Chapter 266 - 0266: I’d Do Anything For You

Chapter 266: Chapter 0266: I’d Do Anything For You

Elena’s Point Of View

"How did you manage to get him to sign it?" The question hung between us, weighted with everything I couldn’t bring myself to voice. Confusion wrestled with relief in my chest, while suspicion crept along the edges of both, coiling tighter with every passing second. And beneath it all, if I was being honest with myself, lurked a thread of fear... thin but persistent, the kind that refused to be reasoned away.

Because nothing about this situation felt remotely normal. Then again, nothing about Jaxx had ever been normal, not from the very first day I’d known him, not even in the smallest, most ordinary moments we’d shared since.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he simply watched me, his expression maddeningly calm. Too calm, actually... like someone who had anticipated my every reaction before I’d even formed the thought, as though he’d already rehearsed this moment in his head a dozen times over. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, as if he found my internal struggle amusing.

Then he shrugged, the gesture so casual it bordered on careless, as though signing away an impossible obstacle was as simple as ordering coffee.

"Well... I went over and rubbed his head and he signed it."

I stared at him, my face deliberately blank as I processed what he’d just said. The absurdity of it sat there, refusing to make sense no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind. I searched his tone for sarcasm, for some hidden joke I was supposed to catch, but found nothing except maddening sincerity. Then my eyes narrowed into slits.

"Seriously?"

"Just like that," he confirmed with a single nod, his expression remaining completely straight-faced, not a flicker of doubt anywhere in it.

I held his gaze for a long moment, searching for any crack in that infuriating composure, any sign that he might be bluffing. There was none. Something in me wanted to shake the truth out of him, to demand the real story behind those absurd words, but another part of me... tired, relieved, raw from months of fighting, decided it didn’t matter enough to keep pushing. Then I rolled my eyes and smacked his shoulder with the flat of my palm.

"Stop being silly, Jaxx."

The sound of contact was light, barely more than a tap, but it shattered whatever strange tension had been coiling around us. He grinned immediately... that grin. Wide and unapologetic, the kind that had always managed to drag me backward through time without asking permission first.

For just a second... maybe two, I didn’t see the man sitting before me now. Instead, I glimpsed the boy I used to know. Reckless and annoying, too confident for his own good, always pushing boundaries just to see what would happen, always daring me to keep up with him. It startled me, how easily that version of him could still surface, as if no time had passed at all, as if the years between us had folded in on themselves.

"Missed that," he muttered under his breath, the words barely audible, as if he’d spoken them more to himself than to me.

"What?"

"Nothing." He shook his head slightly, that ghost of a smile still playing at his lips, though something behind his eyes seemed to linger on whatever thought he’d refused to share. I wanted to ask again, to pry the words loose from wherever he’d tucked them away, but something in his expression told me it wasn’t the moment.

I frowned but didn’t press him for clarification. My attention had already returned to the file in my hands, still open, still impossibly real, still bearing that crucial signature I’d never expected to see. I traced the ink with my eyes as though it might vanish if I looked away, half-convinced that blinking too long would reveal the whole thing as some elaborate trick my mind had conjured out of desperation.

"This doesn’t make sense," I said quietly, the words emerging more as a thought spoken aloud than as a statement directed at him.

"It doesn’t have to," he replied simply.

I looked up at him again, searching his face for answers, for some explanation that would make the ground beneath me feel solid again. "It does to me."

He leaned back slightly, settling into his seat while maintaining that same steady, unwavering gaze. There was something almost hypnotic about the way he watched me - patient yet purposeful, as though he had all the time in the world and intended to spend every second of it on me. It unsettled me and comforted me in equal measure, a contradiction I didn’t know how to hold.

"The most important thing here is that he signed it," he said, his tone shifting away from playfulness toward something more grounded, more serious. "It doesn’t matter what methods I used to make it happen."

