Chapter 86 - 0086: Careful Now, Maltida

Chapter 86: Chapter 0086: Careful Now, Maltida

Jaxx’s Point Of View

"Oh... don’t mind me. I just came by to check if you’re still breathing, Matilda."

Her painted lips parted in a breathless gasp, air catching sharply in her throat as a wash of ugly, mottled shock painted her carefully powder-dusted expression. She clearly hadn’t expected that level of raw, unfiltered venom, not from me, not in her own sanctuary of silk and gold.

Matilda stiffened instantly in her high-backed velvet armchair, her posture going rigid as an iron rod, as though the sheer disrespect behind my words had physically burned her porcelain skin. For a woman who had spent decades perfecting the art of untouchable composure, the crack in her mask was almost satisfying to witness.

And that was the exact second the old monster behind the walnut desk snapped.

"Watch your goddamn mouth, boy!" Sebastian Sinclair’s voice thundered across the vast, oppressive study, booming with the kind of ruthless, autocratic authority that had terrified powerful men for fifty years.

His heavy hands slammed flat onto the dark wood with a deafening THUD, his knuckles turning stark, bloodless white as he gripped the armrests of his leather executive chair. His chest heaved under his tailored suit, and his sharp, sunken blue eyes bulged with a terrifying, apocalyptic rage. Even now, even weakened by age and time, the man radiated the kind of menace that had once built empires on fear alone.

"You do not step foot into my home, under my roof, and speak to my wife in that filthy, common tone!" Sebastian roared, his voice cracking violently on the edges as a dark, dangerous flush crept up his withered neck. "Have you completely lost your mind?! You stand in the presence of the man who built everything you see, you ungrateful, wretched bastard!"

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t jump. I didn’t even bother looking over at him right away. There was a strange, distant calm settling over me, the kind that only came after years of learning to survive men exactly like him.

Instead, I casually raised my hand, bringing the cigarette back to my lips, and took another long, slow, luxurious drag. I held the hot tobacco smoke in my chest for three excruciating seconds, then tilted my head back and let it curl lazily from my mouth in a thick, grey halo that drifted toward the crystal chandelier, dispersing like a ghost among the ornate crystal.

Absolute silence became my sharpest weapon, my rebellion against his dying empire. I had learned long ago that men like Sebastian fed on reaction, on fear, on the satisfaction of watching someone crumble beneath their voice. I refused to give him that meal.

Matilda’s dark, cat-like eyes flickered frantically between the two of us, confusion, outrage, and suffocating tension swirling violently in her gaze. But for a moment, she kept her jaw shut tight.

She knew the history in this room. She knew better than to step between two rabid wolves when the storm was about to collide, though the twitch in her fingers betrayed just how badly she wanted to insert her venom into the fight.

When pure boredom finally clawed at my nerves, I took two slow, heavy steps forward. I leaned over the front of his multi-million-dollar desk and forcefully stubbed the burning cherry of my cigarette right into the center of his pristine, polished mahogany table.

I ground the ash in deep, twisting my thumb until a fresh, black burn mark permanently scarred the flawless, shiny surface. The bitter, pungent scent of scorched wood and burnt ash rose heavy between us, mingling with the old leather and dust of a room that had clearly seen too many silent wars.

Sebastian’s jaw worked in silent horror as he stared down at the ruined wood, veins bulging against his temples like thick blue ropes. For a man who valued his possessions more than his own blood, I might as well have carved the wound directly into his chest.

"Why the hell did you call me here, old man?" I asked, my tone entirely flat, bone-chillingly calm, and unbothered.

His eyes narrowed into murderous slits, his teeth grinding so hard I could hear the enamel squeak from three feet away. For the very first time in my life, as I stared into those cold, sunken blue eyes, I saw something unfamiliar flicker beneath his rage.

Was it regret? Fear? Pure, helpless impotence? Maybe a sickening cocktail of all three, stirred together by a decade of unspoken guilt.

He shook his silver head slowly, breath coming out in ragged, raspy wheezes, looking at me as if he couldn’t comprehend the towering monster he had created, the same monster he had shaped with his own two hands and years of cruelty disguised as discipline.

"What are you doing back in Texas, Jaxx?" Sebastian asked, his voice dropping into a raspy, dangerous baritone that carried the dark weight of an executioner’s blade. "What insane madness possessed you to show your face here? I thought I made myself crystal clear ten years ago. I thought I ordered you to never set foot in this city, never breathe the air of this state, and never show your goddamn face near my family again!"

