Chapter 78 - 0078: How Did He Even Get My Number?

Chapter 78: Chapter 0078: How Did He Even Get My Number?

Elena’s Point Of View

I stormed down the hallway, my heels clicking against the cold marble tiles like bullets fired in rapid, frantic succession. Each impact rang out in the empty corridor, echoing off the high ceilings and gilded frames of the Sinclair Estate. My chest rose and fell violently, every breath tight, ragged, scraping against the back of my throat as though even the air itself had turned hostile and sharp tonight.

The portraits of long-dead Sinclairs seemed to watch me pass, their painted eyes judging me the way this whole house always had, the way it had judged me from the very first night Graham brought me here as his blushing, hopeful bride.

By the time I reached the guest room at the end of the wing, I didn’t just shut the door. I slammed it... hard enough that the heavy mahogany frame rattled, the sharp, deafening bang echoing back at me like a gunshot in the silence. It felt good, that violence.

It felt like the only honest thing I’d done all night, the only gesture that hadn’t been rehearsed or performed for an audience of judgmental relatives and simpering society wives.

My back hit the solid wood immediately after, and I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a ragged breath to swallow the white-hot rage rising in my throat. My legs shook beneath me, threatening to give out entirely, so I let the door hold me upright a moment longer, grateful for its solidity when my own body seemed intent on betraying me.

This was the first time in my life... the very first time, I had ever let Graham push me to a point of pure, unadulterated fury. Ten years of composure, of biting my tongue and smoothing things over for the sake of appearances, and it had all shattered in a single evening.

My blood was boiling so hot I thought my veins might burst under the pressure. My right palm still stung, throbbing with a dull, vicious heat from where it had connected with his cheek.

But instead of regret, instead of panic, all I felt was satisfaction. Pure, bitter, exhilarating satisfaction, the kind that curled in my stomach like a secret I intended to keep, hoarding it the way a starving woman hoards bread.

"That idiot," I hissed, my voice breaking in the stillness of the room as I opened my eyes to glare at the empty space. My chest heaved, the words tumbling out again, sharper, louder. "That absolute, spineless, brainless idiot! How dare he? How dare he look at me like that? How dare he say that to me?"

I kicked off my designer heels violently, watching them sail across the room. The sharp, loud clatter as they slammed against the baseboard wasn’t enough to drown out the storm roaring inside my head. My hands trembled, curling into tight fists until my nails bit painfully into my palms, before I released them again, pacing in tight, agitated circles across the plush Persian rug.

Ten years of marriage, and it had taken exactly one night to show me how little of it had ever been real. Ten years of galas and charity dinners, of playing the perfect Sinclair wife, all of it reduced to ash in the span of a single accusation.

All I could see when I closed my eyes was his stunned, pathetic face. The way his lips had parted in shock, but no real words came out. The way he had stuttered like a guilty child caught in a lie, all that practiced charm and easy confidence evaporating the instant I’d finally stood up for myself.

"I... I’m sorry, Elena, I didn’t know... what happened... someone tried to kill you?"

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I could still hear the tremor in his voice, the cowardice dressed up as concern, as though panic alone could scrub away the truth of what he’d said to me first.

He didn’t ask if I was hurt. He didn’t run to hold me, didn’t even blink at the horrific realization that I had almost lost my life tonight on that dark road. He didn’t care that someone had tampered with the car of his wife. No. He accused. He attacked.

He dared... he dared to fling his mistress’s shadow in my face as though that silicone-filled whore mattered more than my safety, more than my life. Ten years of building a life together, and in the end, his first instinct had been to protect his secrets rather than protect me. That realization alone cut deeper than any bullet could have.

My pulse hammered ruthlessly at my temples, each heavy beat another reminder of the insult, another reminder of just how deeply, irrevocably our marriage had rotted from the inside out. I pressed my palm to my forehead, willing the ache to dissolve, but it only sharpened, spreading down into my jaw, settling there like a second, more physical grief layered atop the first.

Buzz.

My purse, discarded carelessly on the vanity table, vibrated against the polished wood. I ignored it, pulling the lapels of Jaxx’s heavy wool coat tighter around my shoulders. The coat still smelled like him... rich tobacco, cedarwood, and a dark, expensive cologne that made my senses reel.

