Chapter 68 - 0068: Let Her Have Her Boyfriend

Chapter 68: Chapter 0068: Let Her Have Her Boyfriend

Graham’s Point Of View

The heavy silence following Lillian’s ultimatum hung in the living room like poison, thicker even than the scent of expensive bourbon spilling across the marble counter.

Her foot hovered on the bottom step, her eyes wide with a cold, calculated fury, waiting for me to break. Waiting for me to drop the glass, chase after her, and beg her to stay for the sake of the child growing inside her.

That was usually how this script went. We had performed this scene before, in different rooms, with different words, but always the same ending... her walking away, me chasing, both of us pretending the outcome had ever been in question.

Instead, I just stood there, my hand frozen around the crystal tumbler, my pulse hammering in my throat like a trapped animal. Something had shifted in me tonight, some final thread of patience finally snapping loose.

"Don’t even think about running after her, Graham," Lillian added, her voice dropping into a deadly, viper-like whisper as she turned back toward me, her knuckles white on the banister. "Let her have her fun with whatever pathetic little side-piece she’s found! Let her ruin herself! You think she’s sitting up there weeping for you? She’s probably texting him right now, laughing at how easily she wound you up!"

The word him sliced straight into my gut like a serrated blade. My mind conjured an image I didn’t want... Elena’s fingers moving across a phone screen, her lips curling into a smile meant for someone else, and the jealousy that followed was so acute it nearly buckled my knees.

"Shut your mouth, Lillian," I growled, my voice barely human. The glass in my hand creaked under the brutal pressure of my grip, and some distant, rational part of me wondered if it might shatter before I even had the chance to throw it.

"Why? Because it hurts?!" she sneered, taking a sharp step down, her silk robe fluttering around her ankles. "Because you can’t stomach the fact that another man is touching what you thought was yours forever?! Look at you! You’re standing in the dark, reeking of her perfume and your own sweat, obsessed with a woman who slammed a door in your fucking face! What about me, Graham?! What about our child?!"

"I said shut up!" I roared, slamming my fist onto the dark mahogany bar with enough force to send the remaining whiskey sloshing over the sides.

The loud boom rattled through the grand foyer, echoing straight up the stairwell toward the guest room where Elena was hiding. Somewhere above us, I imagined her flinching at the sound, curling further into herself, and the thought only fed the fire building beneath my ribs.

Lillian flinched, stepping back, but the spite in her eyes didn’t fade. If anything, it sharpened, honed by years of watching me choose someone else over her, again and again.

"You think I’m blind?!" I spat out, taking slow, menacing strides toward the foot of the stairs, my chest heaving beneath my shirt. "You think I don’t see what you’re trying to do?! You want me to just throw five years of my life in the trash! You want me to hand my wife over to some random fucker while I play happy family with you?!"

"She’s barren, Graham!" Lillian shrieked, the ugly truth spilling out of her mouth without a filter. "She couldn’t give you a family! She failed you! I am giving you the heir your family has been begging for, and you’re still chasing after a broken vessel who can’t even give you a child!"

The words landed like a physical blow, and for a moment the room tilted around me, rage and grief tangling together until I could no longer tell which one was driving my pulse.

"Don’t you ever speak about my wife like that again," I whispered, my voice dropping into a terrifyingly low register as I stood at the base of the steps, looming over her. "She is more woman than you could ever dream of being. Every inch of her belongs to me. No other man gets to touch her. I will tear this entire city apart before I let anyone else have her!"

Lillian stared at me, her chest rising and falling in sharp, terrified gasps as the sheer scale of my insanity finally hit her. I watched the realization dawn across her face, the color draining slightly from her cheeks. The possessive obsession radiating off me wasn’t about logic, or pride, or even the baby. It was a disease.

Elena was in my blood, a dark, agonizing fever I had no intention of ever curing, and no amount of reason or guilt could touch it.

"You’re sick," Lillian breathed, tears of frustration finally brimming in her eyes as she realized she was losing the war she thought she had already won. "You’re completely out of your mind."

"Maybe I am," I sneered, my jaw tight, my blood still thrumming with the memory of Elena’s fingernails digging into my shoulders, her tight core pulsing around my shaft as she screamed my name in the dark. The memory alone was enough to steal the air from my lungs. "So go ahead, Lillian. Walk out that door. Pack your bags. But don’t you ever tell me to let my wife go."

"I will leave," Lillian hissed, her voice cutting through the stillness like a serrated blade, and for one suspended second I believed her completely.

When she turned toward the staircase, I felt my heart squeeze, a cold panic flooding through me faster than I could control it. The wine glass slipped from my hand, shattering like a gunshot against the hardwood floor. Amber liquid splashed across my polished shoes, but I didn’t even feel it. My heart dropped with it, plummeting somewhere past my stomach.

"No. Lillian, no!" I crossed the room in two strides, reaching her at the base of the steps, grabbing her arm... not hard, just enough to stop her from climbing another step into the shadows. She resisted, struggling slightly against my grip with a frustrated gasp, but I pulled her around and forced her to face me, searching her expression for any sign of softening.

My hands, almost of their own accord, found her belly... her beautiful, round belly, the soft, warm home of the child I hadn’t even met yet. The physical reminder of the legacy I was so desperate to build settled beneath my palms, warm and undeniable, and something in my chest cracked open at the contact.

