. He never summoned me to the main house. Not at night. Not in years.

"Now," his voice dropped down an octave, shedding the loud volume but gaining a lethal, suffocating weight. It was colder than I had heard it in months. "I am not discussing this filth over an unencrypted phone line."

I clenched my jaw so tight my back teeth ached, quickly weighing my options and finding every single one of them equally miserable. "Whatever this is, it can wait until morning. I have meetings at eight."

"No, it cannot wait," he snapped, leaving zero space for negotiation.

"I have work..."

"You have a catastrophic problem!" The words cut straight through my excuse, sharp and final. "And you will get in your car and drive here right now before I come to your office and drag you out by your collar."

I leaned my head back against the headboard of the chair, exhaling a ragged breath toward the ceiling. This nightmare of a day just refused to die. "Fine."

"Don’t you dare ’fine’ me, Graham!" he barked.

"Then what the hell do you want me to say?"

"I want you to start telling the damn truth for once in your life!"

I let out a short, dry breath, feeling the crushing weight of his accusation hanging in the air between us. "I’ve told you the truth."

"Come here and say that to my face," he said, his tone dropping down into something pitch-black and dangerous.

The line went dead with a sharp click.

I sat there staring at the black screen for a few seconds, the absolute silence on the other end somehow ringing louder than his shouting had been. I let my head fall back, closing my eyes against the harsh glare of the ceiling lights above.

"This is going to be a long night," I muttered to the empty room.

First Lillian, with her tears, her demands, and whatever toxic mess she had dragged into my sanctuary. Now my father blowing up my phone like the company was burning to the ground.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I pushed myself up from the leather chair, my joints stiff from sitting still for so long. I snatched my car keys off the desk without bothering to look down at the open folders I had been pretending to analyze. The numbers had blurred together hours ago anyway.

They could sit there. The whole damn company could sit there. Clearly, none of it mattered tonight, not when the old man decided to snap his fingers and summon me like an obedient, disgraced child.

The high-ceilinged hallway outside my corner office stretched out before me, long, cold, and entirely empty.

Too quiet.

The kind of heavy, oppressive silence that made every single one of your footsteps sound twice as loud as it actually was, each leather sole striking the polished marble floor like a public announcement of disaster.

I walked straight through the corridor, my stride long and rigid. I didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, completely ignoring the few late-night administrative staff members still lingering at their cubicles. The second my shadow crossed their glass walls, they immediately buried their faces in their work, frantically typing or shuffling paper to avoid making eye contact.

Smart.

Very smart.

They had spent years learning how to read the warning signs on my face... the hard set of my jaw, the sharp, aggressive pace of my stride, the dangerous edge in my eyes that meant speaking to me right now was a career-ending risk.

By the time I took the private elevator down to the underground garage, my patience was hanging by a single frayed thread. I unlocked the sedan with a double-click of the fob and pulled the heavy driver-side door open, sliding into the leather seat and slamming it shut behind me with unnecessary force. The booming sound echoed sharply through the cavernous concrete garage, offering a brief, satisfying release.

The engine roared to life with a deep, guttural hum.

I gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel for a long moment before pulling out of the stall, my knuckles turning white against the dark material. The familiar grip did absolutely nothing to soothe the tight, burning knot coiled tightly between my shoulder blades.

The drive across the city to the Estate felt twice as long as it usually did.

It wasn’t because of the roads.

At this hour, the streets were mostly clear—just the occasional yellow cab or delivery truck sweeping past in the opposite lane, their bright headlights cutting long beams through the gathering night mist. It felt longer because my mind refused to shut down, refusing to grant me even ten seconds of quiet clarity.

Calls.

Context.

What exact piece of news had leaked out? How much did my father actually know, and how much of that phone call was just him fishing for a confession?

And more importantly... who had opened their mouth? Who had been stupid enough, or bold enough, to drop my name into a conversation with the old man?

