Chapter 291 - 0291: You Picked The Wrong Protagonist

Chapter 291: Chapter 0291: You Picked The Wrong Protagonist

Elena’s Point Of View

The words hit harder than the slap. I touched my stinging cheek, feeling the heat radiating from where her palm had connected. My eyes narrowed. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. Instead, a cold, calculated stillness settled over me like frost forming on glass.

I looked at her... really looked at her, and realized she wasn’t just angry; she was desperate. Her perfectly manicured hands trembled. Her breath came in shallow, rapid bursts.

And desperation is a weakness I knew how to exploit.

I stepped forward, closing the distance she’d created. Before she could even pull her hand back to strike again, I landed two slaps of my own... back-to-back, left then right, with every bit of the frustration I’d been carrying since I met Jaxx. Every sleepless night, every moment of doubt, every second of confusion poured into those strikes.

The sound was like a whip cracking through the morning air. She stumbled, her thin heels giving way as she hit the gravel with a pathetic thud. A small cloud of dust rose around her.

I didn’t wait for her to recover. I reached down, grabbing a handful of that platinum hair... extensions, I noted with grim satisfaction, and dragged her back up until we were eye-to-eye. The strands felt synthetic between my fingers. "Don’t fucking mess with me, Barbie," I hissed, my voice a low, dangerous vibration that came from somewhere deep in my chest. "You want to play the villain? You picked the wrong protagonist."

"Let me go!" she shrieked, clawing at my wrists with those ridiculous acrylic nails. "You’re insane! My father will have you locked away in a federal penitentiary before sunset!"

"Oh, please," I mocked, tightening my grip slightly and leaning in until my nose nearly touched hers. "Your father’s money might buy you a front-row seat at charity galas, but it doesn’t buy immunity from getting dragged in the dirt when you start a fight you can’t finish. And why should I stay away from him? Give me one good reason. Because he was never yours to begin with. Men like Jaxx don’t belong to anyone, but he’s certainly not interested in a girl who thinks a pink outfit is a personality trait."

The insult landed like a physical blow. I saw it in her eyes, the way they widened with a mixture of blistering fury and absolute, soul-crushing humiliation.

"You absolute trash!" she choked out, her voice cracking as hot, angry tears finally spilled over her designer makeup, cutting tracks through her foundation. "You think you’re untouchable just because he spent a single night looking at you? You have no idea what monsters you’re playing with!"

"Well, I’m standing right here looking at one," I replied sweetly, my voice laced with venomous calm. "And honestly? She’s remarkably underwhelming."

"Shut up! Just shut your filthy mouth!" she screamed, thrashing wildly in my grip, trying to claw at my face again. "There is no way—do you hear me? There is no way on this earth he will ever truly touch you, care about you, or keep you around! You’re a dirty little secret he’ll throw away when he’s done playing dirty!"

I let out a soft, mocking chuckle that drove her completely insane. I tilted my head, looking her dead in her tear-filled, frantic eyes with a slow, devastating smirk.

"Anything that makes you sleep at night, Barbie," I whispered, the words dripping with honeyed condescension. "Though judging by how unhinged you look right now, you haven’t caught a wink of sleep since yesterday."

Her face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated murder. "You bitch! You don’t know anything! Guess what we did throughout yesterday all till early morning, huh?" I shot back, leaning in closer to deliver the psychological coup de grace, letting my voice drop to a slow, deliberate cadence. "We fused so good, so deep, that I actually had a hard time leaving the bed this morning. His hands weren’t thinking about your pathetic history, honey. They were entirely occupied with me."

For a second, all the air left her lungs. Her jaw dropped open, her eyes bulging as the brutal, graphic implication of my words short-circuited her brain. The color drained entirely from her face, leaving her looking like a ghost trapped in a Barbie box.

"You... you lying, disgusting..." she stammered, her voice pitching up into an ear-piercing shriek of sheer denial. "Shut up! Shut up! There’s no way! There is no fucking way he would ever touch someone like you like that! You’re a nobody! You’re nothing!"

She started struggling harder, her face twisted in a mask of pure hate that distorted her carefully applied makeup. She raised her hand again, a frantic, clumsy swing fueled by blind rage rather than strategy, but I caught her wrist mid-air with effortless ease. My grip was iron. I’d spent years handling heavy industrial crates and even heavier corporate egos; she was nothing compared to the weight I carried daily.

"You won’t have a second chance to do that," I said, my voice deadly calm now, the anger crystallizing into something harder and colder. I gave her a sharp shove, pushing her away from me with enough force to send her staggering backward. She nearly fell again, her arms windmilling wildly for balance as her heels caught in the gravel. "Let this be the last time you try this nonsense. You just ruined my perfect morning, and I really, really hate having my mornings ruined."

I turned my back on her, my heart still racing but my mind already moving on. The adrenaline made my hands shake slightly, but I clenched them into fists to steady myself. I wanted to go back inside, find Jaxx, and tell him his precious little "history" was currently losing her mind in the petunias. Maybe then he’d finally understand why I’d been so hesitant about diving headfirst into his psychotic world.

I took three steps when the world exploded.

BANG.

The sound was deafening, a sharp, violent crack that tore through the pristine air and shattered the morning peace. My instinct took over before my brain even had time to process; I screamed and hit the dirt, my hands clamped tightly over my head, my heart trying to beat its way straight out of my throat. Sharp gravel bit savagely into my palms and knees. The acrid, terrifying smell of gunpowder instantly filled my nostrils.

BANG. BANG.

Two more shots rang out in rapid succession. I heard screams behind me... high, shrill, and paralyzed with sheer terror. One of them might have even been mine. I forced myself to turn around, my breath coming in short, jagged gasps that burned my lungs. My entire body trembled uncontrollably.

Barbie was standing there, but she wasn’t the one who had fired. At least, not intentionally. She was clutching her right wrist, her hand dripping a sickening, bright crimson onto her immaculate pink tweed jacket. The blood spread rapidly across the expensive fabric like a macabre watercolor painting.

A small, silver snub-nosed handgun lay abandoned on the gravel a few feet away from her, thin tendrils of smoke still lazily curling from the barrel like a venomous snake. She was staring down at her mangled, bleeding hand, her eyes wide, glassy, and completely blank, her mouth frozen open in a silent, paralyzed wail that somehow seemed louder than any gunshot.

I looked from her bleeding hand to the smoking gun on the ground, and then slowly back up to her terrified, catatonic face. My brain felt like it was short-circuiting, desperately trying to compute the sheer madness of what had just transpired.

She’d brought a gun. She’d actually smuggled a firearm into a high-security estate’s garden just to threaten and murder me over a man. The sheer, terrifying absurdity of it would have been darkly funny if my ears weren’t still ringing deafeningly from the shots.

"What the fuck?!"