"Lily," I whispered, my voice hoarse and raw. "You’re seriously not thinking about leaving me, right? Come on... baby, not like this. Don’t do this to us."

Tears welled up in her eyes... big, glassy, threatening to spill over her dark lashes, but she blinked them away with a bitter, pouting scoff, refusing to let herself break in front of me.

"Of course I’m leaving you, Graham! How can I stay with a man who’s thinking about another woman while touching me like this? How can I raise our child in a house where your mind is constantly upstairs, rotting over your barren wife?!"

I winced, the sting of her words cutting deep into my raw pride, each syllable finding some soft, unguarded place inside me and pressing hard.

"Don’t say that," I muttered, lowering my forehead to hers, my breath hot and uneven, my voice cracking around the words. "Don’t do this, Lily. Don’t walk away from me. You know I need you."

"You already walked away from me the moment you started obsessing over her!" she bit out, shoving against my chest, though my hands stayed locked on her sides, anchored to her bump. "You spent half the night up there trying to touch her, trying to force her to admit she wants you, while I slept alone in our bed! You’re reeking of her, Graham!"

"Tell me what you want, baby," I breathed, desperate, my hands still cradling her belly, holding on like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to sanity in the middle of this nightmare. "Just... don’t go. Please. Tell me what I have to do."

She turned fully in my arms and stared up at me, her eyes cold, calculating, and firm, all traces of tears vanishing as though they had never existed. "I want you to let her have her boyfriend."

I froze. My pulse stopped dead in my throat, and for a moment the whole room seemed to hold its breath along with me.

"No, Lillian, you don’t understand..."

"But nothing, Graham!" she snapped, stepping back from me like my touch suddenly burned her skin. "This is an open marriage! You wanted it that way. You made the rules when you brought me into this house, when you told her that your legacy came first. You don’t get to change the rules now just because they no longer benefit you! You don’t get to act like a jealous psycho when she actually takes you up on it!"

Her words hit me like slaps, each one harder and more brutal than the last. I took a staggering step backward, my mind spinning out of control, the foundation I had built this entire arrangement upon crumbling beneath my feet in real time.

This was unraveling. I was unraveling. How had it come to this? How had this open marriage... the brilliant, clever compromise I had crafted to have my heir without losing my status, come back to bite me so viciously?

I had been so certain of my own cleverness, so confident I could control every variable, every heart involved. I saw now, with brutal clarity, how wrong I had been.

I had played the game and I had made the rules. But I was the one losing now. I was the one standing in the dark, bleeding out from my own arrogance. I sighed heavily, my broad shoulders sagging under the crushing weight of it all.

I looked at Lillian... at the woman carrying my blood, my future, my child. I couldn’t lose her. Not her. Not the baby. Not the legacy my father had demanded of me for years. So I swallowed the burning, razor-sharp pride that was choking me, and nodded slowly, hating myself with every fiber of my being for the surrender.

My chest ached so violently I could barely draw air into my lungs. Damn it.

"Fine," I said at last.

Her lips parted, a small gasp escaping her as she searched my dark eyes for the catch, clearly not trusting the ease of my capitulation.

"But not because I’m okay with it," I added quickly, my voice dropping into a harsh, dangerous growl. "Not because I want to see her with anyone else, because God knows I don’t... God knows I want to tear that bastard’s throat out with my bare hands! But because I can’t lose you, Lily. Not now. Not ever. Not when we’re this close to having everything we dreamed of."

Lillian’s expression wavered, the sharp anger softening just a fraction into triumph, a small, satisfied light flickering behind her eyes even as she tried to mask it with concern.

"I’ll let her have her boyfriend," I said again, firmer now, forcing my throat to swallow the bitter, suffocating pill of surrender. "I’ll back off. I won’t chase her down the hall anymore."

I took a shaky step forward, reaching out with a trembling hand to brush a loose strand of hair behind her ear, leaning down to press a desperate, lingering kiss against her forehead, trying to convince myself as much as her that the words I’d just spoken were true.

"But don’t leave me, Lily. Please. Stay."

My voice was barely a whisper, ragged and stripped raw. She relaxed slightly beneath my hands, her palms moving up to rest against my chest, feeling the violent, chaotic hammering of my heart beneath her fingers, and for a moment neither of us spoke, the silence heavy with everything still unresolved between us.

But I wasn’t done.

I lifted my gaze, turning my head toward the grand staircase... toward the cold, dark hallway above, toward the locked door upstairs where Elena still hid away from me, weeping on the floor after shattering my pride into pieces. Every instinct in me screamed to abandon this conversation, to climb those stairs and tear that door from its hinges until she looked at me again.

My fists clenched at my sides again, the veins bulging against my knuckles, an unholy mix of dark fury, toxic obsession, and raw possession bubbling beneath my skin. Let her have her boyfriend for now. Let her play her little game. But she was still my wife. She was still bearing my name.

And no matter what rules I had to fake agreeing to down here, I was never, ever letting her go. Whatever performance I gave Lillian tonight, whatever surrender I offered to keep her from walking out that door, none of it changed the truth burning through my veins... Elena was mine, and I would burn the world down before I accepted anything less.