Chapter 258 - 0258: He’s Better Than You

Chapter 258: Chapter 0258: He’s Better Than You

Graham’s Point Of View

"He isn’t my only son." The words didn’t just land... they echoed, reverberating through the space between us like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples through every certainty I’d ever held.

For a second, I thought the room had tilted. The ground beneath me seemed to shift just enough to throw everything off balance, making me question whether I was still standing upright, or whether the floor itself had decided to betray me along with everyone else in this room.

I had walked in expecting another argument about the company, about numbers and quarterly losses and my supposed failures as his successor. I had not expected this.

My eyes widened before I could stop them, betraying the shock I desperately wanted to conceal. "What?" The word came out barely above a breath, low and disbelieving. I stared at him, searching his face for anything that resembled hesitation, some flicker of uncertainty that would tell me he hadn’t meant it, that this was some cruel test I’d somehow failed to recognize. Surely a man didn’t say something like that and simply let it sit there, unexplained, unretracted.

There was none. His expression remained carved from stone, as unmoving and unreadable as it had been in every memory I had of him. I tried to recall a single instance where I had seen him falter, where some crack had shown beneath that composure, and I came up empty. Even now, delivering something that should have shattered our family, he looked untouched.

Beside me, my mother gasped. "Sebastian!" Her voice carried shock... real shock, the kind she didn’t bother hiding. The composure she usually wore like armor had cracked, revealing something rawer underneath, something I hadn’t seen in years. "How can you say that?" Her hand had risen to her throat, fingers trembling slightly against her collarbone, as though she were trying to hold herself together by sheer physical pressure.

He didn’t even look at her immediately, letting the silence stretch taut between us until it felt like it might snap and take all of us with it. When he finally spoke, his words were deliberate. "Because it’s the truth."

His tone was flat, matter-of-fact, as though he had simply stated the time or commented on the weather. The casualness of it made my skin crawl, worse somehow than if he’d shouted it. A shout I could have met with my own. This quiet certainty left me nothing to push against.

My chest tightened, constricting around something sharp and painful, like a fist closing around my ribs. "You don’t mean that," I said, louder this time, firmer, willing him to take it back, to laugh and tell me this was some twisted joke. Some part of me, some small and foolish part, still believed he might.

He turned his gaze to me, and for the first time since I’d walked into this office, I saw something else flickering in his eyes. Not just anger. Not just frustration.

Disappointment. Cold, heavy, and final. It settled over me like a shroud, pressing down until I could almost feel its weight on my shoulders. I had seen that look before, countless times across countless dinners and meetings and holidays, but never quite this pronounced, never quite so absolute.

My mother stepped forward, her heels clicking sharply against the hardwood floor, each step punctuating her growing fury. "That boy is nothing but a mistake," she said, her voice sharpening now, protective and defensive in equal measure. "You never wanted him, Sebastian. You made that very clear from the beginning. So what is this? What exactly are you saying right now?" Her hands trembled at her sides even as her voice remained steady, the discord between them betraying just how deeply this had shaken her.

My father scoffed lightly, shaking his head with the kind of dismissive gesture I’d seen him use in boardrooms when someone presented an idea he found beneath him, the same gesture that had once made grown executives shrink in their seats.

I had watched him level men twice my age with that single motion, and some bitter part of me noted that he didn’t even grant me the dignity of raising his voice.

"Whether I wanted him or not doesn’t change what he is." His tone carried the clinical detachment of someone discussing a failed investment, nothing more than numbers on a balance sheet. As if I were a line item he was reconciling rather than the son standing in front of him.

He gestured slightly in my direction, the movement casual, almost lazy, as if I were merely an object to be pointed out rather than his son standing three feet away. "Or what you are."