I hadn’t even realized I’d kept it on, hadn’t registered the strange comfort I’d taken from its weight against my skin the entire ride home. My anger was too sharp, too consuming to deal with notifications. I needed to seethe. I needed to breathe through the rage, needed to let the fire scorch every last illusion I had left about Graham Sinclair.

Buzz. Buzz.

Louder this time. Persistent. Insistent.

I froze mid-stride, my chest heaving as I glared across the room at the leather handbag. Who the hell was blowing up my phone at this hour? It was past midnight. Probably Graham, desperate and groveling from downstairs after realizing just how badly he had crossed the line.

Or maybe even his plastic-faced mistress, bold enough to taunt me now that she thought she had won. My jaw tightened at the thought; I almost hoped it was her, just so I’d have somewhere else to aim this fury... somewhere that wouldn’t require me to confront the wreckage of my own marriage quite so directly.

I marched over, yanked the phone out of the bag with a sharp huff, and swiped the screen awake to glare at the notifications.

It wasn’t Graham. It wasn’t his mistress either.

It was him.

Jaxx.

My breath stuttered right in my chest. My heart did something strange, violent, and heavy behind my ribs, sending a sudden, intoxicating shiver straight down to my fingertips. For one dizzying second, the rage I’d been nursing all night simply evaporated, replaced by something far more complicated... something that felt dangerously like anticipation.

The preview on the screen glared back at me in bold white letters, searing straight into my retinas:

’I can still taste you on my fingers, Bambina.’

My thighs clenched together reflexively, my body betraying me instantly, shamelessly, at the raw memory of what he’d done to me in the back of his SUV just hours ago. Heat shot through me... a sharp, low, insistent throb that curled deep in the pit of my belly.

I hated how easily he could do this to me, how one sentence could undo hours of righteous fury, how quickly my body seemed to forget every reason I had to be furious with the world.

"Oh fuck..." I whispered, my voice breaking, the phone trembling violently in my hand.

Buzz.

Another message popped up immediately beneath the first. This one was worse. So much worse.

’I’m so hard thinking of the way your pussy wrapped around my fingers, so perfect, and it’s making me wonder how it’s going to feel around my cock instead.’

My knees almost buckled.

I grabbed the edge of the marble vanity with my free hand just to anchor myself, my breath coming in short, ragged hitches. My mouth went instantly dry, my pulse slamming against my throat like I had just sprinted a marathon.

I stared at my own reflection in the mirror above the vanity... flushed cheeks, wild eyes, lips parted, and barely recognized the woman staring back. She looked feral. She looked like someone capable of burning her entire life down without a second thought.

"How..." My voice cracked into the quiet room. "How did he even get my number?"

I whipped my head toward the locked door, as though Graham might somehow read the screen through the solid wood. As though the walls of this cold house themselves might whisper my dark secrets back to him. My entire body was trembling, but the violent shake in my limbs wasn’t coming from rage anymore.

No.

This was something entirely different.

Something far more dangerous.

My lips parted, words caught somewhere between shock, scandal, and a sudden, overwhelming surge of desire. Desire I had no right to feel. Desire that branded my skin hotter than any slap, sharper than any insult Graham had ever thrown at me. I hated myself a little for how alive it made me feel, how much more present I felt in this single, illicit moment than I had in the entirety of my marriage.

The guest room felt smaller all at once - suffocating, hot, the air heavy with the ghost of Jaxx’s presence. I could almost feel his heavy voice against the shell of my ear, that low, taunting growl that had undone every single one of my defenses in the dark of his car.

Even now, safe behind a locked door, I could smell him on my own skin beneath his coat, a reminder I hadn’t asked for and couldn’t seem to wash away.

I pressed the phone flat against my chest, squeezing my eyes shut as I willed my heart to slow down. I tried to force my brain to remember the fury I had felt just moments ago, to focus on Graham’s betrayal. But all I could see behind my eyelids was Jaxx - his lazy, lethal smirk, the dangerous glint in his dark eyes, the sheer, intoxicating weight of his hands on my body, treating me like I belonged to him.

And worst of all... the terrifying, dirty part of me that wanted to belong to him.

Before I could regain my sanity, another vibration tore through the silence of the room. It was sharp and accusing, sounding like a physical smack that caught me doing something deeply shameful.

My chest seized. I lifted the phone back up.

The screen glared bright and merciless:

’I know you’ve read my messages, Bambina. Why aren’t you replying? Or do you want me to come over and fuck you right in front of your husband?’

