Chapter 40 - 0040: You’re Not Any Different From Him

Chapter 40: Chapter 0040: You’re Not Any Different From Him

Elena’s Point Of View

"Don’t," I said, my voice sharp, almost cracking under the weight of five years of suffocating silence. "Don’t come close."

I needed to breathe. I needed space. I needed... God, I didn’t even know what I needed. Just not him. Not right now. Not this overwhelming wall of heat and dark ink staring back at me like he’d been waiting a decade for me to break.

Jaxx raised an eyebrow, amused, completely unbothered by the sharp edge in my tone. He stepped back slowly, his heavy boots making no sound on the floorboards as he leaned his muscular frame easily against the opposite wall, folding his tattooed arms over his chest.

I hated that smirk on his face... that quiet, infuriating arrogance that hadn’t aged a single day. It was the same expression he wore Ten years ago, when he had hurt me and also, right before he watched me walk out of his life and into Graham’s arms without so much as a word to stop me.

I remembered hating that silence back then too, the way he’d simply let me go as if I’d meant nothing worth fighting for. Maybe that was why some small, buried part of me still couldn’t forgive him for it.

And what was I thinking out there? Letting him kiss me like that? Pushing myself into his space in a public booth like a woman possessed?

I shouldn’t have let him get close. I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have let him usher me into this suite. He was dangerous in a way Graham had never been... unpredictable, sharp-tongued, and always five steps ahead of whatever pathetic trap I had stumbled into.

And worse, he knew how to get under my skin without even trying. He always had. Even now, standing there so infuriatingly calm, he seemed to see straight through the careful composure I’d spent years building, as if the woman I’d become since him was nothing but a costume he could strip away with a single glance.

"All men are the same," I muttered under my breath, my hands shaking as I tried to smooth down the wrinkled silk of my dress. "Manipulative, self-absorbed bastards in expensive suits."

I spun away from him, my eyes scanning the luxurious suite we’d ended up in. Black velvet drapes hung from the ceiling to the floor, dampening every sound from the club outside. The subtle gold accents on the corners of the walls, the deep leather armchairs, the faint scent of cedarwood and high-proof alcohol... it practically screamed unchecked wealth and indulgence. And yet, none of it impressed me.

It just felt like another golden cage, only dark this time. I had spent five years decorating a different kind of cage, one with Graham’s mother’s approval stamped on every curtain and every place setting, and I refused to admit that I recognized the bars so easily now.

Perhaps that recognition was the most humiliating part of all... proof that no matter how far I ran, I kept ending up somewhere gilded and airless, kept mistaking captivity for comfort.

My gaze landed on a small bar shelf built into the mahogany cabinetry near the back of the room. I stalked toward it, the sharp click of my heels echoing off the hardwood.

"Elena..." Jaxx’s voice came low, laced with a subtle warning, but I ignored him completely.

I grabbed a bottle... one with an expensive crystal stopper and a label I didn’t bother to read, and twisted the top off. Without hesitation, I brought the lip straight to my mouth and took a long, reckless gulp. The amber liquid scorched a path straight down my throat, burning like unfiltered truth.

Good. I wanted it to burn.

"Jesus," Jaxx muttered from behind me, the floorboards creaking as he finally shifted his weight. "Slow down, Bambina."

I drank again. And again. The sharp, searing pain in my stomach was a relief. It reminded me that I was still alive, that I hadn’t completely turned to ash back in Graham’s foyer while his mother handed my life over to another woman. Every swallow felt like punishment and mercy at once, a small violence I could control when nothing else in my life seemed to be mine anymore.

"You think I care?" I said, barely able to force the words through the sudden tightness in my throat. I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand, staring at the label through blurry eyes. "You think I give a single damn about anything anymore?"

"Elena..."

"He’s been sleeping with her under my roof," my voice broke out, louder now, harsher than I intended, the dam inside me cracking wide open. "With his ’cousin,’ Jaxx. His precious, fragile, golden cousin! He brought her into our house while I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, and I... I..."

I let out a bitter, dry laugh that sounded hideous to my own ears. "I was thrown out of our room. Our matrimonial bedroom! Can you believe that? He told me she needed the master suite because the stairs were too hard on her pregnancy!"

I stared down at the bottle in my hands, my knuckles white, the crystal edges biting into my palm like they might anchor me to something solid.

"How didn’t I see it?" I whispered, the rage turning inward, tearing at my insides. "The signs were everywhere. Her lipstick on his shirt collars after late meetings. The way she lingered in the kitchen in his oversized dress shirts when I woke up early. How he suddenly started locking his phone face-down on the nightstand. The fake, pitying guilt in his eyes every time I brought up seeing another specialist..."

My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated myself for how small it sounded, how much it still hurt to say aloud. I had spent months explaining away every detail, building elaborate excuses for a man who hadn’t extended me the same courtesy of doubt.

Jaxx took a slow, deliberate step forward, his hands raised slightly at his sides, his dark eyes fixed entirely on my trembling frame. "Elena, maybe you should put the bottle down..."

