Chapter 60 - 0060: The Bastard Is Back In Town?

Chapter 60: Chapter 0060: The Bastard Is Back In Town?

Graham’s Point Of View

Matilda gasped in outrage. "Graham! How dare you speak to the mother of your unborn child like that?!"

"Shut up, Mother!" I snapped, turning my furious glare onto my mother. "You’ve fueled this fire since the day I brought Lillian through the door! If I hear one more insult directed at my wife at this table, I will strip your allowance and ban you from the estate for a month! Test me!"

Silence crashed over the room like a thunderbolt.

My mother’s face went completely pale, her jaw hanging open in utter disbelief, as though I’d struck her physically rather than with words. She opened her mouth as if to retaliate, then closed it again, some rare flicker of self-preservation winning out over her pride.

I watched the calculation happen behind her eyes, the familiar war between her wounded ego and her survival instincts, and for once, survival won. Lillian covered her mouth, soft tears finally spilling over her cheeks, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have the patience for her tears today. Some cold, exhausted part of me simply couldn’t summon the guilt I knew I was supposed to feel.

I felt, for one fleeting instant, like a stranger in my own body, watching myself become someone I no longer recognized. A better man, the man I used to be before this house swallowed him whole, would have crossed the room and taken her into his arms, would have whispered some empty comfort just to see her stop crying.

I stayed exactly where I was, rooted to the floor by something heavier than anger, something closer to despair.

I snatched my silk handkerchief from my pocket, wiped my hands, and tossed it onto my abandoned plate. The linen landed in a crumpled heap beside a plate of food I hadn’t touched, the eggs gone cold, the toast untouched since the moment this circus had begun.

"I’m going to my office," I growled, looking between the two of them with cold contempt. "Do not disturb me."

I needed the silence. Or whatever broken, twisted version of silence I could find in a mansion that had transformed from a sanctuary into a minefield disguised with crystal chandeliers and polished marble floors. Every hallway in this house now felt like enemy territory, every closed door a truce that could be broken at any moment. I used to love this house. Now I could barely stand to walk through it without feeling the walls press in on me.

I slammed the heavy oak door of my ground-floor study shut, the satisfying, heavy thud of the lock engaging sounding like a vault sealing off the outside world. My head was throbbing violently, a vice-like pressure squeezing my temples until my vision blurred at the edges.

I pressed my palm flat against the cool wood of the door for a moment, just breathing, just existing in the small mercy of being alone. For a few seconds, I let myself imagine I was anywhere else, anyone else, a man without Lillian crying in the dining room and a mother who thrived on chaos.

I dropped heavily into my leather executive chair, leaning back and raking both hands over my face, resting my knuckles against the bridge of my nose. For a long moment I simply sat there, breathing, trying to remember what it felt like before this morning, before Elena’s smile had turned into a weapon and my mother’s tongue into a blade. I couldn’t recall the last time this house had felt like anything other than a battlefield dressed up in silk and marble.

There had been a time, hadn’t there, when laughter had lived in these rooms instead of accusations? When Elena’s laugh used to echo down these same halls, unguarded and real? I could no longer be certain I hadn’t imagined it, and that uncertainty frightened me more than I wanted to admit.

Spread out across the dark mahogany desk were thick stacks of financial reports, corporate contracts, board meeting minutes, and merger proposals. Real-world problems. Things with numbers, logic, and predictable outcomes. Things I could actually control, unlike the chaos brewing upstairs.

At least here, in this room, the rules made sense. At least here, betrayal came with a signature and a paper trail, not a smile that used to be only mine.

Think, Graham. Get it together. Focus on the board meeting.

The dull, low hum of the air conditioning unit filled the quiet study as I picked up a heavy fountain pen. I flipped open a multi-million-dollar acquisition contract, forcing my eyes to scan the black ink, red-lining terms, making sharp annotations in the margins.

The familiar rhythm of corporate dominance usually calmed my nerves. It was supposed to anchor me, to remind me that somewhere in this world I still held command over something, that not every corner of my life had slipped through my fingers.

It wasn’t working.

Every time I looked at a line of text, Elena’s face intruded. Her sharp, beautiful face. Her dark hair back in that sleek bun. The deep emerald silk of her robe clinging to her body, the memory so vivid it was almost cruel. I could still picture the exact curve of her smile, the one she used to save only for me, now apparently spent freely on strangers over the phone.

I remembered a time when that smile had been the first thing I saw every morning and the last thing I saw every night, back when I still believed it belonged to me alone.

And her voice... God, her voice.

Hey, baby... Good morning.

My grip on the fountain pen tightened until the metal groaned under my knuckles. Boyfriend? What a pathetic, transparent joke. That wasn’t Elena. Elena was an artist, a woman of deep, quiet pride. She didn’t have lovers. She was playing a childish, desperate game to get under my skin.

She wanted a reaction out of me. She wanted to see me crack, to watch the composure I prided myself on splinter apart in front of her. I told myself this over and over, the words wearing thin with each repetition, like a lie I was reciting only to keep myself from believing the alternative.

And God help me, it was working. My blood was boiling just thinking about her purring into that receiver, that false sweetness dripping from every syllable. Rage and something dangerously close to heartbreak tangled together in my chest until I could no longer tell which one was winning. Somewhere beneath the fury, a smaller, quieter voice kept asking what I had done wrong, what had driven her into another man’s ear if not another man’s arms.

My personal cell phone buzzed sharply against the wooden desk, the screen lighting up. An unsaved number.

I ignored it, flipping the page of the contract with an aggressive snap.

It buzzed again. Long, persistent vibrations that rattled against the wood, insistent in a way that finally snagged at the edge of my attention.

Then a third time.

"For fuck’s sake!" I slammed my fountain pen onto the desk, ink splattering across the crisp white paper. I snatched the phone up and pressed it to my ear without looking at the screen. "What?!! I told my secretary I am not taking calls!"

A beat of dead silence held on the other end of the line, heavy enough that I almost pulled the phone away to check the connection.

Then, a low, shaking, breathless voice crackled through the speaker. It was Marcus, my head of private security, and something in his tone immediately set my teeth on edge. In all the years he’d worked for me, I had never once heard him sound afraid. Marcus had faced down armed intruders, hostile press, and men twice his size without so much as a raised eyebrow. Whatever had rattled him now was something else entirely, something that reached past his training and touched some older, rawer fear.

"Sir... it’s about him," Marcus stammered, his usual calm demeanor completely shattered. "It’s about Jaxx. He’s back."

Every drop of air instantly evaporated from my lungs. My entire body went rigid, the blood in my veins turning to liquid ice. The world around me seemed to freeze, time coming to a violent, screeching halt, the headache and the argument and Elena’s smirk all vanishing beneath one single, suffocating name.

Years of buried dread came surging back up in an instant, as if no time had passed at all, as if I were once again the same terrified man who had first heard that name and understood, with sickening clarity, what it meant for everyone I loved. I thought I had buried that man years ago, along with everything he’d been forced to survive.

My brow pulled together, my voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet register. "What the hell do you mean, back?"

"He’s here, Mr. Sinclair," Marcus whispered urgently. "He landed two hours ago. My team spotted his motorcade downtown. Sir... Jaxx is back in the city."

In an instant, the cold shock shattered, replaced by a blinding, apocalyptic surge of pure, unadulterated rage.

I shot up from my leather chair so fast it flipped backward, crashing violently onto the hardwood floor with a deafening thud.

"What?!!!" I thundered, my roar ripping through the quiet room, the veins in my neck and temples threatening to burst. "That bastard is back in town?!! Jaxx is in my fucking city?!!"