Chapter 296 - 0296: Father Be Dammed!

Chapter 296: Chapter 0296: Father Be Dammed!

Elena’s Point Of View

The lobby of my headquarters, usually a place where I felt in total control of every moving part, had transformed into a theater of the surreal. My heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs, a staccato beat that made my ears ring and my vision blur at the edges.

Nothing about this moment felt real, and yet every detail seemed etched too sharply, too permanently, into my mind. I looked at Sebastian, whose face had become a map of terror and fury, every line etched deep with emotions he could barely contain.

Then I glanced up at Jaxx, whose profile appeared carved from a block of dark marble, beautiful and terrifying in its absolute stillness. I had seen him angry before, had seen him cold and calculating in boardrooms where lesser men crumbled under his gaze, but this was different. This was something ancient and unyielding, something that made me question how well I truly knew the man I’d fallen for.

The silence in the room grew so thick you could have choked on it. My employees stood frozen like statues, some holding their breath until their faces flushed, others pretending to be absorbed in silent keyboards while their eyes remained glued to the explosion happening in the center of the room.

I could feel their collective anxiety pressing against my skin like a physical weight, and some distant, rational part of my brain registered that I would have to deal with the fallout of this later, the whispers, the rumors, the inevitable unraveling of my carefully constructed professional image.

"Jaxx..." The whisper escaped my lips, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else entirely, someone smaller, more fragile, someone I didn’t recognize. My head spun as a dozen impossible scenarios collided in my brain like a multi-car pileup on a foggy highway. I grasped for an explanation, any explanation, that would make the ground beneath me feel solid again.

None of it made sense. Not the gun in the garden, not the way the Sinclairs looked like they’d just glimpsed the reaper himself, and certainly not the way Jaxx held me like I was the only fixed point in a crumbling universe. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, to wake up from whatever fever dream I’d stumbled into, but the ache in my chest told me this was painfully, irrevocably real.

I tugged at his arm, my fingers digging into the expensive fabric of his jacket, feeling the solid muscle beneath, muscle that didn’t so much as twitch under my grip. "Jaxx! What the hell is going on? How do they know you?"

Jaxx didn’t even flinch. He didn’t look away from Sebastian, didn’t acknowledge my desperate plea with so much as a flicker of his eyes. He just tightened his arm around my waist, pulling me so flush against his side that I could feel the low, dangerous hum of his breathing, the controlled fury radiating from his body like heat from a furnace.

I had the strange, disorienting sensation of being both protected and utterly shut out, held close while being denied the one thing I desperately needed: the truth. When he finally spoke, his voice was ice over steel. "I already told you, Elena. They are not important. They’re just ghosts from a past I burned down years ago."

"Not important?" Sebastian roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of indignation and sheer, unadulterated fear that made him sound almost pathetic. He took a staggering step forward, his expensive shoes squeaking against the polished marble floor. His finger trembled as he pointed it at Jaxx’s chest, the gesture both accusatory and somehow defensive. "I am your father, you bastard! You show up here, after all this time, protecting this... this woman?"

The air left my lungs in a sharp, audible wheeze. It sounded like there was a megaphone shoved down my throat, amplifying my shock for everyone in the lobby to hear. "Fa... father?!" The word tasted foreign on my tongue, impossible, like a sentence spoken in a language I didn’t understand but somehow still comprehended the horror of.

I stared at Jaxx, searching desperately for any flicker of resemblance, any hint that would make this nightmare make sense. I studied Sebastian’s soft, entitled face, his weak chin that had always reminded me of uncooked dough, and those calculating, cowardly eyes that had looked at me with such disdain at family gatherings. I remembered those gatherings now with a sick, lurching clarity, remembered sitting across from this man at holiday dinners, never once suspecting the monstrous secret he carried.

Then I looked at Jaxx, the sharp, predatory line of his jaw, the sheer, overwhelming power in his stance, and the eyes that looked like they had witnessed things Sebastian couldn’t imagine in his worst nightmares.

There was nothing. No similarity. Not a single drop of shared DNA seemed possible between these two men who stood before me like opposing forces of nature. One radiated weakness disguised as authority, and the other wore devastating power like a second skin, as natural to him as breathing.

A sharp, hysterical chuckle escaped my throat, the sound bouncing off the glass walls of the lobby and echoing back at me mockingly. "Come off it, people. This has to be a joke, right? A very, very expensive, very unfunny joke." I heard the desperation creeping into my voice, making it rise half an octave, betraying the panic I was fighting so hard to contain. "It’s not April Fool’s Day, is it, Jaxx? Did you hire these two to put on a show because I was stressed about the Eastern branch?"

I looked at Jaxx, desperate for him to laugh, to roll his eyes, to tell me that this was all some bizarre social experiment or an elaborate prank, desperate for the ground to stop tilting beneath my feet. But Jaxx didn’t respond. He didn’t even blink. He just reached up with his free hand and rubbed the top of my head, a grounding, almost possessive gesture that felt like a claim of ownership.

The tenderness of it, contrasted with the violence simmering in the air, made my chest tighten with an emotion I couldn’t name, something caught between gratitude and dread.

Sebastian’s face went from purple to a sickly, mottled grey that reminded me of spoiled meat. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the air conditioning. "What are you doing with her, Jaxx? Answer me!" His voice climbed higher, edged with hysteria. "She’s your brother’s wife! You’re standing there in public, flaunting yourself with Graham’s wife!"

"Ex-wife." Jaxx cut him off, the word delivered like a bullet, sharp, fast, and final. He leaned forward just a fraction, and I felt the shift in his body, the coiling of muscle preparing for a strike. His voice dropped into a register that made the hair on my arms stand up and my skin prickle with goosebumps. "You forgot that part, Sebastian. Ex-wife. She doesn’t belong to your pathetic bloodline anymore. She never did."