That pulled a laugh out of me.

A low, dark, terrifying rumble that echoed off the high oak walls. The kind of laugh that had zero humor, zero warmth, and pure, concentrated violence in it. The kind of laugh that used to make grown men in this very house flinch and look away.

"Since when did you become the fuckin’ president of this country, Sebastian?" I shot back, tilting my head, a dark, mocking smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth as I taunted him. "You think because you own a few politicians and a bunch of dirty cops in Dallas, you get to draw lines on a map and tell me where I can walk?"

Sebastian’s eyes widened in genuine, staggering shock. His chest hitched. He wasn’t used to defiance, not from the press, not from his board of directors, and certainly not from me. Not from the broken, bleeding boy he used to lock in dark basements to "teach discipline," back when my bones were too small to fight back and my voice too weak to scream loud enough for anyone to care.

"This is my city!" Sebastian spat, his frail body trembling as he leaned across the desk, voice sharpening like broken glass. "Everything in this town runs through me! I built this bloody dynasty with my own hands while you were rotting in the gutters! I gave you a name! I gave you blood! And I want you out! I want you packed up and gone on the first flight out of Texas by midnight, or so help me God, I will use every ounce of my power to crush you into dust!"

I leaned back slowly, folding my arms over my broad chest, acting casual, far too casual for a man being threatened by a kingpin who once made grown executives weep in boardrooms.

"And if I don’t?" My smirk deepened, revealing razor-sharp teeth. "What are you going to do, huh? Are you feeling threatened by me, old man? Is your grand, untouchable empire shaking in its boots because I took a stroll down main street?"

The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy enough to crush a weaker man’s ribs. Matilda’s eyes darted nervously between us, her jeweled fingers clutching the crimson fabric of her dress so tight her nails almost tore the silk. Even she, for all her cruelty, understood the gravity of what simmered beneath the surface of this room.

I stepped closer, planting both palms flat onto the scorched desk, leaning my face until it hovered inches from his trembling, pale nose. My voice dropped low, smooth, and dripping with dark, lethal venom that curled around every syllable.

"Are you scared I’m going to take everything from you?" I whispered, my dark eyes boring into his soul. "Are you terrified that I’ll destroy every single bloody brick of what you’ve spent fifty years building? That I’ll dig up every corpse you’ve buried under this mansion and parade them in front of your high-society friends? Tell me, Sebastian... what is it that makes you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, gasping for air, the second you realize I’m breathing the same air as you?"

He said nothing. He couldn’t. But I saw it: the microscopic twitch in his right jawline, the faint, uncontrollable tremor in his weathered hands, the absolute panic buried beneath his pride. A lifetime of arrogance couldn’t quite smother the fear now bleeding through his composure.

I smirked wider, crueler, letting my gaze drift over his frail, oxygen-starved frame.

"You shouldn’t be scared yet, old man..." I purred, voice dropping into a sinister promise. "...because I haven’t even started playing with you yet."

I let those words hang in the room, thick with guaranteed ruin. Then I leaned in just a fraction closer, whispering his title like a dark curse, tasting the poison on my tongue.

"Keyword... yet."

Sebastian’s face went from an angry crimson to a terrifying, ghost-like ash grey. He clutched at his left lapel, breath coming in shallow, frantic gasps, lips turning faintly blue as his chest rose and fell in erratic, violent hitches. The old bastard looked like he was about to have a massive, fatal stroke right then and there over his mahogany desk, the same desk where he had signed away countless lives without a flicker of remorse.

I looked down at his struggling, wheezing frame with total, chilling indifference. I didn’t care if his heart exploded. I didn’t care if he dropped dead on the carpet. There was a time, long ago, when I might have prayed for his suffering to end quickly. That mercy had long since died in me.

"Go ahead," I added smoothly, voice cold as arctic ice. "If me breathing the same air as you gives you a heart attack... then die, father. Save me the trouble of putting you in the ground myself."

The silence that followed was deafening. The only sound in the massive room was the faint, pathetic wheeze of Sebastian’s lungs and the light sizzle of my dead cigarette butt resting on his ruined desk.

I straightened up, turning away from him as if he were nothing more than a dying dog on the side of the road.

