Chapter 298 - 0298: I Don’t Want To See You Again, Jaxx

Chapter 298: Chapter 0298: I Don’t Want To See You Again, Jaxx

Elena’s Point of View

I gestured wildly toward the door, toward the lobby where the ghosts of my past had just been standing, their voices still echoing in my ears. "Did you come to me just to get back at them? Was I just a convenient tool for your revenge? A way to take the one thing Graham actually managed to hold onto for a few years? Is that it?"

My voice broke on the last word, and I hated myself for it. I hated that he could still affect me this way, that despite everything, some part of me desperately wanted him to deny it all, to produce some explanation that would make the ground stop shifting beneath my feet.

The office felt like it was shrinking, the glass walls pressing in until I could barely draw a full breath. I stared at him, my vision blurring as the first hot, stinging tears finally forced their way past my lashes. My heart wasn’t just breaking; it was being incinerated, reduced to cinders and smoke, and I wondered distantly if there would be anything left of me once the fire burned itself out.

Every memory of the last few weeks... every touch, every whispered promise in the dark, every time I thought I’d finally found a man who saw me and not just a Sinclair asset, was turning to ash right before my eyes. The weight of his betrayal pressed down on my chest like a physical thing, stealing the air from my lungs.

I thought of the mornings I’d woken beside him, convinced I’d finally outrun the wreckage of my marriage, and the cruelty of that false comfort made my knees weak.

I had been so careful, so guarded after Graham, building walls I thought no one could breach, and yet here I stood, destroyed all over again, proof that even my most careful defenses had been nothing against him.

"No, Elena, please. No. Just... listen to me for one second." Jaxx’s voice came out ragged, losing that polished, lethal edge he’d used downstairs. He took a step toward me, his hands reaching out as if he could physically catch the pieces of my shattering world. The desperation in his eyes looked genuine, but I no longer trusted my ability to read him. His face, once a source of comfort, now seemed like a mask I’d never properly learned to see through.

How could I, when everything I thought I knew had been a carefully constructed lie?

"Yes, I knew. I knew you married Graham. I knew exactly who you were before I ever laid eyes on you in that bar, the night you walked up to me. But I didn’t use you to get back at them. I swear on my life, Elena, that wasn’t it. I want you just for you. Not because of the name, and certainly not because of them." He said it quietly, almost pleading, as though the force of his sincerity alone might undo the damage already done.

"Stop it!" The scream tore from somewhere deep in my chest, jagged and raw. I slapped my hands over my ears, shaking my head so hard my hair whipped across my face. The room spun around me, tilting on its axis. My stomach lurched with the vertigo of betrayal, and for one disorienting second, I thought I might actually be sick.

"Just stop lying! Every time you open your mouth, a new layer of the nightmare reveals itself. You knew. You knew I was drowning in that family, you knew what Sebastian was like, you knew Graham’s every pathetic secret because you share his blood! And you sat there? You watched me? You let me tell you about my life while you were sitting on a mountain of secrets that could have destroyed me?"

My voice cracked on the last word, the sound of my own pain almost unbearable. I thought of all those nights I’d confided in him, bared my soul to him, while he’d held back the one truth that mattered most, letting me hand him piece after piece of myself while he kept the most important piece of himself hidden.

"I was trying to protect what we had!" Jaxx stepped closer, his shadow falling over me, dark and suffocating. His jaw clenched, a muscle twitching beneath the skin. The anguish etched across his features might have moved me yesterday, but today it only fueled my rage, each flicker of pain on his face a fresh reminder of how thoroughly he’d deceived me.

"I knew the second you found out who my father was, you’d run. I knew you’d look at me and see him. Or worse, you’d see Graham. And I couldn’t let that happen, Elena. I couldn’t lose you before I even had a chance to show you I’m nothing like them." His words came fast now, almost desperate, as if speed alone could convince me of their truth.

His hands trembled slightly at his sides, the only visible crack in his composure. The vulnerability in that small gesture twisted something inside me, but I forced myself to ignore it, refusing to let old tenderness soften what needed to stay sharp.

"Protect us? We had nothing Jaxx. Nothing!" I let out a choked, hysterical laugh, my chest heaving with the effort of breathing through my rage and heartbreak. The sound was ugly, foreign to my own ears. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered how far I’d fallen from the composed CEO who’d walked into this building this morning, a woman who had believed, however briefly, that her life was finally her own.

"You didn’t protect us, Jaxx. You built a house on a graveyard and acted surprised when the ghosts showed up. Why didn’t you say anything? At the bar that we met, when I told you about my awful marriage. At the gala, at the hotel, in the garden... why didn’t you just tell me? ’Hey Elena, by the way, I’m the bastard brother your ex-husband hates.’ It would have been a hell of a lot better than finding out while your ’father’ is slapping me in my own lobby!"

The memory of Sebastian’s hand connecting with my face sent a fresh wave of humiliation through me, making my cheeks burn. I could still feel the sting, still hear the shocked gasps of my employees witnessing my degradation, and the shame of it coiled in my stomach like something alive.

"Because I knew you would have stayed away from me!" Jaxx roared back, his frustration finally snapping. He slammed his fist against the side of my bookshelf, making the awards and books rattle precariously. A framed photograph of my father tipped forward, and I watched it fall in slow motion, the glass cracking against the wood. The sound of shattering seemed to echo the destruction of everything I’d built with him, a small, violent punctuation to the ruin unfolding between us.

"I knew you’d bolt! And I didn’t want that. I couldn’t have that. I needed you to see me first. Jaxx. Just Jaxx. Not the Sinclair mistake. Not the dirty secret they tried to bury." His voice broke on the last word, revealing a vulnerability I’d never heard before.

For a fleeting moment, I glimpsed the wounded boy beneath the powerful man, the one who had spent a lifetime being someone’s inconvenient truth, but I couldn’t afford to care about that now.

I shook my head, tears finally spilling down my face in hot, messy tracks that I couldn’t control. I felt small. I felt used. I felt like the punchline of a joke that had been years in the making, and everyone was laughing except me. The humiliation was a living thing, crawling beneath my skin and making me want to shed myself entirely, to step out of this body that had been so thoroughly fooled.

"You toyed with me. You made me believe you were different. You made me feel like I was finally safe, like I wasn’t just a pawn in some billionaire’s game. But you’re no different from Graham. You’re worse. He was a coward, but you? You’re a predator. You knew the layout of the cage before you even stepped inside."

Each word tasted bitter on my tongue, but I forced them out anyway, needing him to understand the depth of his betrayal. I needed him to feel even a fraction of the pain that was tearing me apart from the inside out, to carry even a sliver of this devastation himself.

"That’s not fair, and you know it." His voice came out in a hiss, his eyes pleading with an intensity that made my stomach clench. I saw the hurt flash across his face, saw the way my words landed like physical blows, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Some distant part of me registered that I was hurting him too, and found it did nothing to loosen the grip of my own agony.

"Fair?" I stepped toward him, my finger trembling as I jabbed it into his chest, feeling the rapid thud of his heartbeat beneath my fingertip. The warmth of him seeped through his shirt, a reminder of all the times I’d pressed my palm there, feeling safe and cherished. That memory only stoked my fury higher, turning tenderness into something closer to rage.

"You want to talk about fair? I spent five years being told I was ’less than’ because I couldn’t give that family an heir. I spent five years being gaslit and cheated on, being made to feel like I was the problem, like I was broken. And then you show up, the ’mysterious savior,’ and it turns out you’re just the other half of the coin? I don’t ever want to see you again, Jaxx. I want you out of my office, out of my building, and out of my life."