I felt my jaw tighten, muscles clenching so hard my teeth ached. Heat crawled up my neck, spreading until my whole face burned with humiliation and rage in equal measure. "Don’t." The word slipped out before I could stop it, sharp and warning. But he didn’t pause. He never did when he had momentum. He had built an empire on never pausing, never second-guessing, and I was beginning to understand that same relentlessness could be turned on his own blood without hesitation.

"Jaxx would never stand here," he continued, his voice gaining that cutting edge again, the one that could slice through confidence like a blade through silk, "and watch my company go under because of a woman." He said the last word with particular disdain, as if the very concept was laughable, something unworthy of a real man’s attention.

There it was again. That name. That comparison. The invisible standard I could never meet because it didn’t actually exist, just a ghost he’d conjured to haunt me with, a phantom brother built from my father’s disappointment and projected wherever I failed to measure up. I had grown up in the shadow of a name attached to no face, no memory, nothing but my father’s private mythology of the son he wished he’d had instead.

He paused, letting the silence stretch between us. Just long enough to let it sink in, to let the poison spread through my veins like something toxic. Then he added, almost conversationally, "In that aspect, he’s better than you."

That did it. My hand slammed against the table before conscious thought caught up with action. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, sharp enough to make my mother flinch beside me, her hand flying to her chest. The sting in my palm barely registered against the roar building in my ears.

"Enough!" My voice came out harder than I intended, rougher, carrying all the years of swallowed resentment, every slight I’d ever let pass without comment. Years of biting my tongue at dinner tables, of accepting his criticism as discipline, of telling myself it was simply how he showed he cared... all of it rose up at once, demanding release.

"Stop comparing me to that ..." I stopped myself for half a second, some last shred of restraint trying to hold on, trying to pull the words back before they could do more damage.

Then I finished it anyway, because what did it matter now? The damage was already done; one more wound wouldn’t change the outcome.

"That scum." The word hung there in the space between us. Ugly. Deliberate. Final. I watched my mother’s eyes close briefly, as though she could will the word back into my mouth if she only tried hard enough.

"I’m your only son," I added, my voice dropping to something quieter but no less intense, each word deliberate, each one costing me something I couldn’t name. "And that’s it. Not him. Me." I hated how much it sounded like begging, how much I needed him to simply agree.

My father didn’t react the way I expected. Didn’t react the way any normal parent would. He didn’t argue. Didn’t shout. Didn’t even look offended by my outburst. He just watched me with those cold, calculating eyes. Calm. Too calm. Like he’d been waiting for exactly this moment, this breakdown, as though my anger only confirmed something he’d suspected all along. "Then sign the papers." The words came without hesitation, without warmth, as though he were closing a business deal rather than dismantling what remained of his family.

"Restore all the damages you’ve caused." He gestured toward the documents again, that same dismissive wave of his hand, the gesture of a man used to having his demands obeyed without question.

"And I might continue seeing it that way."

Might. Not will. Might. The conditionality of it struck me like a physical blow, worse somehow than an outright refusal would have been. I let out a short, disbelieving breath that was almost a laugh. Almost. There was nothing funny about it, but laughing felt like the only alternative to screaming.

"You’re unbelievable."

"And you’re irresponsible," he countered without missing a beat, the words landing with practiced precision, as though he’d rehearsed this exchange long before I’d ever walked through the door.

"I’m not the one tearing this family apart." My hands had curled into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to leave marks.

"No," he replied immediately, leaning forward slightly, "you’re just the one dragging it down with you. There’s a difference." The distinction seemed to matter to him, as though it absolved him of something, as though semantics could rewrite what he’d just done to the people standing in his office.

My mother shook her head softly, her perfectly styled hair catching the light. She looked between us like she was trying to piece everything together and failing, her expression caught somewhere between grief and exhaustion, the toll of years spent mediating between two men who refused to yield. I could see it then, how tired she truly was, how long she must have been absorbing blows meant for both of us.

