Chapter 98 - 0098: I Don’t Let Go Of Mine

Chapter 98: Chapter 0098: I Don’t Let Go Of Mine

Jaxx’s Point Of View

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

Graham’s voice thundered across the night air like a whip crack... raw, jagged, trembling with something far beyond anger. His hand clutched the car door so tightly his knuckles turned ghost-white, as if the cold metal frame was the only thing anchoring him to the ground.

I lowered the window just an inch, letting a thin, lazy trail of gray smoke drift out into the cool night air.

Graham stood right outside the heavy driver’s side door, his expensive tuxedo jacket unbuttoned, his silk tie loosened just enough to look frantic. His face was flushed red, a cocktail of raw alcohol, bruised corporate pride, and sudden, panicked desperation burning through his veins.

"Are you deaf, Jaxx?!" Graham yelled, taking a heavy step closer and slamming his open palm against the hood of my car. The loud thud vibrated through the metal, echoing off the damp pavement, but I didn’t even flinch. "I asked you a fucking question! What the hell are you doing at my company’s gala? Who invited you? Answer me!"

I took another long, slow drag of my cigarette, letting the cherry ember glow bright in the pitch-black interior of the car before blowing the smoke directly toward the gap in the window. The gray haze curled into the cold night, lingering right between his eyes.

"It’s a public venue, Graham," I drawled, my voice low, raspy, and thoroughly unbothered. "Besides... your board members were more than happy to hand me an entry pass when I mentioned potential investments. You should really keep a tighter leash on your security. Or your board. Or..."

I paused, letting a lazy, wicked smirk carve slowly into my face.

"...your wife."

Graham froze. The flush on his neck turned instantly pale, his jaw twitching violently as his eyes narrowed into desperate, bloodshot slits.

"Leave Elena out of your fucking mouth," Graham spat, his voice cracking with a mix of fury and unacknowledged fear. "She’s my wife. You have no business anywhere near her. You think I don’t know what you were doing back in the city? You think I don’t see the way you look at her when you think no one’s watching?! You think I’m blind?!"

"Do you?" I leaned my elbow against the window frame, tilting my head slightly as I studied him like an annoying insect stuck to my windshield. "Because from where I was sitting inside, you were far too busy staring into your phone screen to notice anything at all. You didn’t see who came and went. You didn’t see her leave her seat. You didn’t see a single thing."

I smiled. Not the kind that softened or reassured. No, this was deliberate. Slow. Mocking. A curl of lips so poisonous it might as well have been venom sliding off my tongue.

Between my fingers, the cigarette burned, the ember glowing like a warning flare in the suffocating dark, smoke spiraling upwards as if the night itself bent to my presence.

"Do I need your permission to be here?" My voice was measured, lazy, each word dragged out, but sharpened enough to slice right through his fragile composure. "Are you the gatekeeper now, Graham? Since when do you run anything in this town without running to Daddy’s lawyers first?"

He stepped forward, his leather shoes grinding hard against the gravel. His jaw locked tight, his chest rising and falling with shallow, ragged breaths. His whole body was wound tight, a spring pulled to the very edge of snapping.

"This is my wife’s event. Her company. Only those invited are allowed," Graham rasped, trying to pull himself up into something grander, his tone attempting formal and clipped. But the betrayal of his pulse was written all over him, hammering violently in the thick vein pulsing at his temple. "You don’t belong here. You never belonged in our circle, Jaxx. You’re a stain."

I tilted my head, my smirk tugging wider. His pathetic attempt at control amused me more than it threatened.

"Then do the calculations yourself, big brother," I purred softly. "Stop acting like a thoughtless toddler throwing a tantrum in the driveway because someone picked up a toy you forgot you owned."

The words landed like a blade buried deep into his gut. Graham’s gasp cut the air... sharp, guttural, halfway between disbelief and absolute fury. His eyes scoured my face in the dark with a desperation that betrayed him, searching for a lie, for some loophole to cling to, for anything to protect his bloated ego.

"What?" he breathed, his voice barely a rattle. "What? You mean... Elena invited you?"

I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

The silence between us swelled, louder and heavier than anything my mouth could form. I simply held his gaze... steady, unblinking, dark, letting him drown in the suffocating weight of his own rampant thoughts. His chest rose higher, his breaths turning sharper, his flimsy illusion of control unraveling by the second.

His nostrils flared, his hands trembling where they hung at his sides. "No. No, it can’t be," he hissed, each word trembling as though they burned his tongue just to speak them. "She wouldn’t. She knows what you are. Stay away from my wife, Jaxx. Stay the hell away from her!"

By then, I’d had enough of looking at him through glass.

I pushed the heavy car door open, forcing him to take a hasty, awkward step back to avoid getting hit by the frame. My boots struck the damp pavement with slow, deliberate thuds, each step a heavy punctuation mark to the unspoken threat thickening the cold air. Smoke curled around my shoulders like a crown of shadows, encasing me in an aura that was neither guest nor intruder, but something far more dangerous. A predator in a bespoke suit.

Straightening to my full height, towering over him, I let the silence drag. I let it stretch... long enough, heavy enough for his knee-jerk fury to curdle into something far more delicious: pure, unadulterated unease.

"And what makes you think I have anything to do with your wife?" I asked, my tone conversational, light... far too light for the way I was looming over him.

"You think I don’t know you?" Graham spat, pointing a shaking finger directly at my chest, his voice quivering even as he tried to steel it. "I know you, Jaxx. I know how you move. I know how you look at things you want to tear apart. You’ve always been that way... vicious, needy, taking whatever isn’t yours. And I know this isn’t a coincidence. You didn’t just... show up. You came here for her!"

