Chapter 35 - 0035: Tell Your Guards To Remember My Face

Chapter 35: Chapter 0035: Tell Your Guards To Remember My Face

Graham’s Point Of View

"Graham, come on! I’m carrying your child," Lillian said, her tone swinging from timid to sharp as she reached out to grab my forearm again. "You should focus more on our family, not her."

That snapped me out of whatever trance I was in.

I looked down at her hand, then up at her face. She was smiling... a tiny, triumphant little curve of her lips, while her other hand rubbed her stomach like it was a trophy she’d just won at an auction. The gesture made my stomach turn. There was nothing tender in it, nothing maternal.

It was calculation dressed up as affection, and I’d been blind to it for far too long. How many months had I let myself believe otherwise, telling myself the softness in her voice meant something real?

A slow, ugly fury spread through my chest. I yanked my arm free so hard she stumbled back a step.

"I don’t care about Elena," I lied, my voice flat, cold, and stripped of anything human. "But I do care about this family name. And I’m not about to let her drag it through the mud."

Lillian blinked, her delicate facade cracking. For a moment, something raw flickered across her features - fear, maybe, or the first real crack in her composure I’d seen in months. "What...?"

"I’m going to get her back. Talk some sense into her before she does something stupid."

"Graham!" Lillian called out, her voice pitching high and panicked as I turned on my heel.

My mother’s voice joined in right behind her, a screeching, judgmental wall of sound that I completely tuned out. "She’s nothing, Graham! Don’t ruin your future over a bitter ex-wife!"

"Ex-wife?" I paused at the threshold, my hand gripping the cold bronze handle of the front door. I looked over my shoulder, catching sight of my mother holding Lillian by the shoulders, both of them staring at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. "Elena is still my wife. And I’m going to bring her back here."

I slammed the front door shut behind me, the sound cracking through the quiet estate like a gunshot.

The night air hit my face... cold, damp, and thick with tension. I strode down the wide stone steps toward my car, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it felt structural. I couldn’t categorize what I was feeling. Panic? Anger? Pure, unadulterated humiliation?

Perhaps all three, braided together into something I had no name for. Even my footsteps sounded foreign to me, too fast, too unsteady, as if my own body had decided to panic before my mind caught up.

I slid into the driver’s seat of the Bentley, shoved the key into the ignition, and brought the engine to a roaring start. The low, mechanical hum gave me something to anchor on, but my hands were shaking against the leather steering wheel. I stared at them for a moment, almost disbelieving.

I couldn’t remember the last time my hands had betrayed me like this. Not during board meetings where fortunes hung in the balance. Not even at my father’s funeral. Only now, over her.

Where the hell did she go?

I snatched my phone off the center console, opened the tracking app, and pulled up her device’s live feed. Thank God I’d set up that shared family locator three years ago and she’d been too lazy... or too indifferent, to ever turn it off. Typical Elena. She never checked settings. Never cared about digital footprints.

It was one of the small, maddening things I’d once found endearing about her, back when everything about her had seemed endearing, before indifference crept into all the spaces where affection used to live.

The small blue icon blinked once. Twice. It was moving fast along the boulevard, then it took a sharp left and stopped dead.

I squinted at the screen, zooming in on the map pin.

"The Vesper Club?" I muttered to the dark windshield.

How the hell did she get into The Vesper? It was a private velvet-rope joint tucked into the basement of an old marble high-rise downtown. Members-only. High-stakes discreet. The kind of place where politicians bought silence and businessmen spent money they didn’t report to their wives.

Elena didn’t even like loud bars. She hated crowded rooms. None of this made sense, and the dissonance between what I knew of her and where she now stood gnawed at something deep in my gut. It was as if a stranger had stepped into my wife’s body and driven her somewhere I couldn’t follow with logic alone.

I hit the gas, the tires screeching against the wet driveway as I tore out through the iron gates.

The streetlights blurred into long streaks of yellow and white as I tore through the city. Every red light was an insult. Every car in front of me was an obstacle. My mind spun out of control, constructing grotesque scenarios.

Who was she meeting? An old college acquaintance? Some sleazy divorce attorney she’d found online? Or was she actually meeting a man?

I’m going to get myself a boyfriend.

The words tasted like ash in my mouth. I gripped the wheel until my knuckles turned white. She’d said it so casually, almost as a joke, and I’d dismissed it the way I dismissed most things she said in anger. Now the memory circled back like a blade, twisting deeper with every block I drove, until I could no longer tell if I was chasing her out of love or out of the terror of losing something I’d taken for granted.