"Since you clearly have nothing of relevance or intelligence to say to me..." I exhaled slowly, adjusting the cuffs of my black shirt, my heavy leather boots scraping against the polished floor as I took a deliberate step toward the exit. "...enjoy your miserable home."

I smoothed down my clothes, a cold smirk tugging at my lips, and turned my back on the great Sebastian Sinclair. Every movement I made was deliberate, controlled, and heavy with absolute disdain. The silence in the hallway felt thick, suffocating, broken only by the sharp, rhythmic clack-clack of my boots against the marble tiles.

I could feel both of their eyes burning holes into my back, Sebastian’s trembling with restrained, powerless fury, and Matilda’s dripping with that ever-present, arrogant venom she genuinely believed could still wound me.

My fingers wrapped around the cool brass door handle of the double oak doors, pressing the latch down, ready to leave them in their gilded tomb.

And that’s when her voice cut through the air.

Shrill, high-pitched, and dripping with pure, unadulterated poison, her words sliced through the room like a jagged, rusty blade.

"Tch... what else did we honestly expect from the pathetic son of a whore?"

The weight of her words landed like a physical blow against the back of my skull, dripping raw malice into every vein in my body. Ten years of buried grief and rage stirred instantly awake, clawing at the inside of my ribs like something desperate to be freed.

My hand froze on the brass knob.

Slowly, agonizingly, I let my eyes close for one single second. A slow, terrifying smile spread across my face, not a smile born from amusement or pride, but from a dark, ancient beast that had been chained deep inside my soul for ten long years, and had just been handed the keys to its cage.

Matilda didn’t stop there. Emboldened by my pause, thinking her words had struck a nerve, she stood up from her velvet armchair, heavy diamond necklaces clinking loudly against her chest as she stepped forward, face twisted in absolute disgust.

"Look at you!" Matilda sneered, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling, loud, shrill, and vicious. "You think you’re a big man because you walk around with guns and muscle? You’re nothing! You are a low-life, street-dwelling bastard! Your mother was nothing but a cheap, desperate whore who spent her entire miserable life spreading her legs for every single rich man she saw in this city, begging for scraps!"

Sebastian let out a weak, choked gasp from his chair. "Matilda... stop..."

"No, Sebastian! Let the bastard hear the truth!" Matilda shrieked, chin tilted up in arrogant triumph, eyes wide with malicious glee. "She was a filthy, worthless gutter-slut who used her body to worm her way into this family! She died like the dog she was, and you’re just like her! Trash like you can only ever come from trash! She was a whore, Jaxx! A dirty, disgusting, common..."

I moved.

There was no warning. No shift in my weight. No sound.

In less than a fraction of a second, I crossed the fifteen feet of marble floor between us like a shadow tearing through the room.

Before Matilda could even finish the word, before her brain could register the air moving, my large, calloused hand shot out and wrapped around her throat with bone-crushing force.

WHAM!

In one fluid, terrifying motion, I lifted her off her feet and slammed her heavy frame backward into the high-backed velvet chair so violently that its carved wooden legs screeched wildly across the marble floor, slamming into the wall behind it.

The shrill, terrified sound of her breath being instantly cut off echoed like a dying scream in the quiet room. Her body jerked forward reflexively, hands flying up to claw desperately at my iron wrist, diamond-ringed fingers scratching uselessly against my skin.

Her painted lips parted in pure, suffocating horror, eyes bulging as my grip tightened around her windpipe, cutting off every single cubic inch of oxygen.

"Matilda!" Sebastian screamed, trying to force his trembling body out of his desk chair, but his legs gave out and he collapsed back down, gasping for air as he watched helplessly.

I leaned down, bringing my face until my dark, lifeless eyes were inches from her bulging, tear-filled ones.

"Careful now, Matilda..." I murmured softly, my voice shockingly gentle, far too calm, and dangerously quiet for the absolute violence held in my fingers.

It wasn’t wild rage driving me. It was cold, precise, murderous control, the kind of absolute darkness that made people scream for mercy in their nightmares.

I squeezed a fraction tighter, feeling the small bones in her neck creak beneath my palm as her face turned a deep, terrifying shade of purple.

"You talk about my mother again," I whispered directly into her ear, warm breath fanning across her pale, sweating cheek, "and I will rip your tongue straight out of your throat, feed it to you, and watch you choke on it right in front of your dying husband. Do you understand me, you stupid bitch?"