"What? Stop?" I sneered, turning on him with the bottle still clutched in my grip. "Shut up? Drink less? Cry prettier so I don’t ruin your furniture? Is that the protocol here, Jaxx? Should I sit down like a good little girl and wait for someone to tell me what to do next?!"

Before the liquid could touch my lips again, Jaxx moved. Fast.

He closed the distance between us in a heartbeat, his large hand wrapping around the neck of the bottle and yanking it out of my grip before I could even register his shadow over me.

"Hey!" I snapped, staggering slightly as my balance wavered. "Give it back!"

"Not happening," he said flatly, setting the bottle down on the high counter behind him with a heavy thud, well out of my reach.

He turned back to face me, his broad shoulders blocking out the ambient light of the room. He didn’t look angry. He looked at me with a cold, terrifying clarity that made my stomach drop, the kind of look that stripped away every excuse I had rehearsed on the drive over. It was as if he’d already anticipated every word I might throw at him and had long since stopped being wounded by any of it.

"You’ve always been a remarkably poor judge of character, Elena," he said softly, his voice dropping into a dark, unforgiving register. "Ten years ago you chose a spineless mother’s boy who valued a family pedigree over a woman with actual blood in her veins. And now look at you. Wandering into my club, using my mouth to push his buttons, and drowning yourself in my scotch over a man who traded you in the second his mother found a baby vessel."

The words hit me like a physical blow to the face.

The air left my lungs in a sharp, painful gasp. The sheer audacity... the sheer, cruel accuracy of what he had just said, stripped away every last layer of my defense. I felt exposed in a way I hadn’t since the day Graham’s mother sat across from me at that impossibly long dining table and calmly explained why the family needed an heir I apparently couldn’t provide. That memory alone was enough to make my chest ache all over again, the humiliation as fresh now as it had been then.

"You bastard, you’re not any different from him." I whispered, my voice trembling with a sudden, boiling fury.

"Am I wrong?" he countered, stepping closer, refusing to give me an inch.

"You bastard!" I screamed, lunging forward and bringing my right fist down hard against his chest.

He didn’t move. He didn’t flinch.

I hit him again, my fist slamming into the thick, solid muscle of his sternum, the impact stinging my own wrist. "Shut up! Just shut the hell up!" I slammed both palms against his chest, trying with everything I had left to push him back, to hurt him, to make him take it back. "You don’t know anything! You don’t get to stand there and judge me!"

Jaxx just stood there. He took every single blow, letting me strike his chest, letting me hit his shoulders, his posture unyielding as a mountain while I poured my pathetic, desperate rage into his skin. Something in his stillness only made me angrier, as though even my fury couldn’t touch him, couldn’t leave a mark on the one person I desperately needed to feel something. It was maddening, this refusal of his to break, as if he’d long ago decided that nothing I did could surprise or wound him anymore.

My fists grew weak. The alcohol, the exhaustion, the sheer humiliation of the entire night caught up to me all at once. My strikes turned into weak, useless shoves, my breath coming in jagged, dry sobs that wracked my whole body. My hands slid down his unbuttoned shirt, my forehead falling against the hard center of his chest as my knees finally threatened to give out completely.

"I hate you," I wept into his shirt, my tears soaking right into the white cotton. "I hate you so much..."

Jaxx didn’t answer with words.

His large, heavy arms came around me, wrapping firmly around my back and pulling me flush against him before I could hit the floor. One of his broad hands came up to cup the back of my head, his long fingers tangling in my hair, holding me steady against his warmth while my whole body shook with quiet, ragged sobs.

He didn’t offer fake comfort. He didn’t tell me it was going to be okay. He just held me tight enough that I couldn’t fall apart completely, and somehow that silence said more than any empty reassurance could have. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I let myself lean into someone else’s strength instead of pretending I didn’t need it.

"So what do you want, Elena?" he murmured against my hair, his deep voice vibrating through his chest right where my cheek rested.

I buried my face deeper into his shirt, clutching the fabric at his waist like a lifeline.

"I want to make him pay, Jaxx," I sobbed, the truth finally tearing out of my throat, raw and ugly. "I want to hurt him as much... and even more, as he hurt me. I want him to feel the exact taste of his own medicine. He opened our marriage... he brought her into our house and told me to get used to it... so I want to show him exactly what it means for a marriage to be opened."

I pulled back just enough to look up at him, my vision blurred with tears, my lips trembling.

"But I don’t know what to do," I choked out, a fresh wave of helplessness crashing over me. "I don’t know how to do it. I’m hopeless, Jaxx. I’m completely hopeless..."

Jaxx looked down at me, his dark eyes unreadable in the dim light, his thumb moving slowly to wipe a hot tear from my cheekbone, leaving a trail of fire behind. For a moment, something almost tender flickered across his face, gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the familiar glint of dangerous amusement. It was enough, though, that brief flash of softness, to make me wonder how much of the man I’d once loved still lived somewhere beneath all that armor.

"You’re not hopeless, Bambina," he whispered, his smirk returning - slow, wicked, and utterly relentless. "You just finally found the right man for the job."