Fifteen minutes felt like three hours. By the time I pulled into the underground valet garage of the Vesper, my suit jacket felt tight across my shoulders, my tie suffocating. A young valet in a black vest stepped forward, but I ignored him, tossing my black card onto his clipboard before he could open his mouth.

"Sinclair," I said, not waiting for him to check the system. "Park it."

I bypassed the main entrance, taking the private elevator straight down to the subterranean lounge. The doors slid open to reveal dimmed glass chandeliers, heavy crimson velvet drapery, and a thick haze of low jazz mixed with the low hum of laughter, ice clinking in crystal, and hushed, expensive sins.

I didn’t care about the atmosphere. I didn’t care about the subtle nod the head bouncer gave me when he recognized my face. All of it felt distant, like static behind glass, while the only thing sharpening into focus was the need to find her.

I moved past the primary bar, my eyes sweeping the private plush booths lining the back wall.

Then I stopped. My lungs locked up.

She was sitting in the corner booth, half-hidden by a sweeping velvet curtain. Her legs were crossed, one black heel dangling lazily from her toe as she tilted her head back, sipping dark liquor from a lowball glass. Her hair was swept over one shoulder, exposing the pale, vulnerable line of her neck.

I hadn’t seen her look this relaxed in years... not with me, not at home, not anywhere I’d been present. The realization struck harder than I expected, a quiet devastation beneath the roar of jealousy already building in my chest.

And right beside her sat a man.

He had dark hair, slightly messy, and a white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing heavy black ink tracing down his tendons. Unbuttoned at the collar. No tie. Casual. Dangerous. He wasn’t just sitting near her... he was crowding her space, leaning in so close his mouth was practically against her ear.

And Elena... Elena was laughing.

It wasn’t that tight, polite smile she used at my firm’s annual galas. It wasn’t the tired, resigned nod she gave my mother across the dinner table. It was real. Throat warm. Vibrant. I felt something inside me crack at the sound of it, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d earned a laugh like that from her.

When had I last made her feel light, unburdened, free enough to sound like that? I couldn’t recall a single instance, and the absence gutted me more than the sight of the stranger beside her.

I stepped forward, every muscle in my legs feeling heavy, like I was walking underwater.

I saw him reach out his hand to touch her glass. She pulled it back teasingly, saying something that made his mouth curve into a lazy, arrogant smirk. He reached again... not for the glass this time, but for her chin. His fingers caught her jawline, tilting her face toward his.

She didn’t pull away.

My heart didn’t just break; it felt like someone had driven a cold iron spike right through the center of my chest.

She leaned in. And then she kissed him.

It wasn’t a quick peck. It wasn’t a mistake. She slammed her mouth against his with a raw, desperate intensity that I hadn’t seen from her in years. My mind scrambled backward through a decade of memory, searching for the last time she’d kissed me like that, and coming up empty. Somewhere along the way I had stopped noticing the absence of that hunger between us, too consumed with work, with image, with everything except her.

My vision went entirely red around the edges. I couldn’t move. I was pinned to the parquet floor, watching my wife... the woman who had slept in my bed for years, the woman who had cried on my chest, the woman whose name was etched next to mine on legal deeds, throw her arms around a stranger’s neck.

I watched his hand move.

He didn’t just hold her. His large, tattooed hand slid down her back, trailing over the dark fabric of her dress, gripping her waist possessively before sliding lower, pushing up the hem of her silk skirt to rest heavy and warm on her bare thigh. His fingers dug into her skin, pulling her body flush against his chest right there in the booth, behind a curtain that wasn’t even fully drawn.

And she let him. She arched into it, her fingers tangling in his dark hair, pulling him deeper into the kiss, her mouth parting as she drank him in like she was dying of thirst.

I couldn’t see his face clearly in the shadow of the booth, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t give a damn who he was. All I saw was his hand on her skin. His mouth on her lips. Her body surrendering to a man who wasn’t me.

No. No, no, no.

The rage boiled over, hot and violent, erasing every drop of logic left in my head.

I broke into a stride, shoving past a waiter carrying a tray of champagne flutes, sending glass shattering onto the floor. I didn’t care. I pushed through the crowd, my eyes locked on that curtain, on her bare leg hooked over his knee, on the sickening, intimate rhythm of them making out in open view.