The possessiveness in his tone sent a shiver down my spine, and I wasn’t sure if it was fear or something else entirely, something that made my pulse quicken for reasons that had nothing to do with the confrontation unfolding around us. Even now, even with chaos erupting around me, some traitorous part of me responded to the claim in his voice, to the certainty with which he declared me his.

Sebastian looked like he was about to have a genuine cardiac event right there on my polished marble floor. He clutched his chest dramatically, his weathered hand pressing against the fabric of his expensive suit. His eyes darted to me with a venom that made my blood run cold, the hatred in them so pure it seemed to radiate like heat.

Then, he jabbed his finger toward me again, the gesture trembling with rage, his voice shrill and breaking. "You sly, calculating witch! So you knew? You knew who he was and you played both brothers?" Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke, his face turning an alarming shade of crimson. "You spent years in our house, eating our food, using our name, all while you had your hooks in the brother we cast out? You whore, you..."

"Shut it, old man," Jaxx hissed, the sound so quiet, so lethal, that Sebastian actually recoiled as if he’d been struck. I felt Jaxx’s body tense beside me, every muscle coiled like a predator ready to strike. "Shut your mouth before I decide to cut out your tongue and feed it to you."

His voice dropped even lower, each word enunciated with deadly precision. "How dare you speak to her like that? In my presence? How dare you think your mouth is worthy of uttering her name, let alone an insult?"

"I am your father!" Sebastian screamed, his voice breaking with desperation, his composure, already fragile, shattering completely. "You can’t talk to me like that! I gave you life! I gave you..."

Jaxx chuckled, a dark, hollow sound that didn’t reach his eyes, which remained cold and empty as a winter sky. The laugh sent shivers down my spine, and I saw Sebastian’s face pale at the sound, as though he recognized something in that laugh that terrified him more than any shout could have. "You are not my father. My father died thirty-two years ago, the moment he chose his pride over his blood." Jaxx’s jaw tightened, a muscle twitching beneath his skin. "You’re just a man who shares a surname I’ve spent a lifetime making irrelevant."

Matilda, who had been hovering in the background like a specter of failed elegance, suddenly shrieked, her carefully maintained facade crumbling to reveal the ugly desperation beneath. "He is your father! He is the head of the Sinclair family, and you dare take the side of that... that cheap, barren thing over your own flesh and blood?"

The word "barren" hung in the air like poison. I felt my stomach clench, old wounds tearing open, wounds I thought had scarred over years ago but now bled fresh and raw under the fluorescent lobby lights.

It happened so fast I didn’t even see his arm move.

Crack.

The sound was like a whip snapping in a small room. Matilda’s head jerked back violently, her perfectly coiffed hair coming loose from its pins. She collapsed, hitting the floor flat on her back for the second time today. The lobby went deathly silent. Even the distant hum of the air conditioning seemed to fade, as though the building itself were holding its breath.

I stared, my mouth hanging open, my hands flying to my own face in shock. My heart hammered against my ribs. Jaxx hadn’t even looked like he’d exerted himself. He stood there, his hand still slightly raised, his chest rising and falling with controlled breaths, his expression completely void of remorse, as though striking down his own stepmother cost him nothing at all.

"Jaxx!" I gasped, grabbing his arm, trying to pull him back, though some small, shameful part of me understood the fury that had driven his hand, understood it even as it frightened me. His muscles were rigid beneath my fingers, unyielding as stone.

But Jaxx stepped forward, looming over the woman sprawled on the floor. Matilda whimpered, her hand pressed to her reddening cheek, tears streaming down her face and smearing her expensive makeup. "You still haven’t learned your lesson, Matilda."

His voice was eerily calm now, which somehow made it more terrifying. "I told you years ago that if you ever used that tone with someone I cared about, there would be consequences. It seems you need a reminder."

He turned his gaze back to Sebastian, who was standing over his wife, trembling so hard his knees were knocking together. The older man’s face had gone from red to ashen, all the bluster drained from him, leaving behind only a frightened old man clinging to the wreckage of his own authority. Jaxx’s eyes were like two pits of charcoal, glowing with a slow, steady heat that promised destruction.

"Now get your wife and leave. Right now," Jaxx commanded, the authority in his voice absolute. It wasn’t the authority of a businessman, but of a ruler, someone born to command and destroy in equal measure. "I am going to say this once, and I want you to hear it through the cowardice currently clogging your ears."

He paused, letting the words sink in, watching Sebastian’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. "If I see any of you, and I mean any of you, including that weak, sniveling coward you call a son anywhere near Elena, father be damned, I will deal with you. I won’t just take your investors. I won’t just ruin your deals."

His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried across the entire lobby. "I will dismantle everything you are until there isn’t enough of the Sinclair name left to put on a tombstone."

He stepped closer to Sebastian, lowering his head until they were inches apart. I could see Sebastian shaking, could smell the fear rolling off him in waves. "She is the only reason you are still standing in this lobby instead of being hauled out in a bag. Don’t test my patience again."

Jaxx straightened his jacket, his movements calm, almost bored, as he turned back to me and tucked me firmly under his arm again. His touch was gentle despite the violence that had just erupted from him, and I felt the contrast keenly, the way he could be so brutal one moment and so protective the next, as though he contained two entirely separate men within the same skin.

He looked at the two broken people cowering on my floor with a look of pure, unadulterated coldness, as if they were insects beneath his notice, unworthy of even the energy it would take to despise them properly.

"Now out!" The command echoed through the lobby like a final judgment, and for a long moment, no one in the room dared to breathe.