I held his eyes, noticing something in their depths - something firm and unmoving, like bedrock beneath shifting sand, something that refused to be questioned or shaken. It was the same look he used to get as a boy whenever he’d made up his mind about something, right before he did exactly what he intended regardless of anyone’s objections.

"As long as he signed the papers, that’s the end goal, Bambina," he continued, his voice carrying a quiet finality.

iI swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in my throat. Because the way he said it... the certainty, the conviction, made it clear this wasn’t just about the papers anymore. It felt bigger than that, heavier somehow. Like he had already decided something far beyond this single moment, something that would ripple forward into our future, something I wasn’t sure I was ready to name. A small, nervous thrill ran through me at the thought, quickly followed by panic at how easily he could still provoke that reaction in me.

"What are you?"

The question slipped out before I could stop myself, barely more than a whisper. But he heard it. Of course he did. He seemed to hear everything I said, even the things I didn’t mean to voice, even the words I buried beneath silence, as though he’d spent years learning to read the spaces between my sentences.

He leaned forward slowly, taking his time, not rushing or forcing anything. Just closing the space between us as if that space had always belonged to him anyway. His hands found my waist, warm and firm, settling there with a certainty that suggested they knew exactly where they were meant to be.

My breath caught slightly, a tiny hitch I couldn’t quite suppress. I hated that, hated how easily he could affect me, how my body responded to his proximity before my mind had even finished processing what was happening, how traitorous my own pulse could be. I hated it, and yet some reckless part of me leaned into it anyway.

"How do you do that?" The words came out as a whisper, carrying more frustration than I’d intended to reveal.

"Do what?" His voice was low, genuinely curious, as if he truly didn’t understand the chaos he left in his wake.

"This..." I gestured vaguely between us, my hand wavering in the air as I struggled to articulate what I meant. "This thing where you just... take over everything. Where you make the impossible happen and act like it’s nothing."

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his fingers pressed lightly into my waist, applying just enough pressure to draw me a fraction closer. Not enough to trap me or make me feel cornered, just enough to remind me that I was already within his reach, had been all along, perhaps longer than either of us wanted to admit. My heartbeat climbed, loud and unmistakable, and I was certain he could feel it too.

Then he leaned in, closing the remaining distance between us until I could feel the warmth of his breath ghosting across my skin, could count the different shades of color in his eyes - flecks of gold hidden within the deep brown, details I had no business noticing at a moment like this, yet couldn’t seem to look away from.

"What am I? I’m yours... Bambina..."

The word brushed against me softly, quiet and intentional, carrying a weight that made my heart stutter in my chest.

"Only if you want it," he added, his voice dropping even lower, leaving the choice... the power, entirely in my hands.

For a second, everything in my head went silent. No thoughts. No arguments. Nothing. Just that voice, low and deliberate. That closeness, suffocating and intoxicating all at once. That feeling that I was standing too close to something dangerous and not stepping back... worse, not wanting to step back.

What the hell had gotten into this man? More importantly, what had gotten into me? I searched myself for the resistance I knew I should feel, the caution born of every wound he and others had left behind, and found it strangely, frustratingly quiet.

I blinked, forcing myself back to reality. Then I pulled back quickly, breaking whatever hold that was, severing the invisible thread pulling us together. Space. I needed space to think clearly, to remember who I was before he’d walked back into my life and rearranged everything without asking.

"This is insane," I muttered, looking away for a second, trying to steady my breathing.

"Is it?" His tone remained maddeningly calm.

"Yes."

"You don’t sound convinced."

"I am convinced," I insisted, though the words felt hollow even to my own ears, betraying me the moment they left my mouth.

"You’re lying."

I shot him a look, one that should have warned him to back off. "I am not lying."

"You are," he countered smoothly, as if he could read every thought flickering across my face like it was printed there in plain text.

"Jaxx..."

"You’re thinking about it," he said, cutting me off with infuriating certainty.