"Elena!" I roared.

Before I could reach the wooden step of the booth, a wall of black suit fabric cut me off.

A bouncer... six-foot-four, built like a brick vault, slammed a heavy arm straight across my chest, stopping my momentum so hard my teeth rattled.

"Sir, step back," he barked, his voice flat and unyielding.

"Get your hands off me!" I snarled, shoving at his arm with both hands. "Do you have any idea who I am?!"

"Don’t care," he said, not even swaying.

"That’s my wife!" I pointed a shaking, furious finger over his shoulder at the booth, where the shadows were still merged, her hand clutching his unbuttoned shirt. "That woman right there is my wife! Move!"

A second guard stepped up, forming a physical wall between me and the alcove. "Sir, you’re causing a scene. You need to step back to the main bar or we’re removing you."

"Elena!" I yelled over the throbbing bass of the music, my voice cracking with an embarrassing, desperate fury. "Elena! Get out of there!"

Around us, the low chatter of the club began to die down. Heads turned. Eyes locked onto me... Graham Sinclair, losing his mind in a basement lounge. I could hear the hushed whispers starting, the rustle of expensive silk as women turned to watch, but none of it registered. Shame would come later, I knew, but in that moment there was only her.

Through the gap between the bouncers’ shoulders, I saw the motion in the booth shift.

They broke apart. Elena stood up, her breath coming in visible, shallow hitches, her dark berry lipstick smudged across her chin. She didn’t even look toward the noise. The man stood up right behind her, his arm dropping back down to wrap heavily, possessively around her waist, tucking her against his side as if he owned every inch of her.

He guided her toward a narrow service corridor bathed in red neon light... a back exit leading to the private alleyway.

"Elena!" I screamed, lunging forward with everything I had.

The main bouncer caught me by the lapels of my suit, shoving me backward into the edge of a high-top table. A highball glass crashed to the floor, bourbon soaking into the cuff of my trousers.

"Last warning, buddy," the guard growled in my face, his breath smelling of mint and tobacco. "Walk out on your own feet, or you go out through the kitchen in a zip-tie."

I stood there, gasping for air, my hands gripping the polished marble edge of the bar behind me to keep from falling.

My face felt cold. The blood had drained out of my head, leaving a hollow, sickening ringing in my ears. I watched the red neon glow of the hallway reflect off the wall as the dark silhouette of my wife... her hips swaying, her head resting near his shoulder, disappeared around the corner and into the night.

Something inside me had gone very quiet, the kind of stillness that comes right before something breaks beyond repair. I stood there a long moment, feeling strangely hollow, as though the version of me that had walked in through that elevator no longer existed.

"Mr. Sinclair?"

A small, slick man in a tailored grey suit stepped around the bouncers, his hands clasped nervously in front of him. The venue manager.

"I’m sorry about the security team’s posture, sir," the manager said quickly, eyeing my face with a mix of fear and professional annoyance. "But you’re disrupting the floor. We have high-profile guests tonight. I must ask you to leave."

I let out a harsh, dry laugh, dragging a trembling hand through my slicked-back hair, ruining it completely.

"Disrupting?" I muttered, my voice tight and rasping. "My wife is in your back hallway with another man. You let a married woman get taken out the back door like a piece of meat?"

"She came in on her own accord, Mr. Sinclair," the manager said plainly, not dropping his eyes. "She drank at our bar. She left with a guest. We don’t verify marital status at the door."

"She’s mine," I whispered, the words coming out small, pathetic, and bitter. Even as I said them, I wondered if they were still true, or if I’d simply lost the right to claim her the moment I stopped truly seeing her. Somewhere in the last year, I had traded the woman in front of me for spreadsheets and appearances and Lillian’s calculated softness, and only now did the cost of that trade become unbearably clear.

"That appears to be a civil matter for tomorrow morning, sir," the manager replied, stepping aside and gesturing toward the main elevator bank. "Right now, your car is waiting downstairs."

I stared down the dark corridor where she had gone, my chest heaving, the stench of spilled scotch rising from the floor.

"She’s coming back," I bit out, my jaw locked so tight the muscle twitched beneath my skin.

"Sir?" the manager asked.

"Tell your guards to remember my face," I said, leaning in until I was inches from his nervous eyes. "Because when I find out who he is, I’m buying this entire building just to tear it down."