I tightened my hands on the wheel until the leather groaned under the pressure. This entire situation was an absurd, dramatic waste of time. Whatever fire had started, I could have extinguished it quietly, surgically, the exact same way I managed every other crisis in my life.

It should have been handled quietly.

But no. Instead, I was driving through the night, forced to walk into that massive mausoleum of a house and defend my reputation against vague accusations I didn’t even fully understand yet. Now I had to stand there and take whatever self-righteous rage he had spent the last hour building up.

A short, humorless laugh escaped my throat, sounding raw and bitter in the quiet cabin of the car.

"This is ridiculous."

The massive wrought-iron gates of the Sinclair Estate loomed up ahead through the fog.

Tall, sharp, and ridiculously imposing... unnecessarily dramatic, just like every single other thing associated with my family name.

The gates began to swing open automatically as my car approached, the hidden security sensors picking up my transponder before I had even touched the brakes. Of course they did. The Sinclair Estate never missed a detail, never failed to remind you of its immense power, its flawless precision, its absolute control over every single square inch of ground it claimed.

I drove straight through the entrance without slowing down, the tires crushing the fine white gravel of the winding driveway as I pulled up to the front portico of the main house. The second I stepped out of the warm car, the night air hit my skin like an ice bath... heavy here, colder than the rest of the city, carrying the faint, suffocating smell of damp earth, old money, and older secrets. Or maybe that feeling wasn’t in the air at all; maybe it was just the knot of dread twisting tighter and tighter in my gut with every breath I took.

I didn’t waste a second lingering on the driveway.

I marched straight up the grand stone steps to the heavy oak double doors. Inside.

The house staff hovering in the grand foyer barely dared to glance in my direction as I swept past the marble pillars. Their stiff, carefully studied indifference told me everything I needed to know. They knew something had gone horribly wrong. Or, at the very least, they knew the master of the house was in a murderous mood and had enough sense to make themselves scarce, fading into the shadows of the long hallways to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

Good. I had zero energy for fake pleasantries, for domestic staff bowing, or for the careful, artificial dance of propriety that usually governed this damned house.

I walked directly toward his private wing, my heavy leather soles clicking sharply against the polished checkered floorboards. I didn’t knock on his study door. I didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. I reached out, grabbed the heavy brass handle, and threw the door open, my shoulders square, my mouth already opening to demand what the hell this was all about—

A sharp, violent crack split the air.

CRACK!

A searing, blinding pain exploded across the left side of my face as a heavy palm connected violently with my cheekbone.

The sheer physical force of the strike snapped my head sideways, the sudden whiplash jerking my neck as bright white stars burst across my field of vision. My knees buckled for a split second, my boots sliding across the Persian rug as I stumbled back against the doorframe to keep from hitting the floor.

For two agonizing seconds, the entire world went dead silent. The room narrowed down to the high-pitched ringing in my ears and the fierce, burning heat spreading across my face like liquid fire.

I slowly forced my head back around, my jaw clamping shut so hard my teeth ground together, fighting down both the blinding physical pain and the sudden, murderous surge of rage tearing through my chest.

My father stood inches away from me, his heavy hand still hovering in the air between us, his fingers trembling with violent, unrestrained adrenaline. His chest rose and fell in ragged, gasping hitches. Those eyes... the exact same icy steel-gray as my own, were wide, bloodshot, burning with a raw, unhinged fury I had rarely seen from him, even in his worst moments. The deep color had flushed all the way up his neck, thick blue veins bulging dangerously at his temples.

And right then, a cold, heavy realization settled into the bottom of my stomach like a block of lead.

Whatever phone call he had received tonight... whatever mess had finally broken out into the open...

It was a hundred times worse than I had ever imagined.

I barely had time to blink, to clear the spots from my vision, to draw a breath and demand an explanation, before his arm whipped back, and his hand came crashing down toward my face a second time.

"You miserable, arrogant fool!" my father roared, his voice cracking with sheer rage as the second blow caught me squarely across the jaw, sending a sharp, copper taste of blood spilling over my tongue. "Look at me when I am speaking to you!"