The air left my lungs in a harsh rush. I clutched the phone so tightly my knuckles turned stark white.

"What... what the hell is wrong with him?" I whispered to the empty room, but the words came out thin, strangled, utterly useless.

Because the truth... the awful, shameful, vile truth, was that the picture his words painted in my mind made my legs feel like lead. The image of Jaxx storming into this grand estate, ripping through the security, tearing me out of Graham’s sight and dragging me onto that cold glass dining table in the main hall... God help me, a dark, traitorous, filthy part of me wanted it.

I wanted to be ruined by him. I wanted Graham to know, to watch, to understand exactly how thoroughly he had lost me, how completely another man had claimed the parts of me my husband had never bothered to reach for.

"No," I hissed, spinning around and pacing fast, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet as though the friction might anchor me to reality. "No, Elena. You’re losing your mind. You can’t think like that. You can’t let him do this to you."

Buzz.

The phone vibrated again. Cruel. Insistent. Ripping right through my desperate self-scolding.

’I’m going to call right now. And you better pick, Bambina. If you don’t, I swear with everything in me, I’ll drive over there and fuck you mercilessly right on your dining table.’

My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit, my pulse leaping so hard it made me dizzy. Every sane nerve in my body screamed at me to run... to block his number, to turn off the phone, to throw it out the third-story window into the rain.

But my body... my traitorous, needy body, was trembling, my skin too hot, my breaths far too shallow. Because I knew Jaxx wasn’t a man who made idle threats. He didn’t bluff. If he said he would scale the gates of Sinclair Estate and drag me out, he would do it without a second thought.

And if he said he’d take me apart, he most definitely would. That certainty terrified me more than anything Graham had said all night, more than the accusation, more than the mistress, more than a decade of quiet lies finally coming undone.

The screen lit up instantly, Jaxx’s unnamed number illuminating the dark room. The shrill, heavy vibration echoed through the silence, vibrating through my palm, through my ribs, through every firing nerve in my dark blood.

I froze, staring down at the glowing screen.

One second passed. Two. Five.

What if he really came? What if Graham heard his car outside? What if - what if I let him in?

My index finger hovered, quivering violently above the glass.

"No. No. No," I whispered into the quiet, chanting it like a desperate prayer to save myself from the edge of the cliff.

But my thumb betrayed me. It slid across the smooth glass before my brain could stop it, pressing the green button and lifting the phone to my ear.

The call connected.

I didn’t say a word. My breath caught in my throat, the silence stretching long, heavy, and suffocating between us, pressing down like a thick, warm hand wrapped around my neck. I could hear the faint, steady sound of his breathing on the other end - calm, dominant, terrifyingly composed.

It was maddening, how unaffected he sounded while I stood there falling apart, as though he’d known all along I would answer, as though my resistance had merely been a formality he tolerated out of politeness.

Then his voice broke through the speaker. Low. Dark. Velvet and gravel and pure, unadulterated sin.

"Lock your door, Bambina. I don’t want your husband barging in while I’m making you cum."

My eyes flew wide open. My lungs burned as I gripped the phone tighter.

"W-what are you even saying?" My voice cracked badly - too high, too shaky, half filled with desperate outrage, half with something far more dangerous, far more submissive.

And then his chuckle came through the line.

It was deep. Sinful. Slow. The kind of dark, rich sound that slithered right under my skin, straight into the marrow of my bones, making every single fine hair on my body stand on end.

I actually shivered, my core tightening so hard it drew a quiet gasp from my lips.

"Lock the door, princess," he murmured, drawled really, like every syllable was a caress and an absolute command rolled into one. "Do it. Now."

"I... I’m not locking anything for you," I lied, my voice small, betraying the sheer havoc he was wreaking on my chest. "You’re crazy, Jaxx. You can’t send me things like that. You can’t say things like that to me while I’m in my husband’s house."

"Husband?" Jaxx scoffed, the low sound dripping with pure contempt. "Is that what you call the pathetic excuse for a man who let you walk into the house bleeding emotion, looking like you were ready to tear the world apart? I heard the slap from the driveway, Elena. You hit him hard. Good girl."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "You... you were still watching?"

"I watch everything that’s mine," he growled softly, the raw authority in his tone sending a jolt of liquid heat straight between my thighs. "Now stop wasting my fucking time and slide that bolt shut before I come back around those gates and do it myself."