I chuckled, low and dark, the kind of laugh that crawled under the skin and settled deep in the marrow of the bones.

"Always so paranoid, Graham. Always so quick to jump to conclusions when your conscience starts bleeding," I murmured. "Look at you. You’re sweating straight through your hand-tailored collar, clenching your jaw like a frightened schoolboy caught lying to his headmaster... Tell me, Graham. What exactly are you so afraid of?"

"I’m not afraid of you!" he snapped instantly, far too quickly, his voice pitching high.

"Liar."

The word rolled off my tongue like a curse, smooth and absolute. I took a step closer, then another, shrinking the fragile pocket of air between us until he had nowhere left to back up without falling over his own feet. My voice dropped, soft as liquid poison.

"Then why are you so bothered by me being around her? If your marriage is so solid... if she’s so undeniably yours... why are you shaking in your double-breasted suit?"

His chest rose and fell sharply... shallow, uneven, frantic. His hands twitched at his hips, his fingers flexing against his trousers as though they couldn’t decide between swinging a punch or strangling the terrifying thoughts out of his own head.

"You’re worried, aren’t you?" I pressed, slowly circling him like a wolf that had already tasted blood and was just deciding where to bite next. "Worried because the past doesn’t rot the way you wish it would. Worried because no matter how much money you pour over the cracks, deep down, you know what I know."

"Shut up," he growled through his teeth, gritting them so hard the tendons in his neck strained against his starched shirt. "Shut your fucking mouth!"

I leaned in close, my words a razor gliding across his bare skin. "You hear it at night, don’t you? That deafening silence in your bedroom. That... reminder. The kind of cold emptiness that digs its claws right into your chest the second the lights go out and she turns her back to you."

"Stop," his voice broke, rough and shredded, as if the single word had to scrape its way out of a burning throat.

"Tell me, big brother..." I breathed, letting my mouth hover dangerously near his ear, my warm, smoke-laced breath ghosting over his skin like frostbite. "Is it haunting you? Every time you touch her arm and she flinches? Every time you ask her a question and her eyes look right through you like you’re already dead?"

He froze. His entire body went rigid as a corpse, his jaw locked like a vise. His eyes widened into saucers, betraying the catastrophic crack in the pristine armor he’d spent three years stitching around himself.

I straightened slowly, taking my time, my grin spreading... sharp, toxic, and venomous, savoring the unraveling storm of complete despair in his gaze. The silence pressed heavy between us, like the night itself was leaning in to hear him break.

And then softly, almost kindly, as though offering mercy while twisting the knife directly into his heart, I repeated, with every ounce of venom dripping from my tongue:

"Tell me, Graham... is it haunting you?"

Graham’s nostrils flared wildly. His jaw was clenched so tightly I could hear the faint, sickening grind of his teeth against each other. His eyes wouldn’t settle; they kept darting frantically... from my face, to the cigarette still burning low between my fingers, to the dark shadows of the empty parking lot behind me, as if some miraculous savior might emerge from the night and rescue him from this humiliation.

"Stay the hell away from my wife," Graham whispered, his voice cracking violently in the middle, rough and completely unsteady. He tried to clear his throat, tried to pull his posture upright, but the pathetic quiver at the edge of his lips betrayed every bit of his terror.

I tilted my head, studying him with cold, clinical detachment, like I might watch a caged animal gnawing off its own leg to escape a trap.

"That’s it?" I asked, my voice dropping into a smooth, almost curious lilt. "That’s your big grand stand? That’s your line in the sand? ’Stay away’?"

His hand balled into a tight fist, trembling violently against his leg. "I know what you’re doing," Graham hissed, his eyes swimming with helpless rage. "You think you can waltz back into our world, poison everything we’ve built, just because Graham Sinclair’s success is a reminder of everything you failed to be! I’m warning you, Jaxx... whatever sick game you’re playing, whatever dead past you’re desperately clinging to... it ends tonight. It ends right here with me!"

I laughed... low, sharp, and utterly merciless. The sound cut through the quiet night like broken glass.

"With you?" I stepped forward... slow, deliberate, crushing the gravel beneath my heavy boots. Each crunch made his Adam’s apple bob harder, his shoulders twitching tighter. "You can’t even hold her attention for five minutes at a dinner table, Graham. You can’t even keep your own shadow under control. And you sit there trembling in the dark, telling yourself you can control me?"

He held his ground, but only barely. His knees were visibly stiff, his lips trembling before the desperate words finally tumbled out of him like blood from a wound.

"She’s my wife! Do you understand me?! Mine!" he yelled, his voice echoing pathetically against the concrete walls of the venue. "She wears my ring! She signed the papers! Whatever... whatever you’re trying to pull, it’s not going to work! She won’t leave me! She can’t leave me! Not for a monster like you! Not for anyone!"

I smirked. Not a smile of humor, but the kind that curled cruel and sharp at the corners... a blade slipping out of its sheath. I took one more step forward, measured and absolute, until my tall shadow spilled completely over his shoes, swallowing him in the dark.

Graham’s breathing shifted into ragged, shallow gasps, his chest heaving like a man trying to mask pure panic as righteousness. His eyes burned... oh yes, they burned with fury, but rage without power is nothing more than desperation dressed up in fire. And desperation? I could smell it on him like cheap whiskey.

"And if I don’t?" I murmured, my voice dipping into a whisper sharp enough to slice skin. I could feel the microscopic tremor in his jaw, the violent twitch in his temple as he fought with everything he had not to break down, not to avert his eyes from mine.

I leaned in, my lips curling right at the shell of his ear, letting every single word land like dripping acid.

"What are you going to do about it?"