I opened my mouth to argue, to deny it completely. Then closed it. Because he wasn’t entirely wrong, and that truth sat uncomfortably in my chest, refusing to be dismissed. That annoyed me more than anything else. I shook my head slightly, trying to refocus on what mattered... the file, the divorce papers, my freedom. Not him. Not this pull between us that I couldn’t quite name, the one that had been tugging at me since the moment he’d walked back into my orbit, patient and relentless, like water wearing down stone.

"This isn’t about you."

"Everything is about me," he replied, and I could hear the hint of amusement creeping back into his voice.

I scoffed, grateful for the return to familiar territory, something easier to navigate than whatever had just passed between us. "You wish."

"I don’t wish. I know."

I stared at him, caught between exasperation and something dangerously close to affection. Then I laughed softly despite myself, the sound escaping before I could stop it, surprising even me with how genuine it felt after everything.

"You’re impossible."

"And yet..." He let the words hang in the air, unfinished. He didn’t need to finish. We both knew what he meant.

I looked down at the file again, my fingers tracing the edge of the papers. Still trying to process it. Still trying to believe it was real. The weight of months of dread seemed to hover just above the page, refusing to fully lift, as though some part of me expected the signature to dissolve the moment I trusted it completely.

"He actually signed it," I whispered, my voice barely audible.

"He did." Just like that. Simple. Certain. Final.

And something inside me... something that had been wound tight for months, maybe years, finally loosened. A breath I didn’t know I was holding slipped out, carrying with it the weight of a thousand anxieties. Before I could stop myself, before I could think about what it meant, I leaned forward and hugged him. Tight. Unexpected. Necessary. My fingers slipped into his hair without thinking, holding onto him like I needed something solid to anchor me to this moment, to make it real. For the first time in longer than I could remember, the ground beneath me felt steady.

"Thank you, Jaxx." My voice came out softer than I expected, vulnerable in a way I rarely allowed myself to be. "You don’t know what... how much this means to me."

I felt him still for half a second, as if my sudden display of affection had caught him off guard, as though he hadn’t expected me to close the distance first. Then his arms wrapped around me... firm, possessive, protective. Not letting go. I let myself stay there a moment longer than necessary, savoring a comfort I hadn’t realized I’d been starving for.

"I know," he murmured against my hair, and somehow I believed him, the words settling into me like something I’d needed to hear for longer than I cared to admit.

I pulled back slowly, reluctantly. Just enough to look at him. His eyes locked onto mine immediately, and the playfulness had vanished. Serious now. Focused. Intense in a way that made my heart skip.

"I told you I would do anything for you, Bambina." There was no teasing in his voice anymore, no playfulness or banter. Just truth, raw and unvarnished. "You just have to trust me."

My chest tightened slightly at those words. Because trust... that wasn’t something I gave easily. Not anymore. Not after everything I’d been through, every betrayal that had taught me to guard my heart like something fragile and easily shattered. But the way he said it, like it wasn’t a question, like it was already decided, like my trust was something he’d already earned and was simply waiting for me to acknowledge, made something shift inside me, some old wall cracking just slightly along its foundation. I didn’t know whether to feel frightened or grateful that he could still find the cracks at all.

"I’ll bring anyone who brings tears to your eyes to their knees," he continued, his gaze not leaving mine, burning with an intensity that stole my breath. His hand lifted slightly, brushing a strand of hair away from my face with unexpected gentleness. "They’ll worship the ground you walk on."

My breath hitched slightly. Not because of the words alone, though they were powerful enough. But because of how sure he sounded, how certain, how utterly convinced. Like this wasn’t a promise he was making. It was a fact he was stating, as immutable as gravity. I felt myself wanting to believe him, wanting it so badly that it frightened me more than anything he’d said all evening.

His thumb brushed lightly along my cheek, the touch sending electricity through my skin. Slow. Deliberate. Claiming.

"And the only tears I want on you..." His voice dropped lower now, rougher, filled with an edge that made heat pool in my stomach. My pulse picked up, thundering in my ears. "...is when I’m taking you," he murmured, his forehead almost touching mine, his breath warm against my lips, "with your legs wrapped around my waist."