I absorbed the hit, taking a half-step back to plant my boots firmly on the floor. I wiped a thin smear of blood from the corner of my lip with the back of my hand, staring at him through narrowed, icy eyes.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" I growled, my voice low, dangerous, vibrating with a dark heat of its own. "You don’t lay your hands on me. Not anymore."

"I will beat some sense into you if it’s the last thing I do on this earth!" he spat, taking a menacing step toward me, his chest heaving under his tailored vest. "Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you have the slightest clue what kind of ruin you’ve brought to this family’s name tonight?"

"I haven’t brought ruin to anything!" I snapped back, stepping directly into his space, refusing to give an inch of ground. "I run a multi-billion dollar firm, Father! I handle crises every single day of my life! If there is a problem, tell me what it is instead of losing your mind like a lunatic!"

"A lunatic?" He let out a harsh, barking laugh that sounded completely unhinged. He turned sharply, pacing toward his heavy mahogany desk, his hands gesturing wildly in the air before he slammed a stack of printout papers down against the wood with a deafening thud. "You call me a lunatic? The entire board is calling me, Graham! The shareholders! The press is already sniffing around the perimeter of our offices! The rumors are spreading through every firm in the city like a wildfire!"

My eyes locked onto the papers sitting on the desk. "What rumors?"

"Don’t play the innocent victim with me!" he screamed, whirling back around to point a trembling, furious finger straight at my chest. "Elena left you! She walked out of the house, she signed the preliminary separation papers, and word has already leaked that you’ve been stashing a pregnant mistress in a luxury penthouse on the company’s dime for two damn years!"

The air left my lungs in a sharp, cold gasp. The room seemed to tilt slightly on its axis.

"Who told you that?" I asked, my voice dropping down into a flat, deadly whisper.

"It doesn’t matter who told me!" he yelled, his face turning an even deeper, uglier shade of red. "What matters is that it’s true! Is it true, Graham? Answer me! Did you parade some cheap, ambitious baseline mistress into your life while your wife walked out the front door?"

"Lillian is carrying my child," I ground out through clenched teeth, my fists balled so tightly at my sides that my nails bit into my palms.

"I don’t give a damn about her or the bastard in her stomach!" my father roared, slamming his fist down onto the desk again, making the heavy crystal decanters rattle against the tray.

"My marriage is my business!" I shouted, the restraint finally snapping inside me, my own voice echoing violently off the high wood-paneled walls. "Whatever happens between Elena and me stays between us! I built this company into what it is today! I tripled our revenue! I don’t answer to you about my personal life!"

"You answer to this family!" he bellowed back, stepping right up to me until we were chest-to-chest, the heat radiating off him suffocating. "You answer to the board! You think those investors give a damn about your quarterly projections when your personal life is a pathetic, scandalous soap opera?"

I stood there, my chest heaving, the metallic taste of blood heavy in my mouth.

"She left," I muttered, the words feeling ash-cold on my tongue. "She gave me divorce papers."

"And what did you do?" my father demanded, his gray eyes burning into mine with pure contempt. "Did you fix it? Did you get on your knees and beg her to stay? Did you do whatever it took to keep this family from becoming a laughingstock?"

"I tore them up," I said flatly.

My father stared at me for three long, agonizing seconds. Then, a slow, terrifying smile pulled at his thin lips, a smile entirely void of warmth or humor.

"You tore them up," he repeated quietly, his voice dangerously soft now. "You think tearing up a piece of paper fixes the fact that she’s gone?"

"It doesn’t matter." I spat as I ran my fingers through my hair in sheer panic, while trying to maintain a composed front in the presence of my father.

Then before I could utter another word, a hand flew so fast acrossed my face, it lurred out my vision, I stumbled back a little as I stare at my father in shock. He had hit me... again, twice in the space of ten minutes.

"It does matter, you stupid son."