"This has gone too far," she said, her voice quieter now. Strained. The words carried the weight of someone who’d been holding things together for too long and could feel the threads finally snapping, as though she’d exhausted every reserve of patience she’d once had. She stepped closer to the desk, placing the document she had been holding down with more force than necessary. The sharp sound of paper hitting wood punctuated the tension already thick in the room.

"One of the men brought this in," she said, glancing at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read... concern mixed with something like apology, as though she already sensed this would only make things worse. "He said it was delivered personally and addressed to you. I wasn’t sure what it was, so I brought it up immediately."

I frowned slightly, my mind still half-occupied with the argument that had just unfolded, struggling to shift gears toward this new, unexpected development. "A delivery? At this hour?" Nothing about tonight made sense anymore, and this new intrusion felt like one complication too many.

"I didn’t open it," she added quickly, her hands fidgeting at her sides in a rare display of uncertainty that looked foreign on someone usually so composed. "It has your name on it. I thought you should see it first."

My eyes dropped to the envelope resting on the desk. Plain. Unremarkable. No return address, no distinguishing marks. Which somehow made it worse. I hadn’t been expecting anything... no correspondence, no packages, nothing that would arrive under cover of darkness with such deliberate anonymity. Not tonight. Not like this, not on top of everything else.

But something about it... the weight of it sitting there, innocent and yet ominous, made the air in the room feel thinner. Something about the timing, coming on the heels of everything else that had unraveled this evening, made my chest tighten with a dread I couldn’t name, a sick premonition settling low in my stomach. I reached for it slowly, as if approaching something that might bite.

My fingers felt heavier than usual as I picked it up, the paper cool and smooth beneath my touch. "This is ridiculous," I muttered under my breath, more to myself than anyone else, trying to shake off the irrational sense of foreboding that had taken root somewhere deep in my chest.

"Go on," my father said, his voice flat and devoid of sympathy. "Open it."

I shot him a look, irritation flaring despite my unease, a flicker of defiance I couldn’t quite suppress. Even now, even with everything else unraveling between us, some old instinct in me still wanted to resist whatever he told me to do.

"This has nothing to do with..."

"Open it."

The command in his tone left no room for argument. I clenched my jaw slightly, biting back the retort that rose to my lips, swallowing it along with the last of my composure.

Then tore it open. The sound of paper ripping through the quiet room felt louder than it should, violent in the stillness that had settled over us all. I pulled out the documents, my movements mechanical now. Unfolded them with hands that had begun to tremble ever so slightly, betraying the calm I tried desperately to project.

And the moment my eyes scanned the first page... the letterhead, the formal language, the names typed in cold, impersonal font, everything inside me stilled.

No. No, no... That wasn’t... This couldn’t be.

My grip loosened involuntarily, fingers going numb, as though my body had decided to reject what my mind couldn’t yet process. The papers slipped from my hand before I could stop them, falling to the floor in a soft, final sound that somehow echoed louder than my father’s voice had earlier, louder than my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.

For a second, I just stood there. Frozen. Staring. Not at the papers scattered at my feet. Not at anything in particular. Just nothing. A void where thoughts should have been, a strange and terrible emptiness that swallowed every coherent thought I tried to form. Even the argument moments ago, with all its venom and old wounds, felt suddenly distant, insignificant against whatever this new horror threatened to be.

My mother frowned beside me, her earlier frustration giving way to maternal concern. "What is it? What’s wrong?"

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because my mind had gone completely blank, wiped clean by shock, leaving only a hollow ringing in its wake, as though the world had gone silent except for that single unbearable note.

She bent down, picking the documents up carefully, her movements deliberate as her eyes began scanning the page. I watched her face as if from a great distance, seeing her expression shift in slow motion, each change registering like a separate, devastating blow.

Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. Then her expression changed. Confusion first, her brow furrowing as she tried to make sense of what she was reading. Then realization, her eyes widening slightly. Then something else. Something heavier. Something that looked almost like pity. She looked up at me slowly, her gaze searching my face for some reaction, some sign of how to proceed.

"These are divorce papers."