Chapter 99 - 0099: Say Your Last Prayer, Graham

Chapter 99: Chapter 0099: Say Your Last Prayer, Graham

Jaxx’s Point Of View

The air in the deserted alleyway behind the venue hung so thick with tension it felt like breathing poison. The distant, muted bass of the gala’s orchestra vibrated through the damp brick walls, completely detached from the quiet violence unspooling in the shadows.

Somewhere beyond the wall, laughter rose and fell in polite, practiced waves, a world away from the one I occupied now.

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?"

That snapped him. The fragile illusion of his corporate composure didn’t just break - it shattered into jagged, unhinged pieces. His face flared a blotchy, furious red, his features twisting into something raw and pathetic. His hands shook violently as his fists clenched at his sides, the thick vein in his neck pulsing so hard against his collar

I thought it might burst. For a moment I almost pitied him... almost. Then I remembered exactly who he was, and the feeling evaporated.

"I will fucking kill you!" he spat, his voice raw, ugly, and desperate - more the frantic bark of a cornered dog than an actual threat.

I laughed. Dark. Cruel. Merciless. The sound slashed through the night, echoing off the wet asphalt like a taunt straight from the devil himself. I leaned back just enough to meet his wide, bloodshot eyes, my smirk widening into a weapon.

"You can try," I said, my tone as casual and conversational as if we were discussing the weather. "Do your best, Graham. Really put your back into it. But make sure it hurts."

Slowly, deliberately, I brought the cigarette up to my lips, took one last slow drag, and flicked the burning ember right between his feet. A shower of tiny red sparks exploded against his polished leather shoes. He flinched - just slightly, just enough for me to notice, and we both knew that I had.

"So when I retaliate," I whispered, stepping into his personal space until my chest nearly brushed his, "it’ll be that much sweeter."

Graham’s face contorted, his teeth grinding so hard I could hear the enamel squeak. Rage bubbled up his throat, almost frothing at the corners of his mouth. His breath came in ragged, shallow pants, his ribs expanding violently under his tailored suit.

"You bastard," he growled, the words trembling with sheer hatred. "You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Coming around here, sniffing around what isn’t yours?"

I clicked my tongue, wagging my head slowly, mocking him with nothing more than calm, terrifying patience. "Tsk. Try something better, big brother. Insults like that... that’s amateur hour. Old news."

The quiet condescension sliced deeper than any blade. His nostrils flared, his heavy shoulders trembling under the weight of his own impotence. He wanted so desperately to wound me, to find the exact phrase that would make me bleed, to strip away the absolute dominance I held over him in the dark.

I could see the gears turning behind his swollen pride, searching, grasping for something sharp enough to finally draw blood.

And then, reading the cold detachment in my eyes, he decided to go straight for the jugular.

"You son of a whore," Graham sneered, stepping closer, his lips curling into a vicious, ugly smile. "A loose, pathetic fuck hole."

The world around us instantly stilled. Even the distant orchestra seemed to fade, swallowed whole by the sudden ringing silence in my skull.

My jaw locked, stone-hard, every tendon and nerve in my body instantly wiring tight like a loaded gun. The lazy amusement vanished from my face, my eyes narrowing into pitch-black slits that locked onto his trembling frame like a predator marking a carcass. My voice, when it came, lost every trace of irony. It was low, flat, and lethal.

"What did you just say?"

Graham, high on his own poisonous bravado and blind to the sheer danger radiating off me, stepped directly into the fire instead of pulling back. His smirk widened, his eyes gleaming with a manic, drunken triumph as he leaned in, his words dripping from his teeth like pure acid.

"What? Did I strike a nerve, Jaxx?" he whispered harshly, his breath sour with scotch. "Is it haunting you now, you illegitimate piece of trash? Your mother was a bitch. A dog. A loose, desperate fuck hole who took money on her back."

My lungs burned. My blood roared in my ears like a furnace igniting. Every memory of her... the soft hum of her voice, the warmth of her hands, rose up and curdled into something violent inside my chest.

"And you?" Graham spat, leaning so close I could see the broken red capillaries in his eyes. "You are nothing more than a mistake. A filthy accident. You don’t deserve to share my blood. You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as the Sinclairs. You’re a stain on our name!"

His voice pitched higher, drunk on the cruel high of finally finding the knife sharp enough to cut through my skin. My hands balled into fists so violently I felt the skin split across my knuckles, cold blood trickling over my fingers. I welcomed the pain; it gave the fury somewhere to go.

"But it isn’t even your fault, is it?" Graham hissed, tilting his head, savoring the poison sliding off his tongue. "If not for your whore of a mother spreading her legs for a man who didn’t give a damn about her... then you would never have..."

He never finished the sentence.

I snapped.

My right fist connected with his jaw, the heavy crack of bone against knuckles echoing through the dark like a gunshot. Every restraint I had built over years of silence collapsed in that single instant.

The force of the impact whipped his head sideways so hard his teeth clicked together. His legs folded instantly, his body crumpling like a ragdoll and slamming hard onto the wet concrete. He let out a wet groan, blood spraying from his mouth and instantly staining the pristine white of his dress shirt.

Before he could even register the pain, I loomed over him, my shadow completely swallowing his shivering frame. My heavy boot pressed down onto his chest for a fraction of a second, pinning him to the gravel as his lungs gasped for air, before I reached down, grabbed his silk lapels in one hand, and yanked him upward with a savage violence that snapped his head back.

"Up," I growled. My voice wasn’t human anymore. It was thunder dragged across iron.

He stumbled, half on his knees, his polished shoes dragging helplessly across the gravel as I hauled him across the lot. I slammed him back-first into the dark, damp brick corner behind the industrial dumpsters, far away from the faint light of the venue, far away from anyone who could hear him scream.

Graham coughed violently, spitting a thick wad of blood onto the wall beside his face. He glared up at me, his eyes wide, bloodshot, but still burning with that same fractured, pathetic pride. Even broken, even bleeding, he clung to it like a drowning man clutching driftwood.

I bent low, my iron grip tightening on his torn collar until the fabric bit into his neck, bringing our faces inches apart. My ragged breath mingled with his - cold air, cigarette smoke, and blood filling the narrow space between us. My voice dropped into a rasp so low it sounded like gravel grinding in a grave.

"I dare you..." My teeth bared in a feral sneer. My right arm trembled with a restraint I was losing by the second. "I dare you to repeat what you just said about her."

Blood dripped steadily from his split lip, running down his chin and dropping onto the front of his jacket. The metallic stench of it filled the alley, heavy and suffocating, mixing with the cold rain-soaked air until I could taste it on my tongue.

And still... even with his body broken against the brick, he had the audacity to sneer up at me.

That fragile, toxic Sinclair pride was too stubborn to die. His chest heaved, his ribs screaming where he’d hit the pavement, but his bloody lips curled back over red-stained teeth. He spat another mouthful of blood directly down onto the leather of my boot.

"You think I’ll take it back?" Graham rasped, his voice shredded, wet, but dripping with malice. He coughed again, the sound rattling deep in his chest. "No. I’ll say it as many times as I want. You... are nothing. Father will never accept you. He despises the very thought of you."

The words slid through me like acid, burning through years of buried rage, unearthing every quiet humiliation I had swallowed just to survive in that family’s shadow.

"To the entire world," Graham whispered, his confidence returning as he realized he had no physical defense left except his tongue, "you don’t exist. You’re a ghost. No one knows of your connection to the Sinclairs. No one cares. You’re just a bastard playing dress-up in an expensive suit."

I tightened my grip on his shirt until his airway closed, his face darkening as he choked for air.

"You’re a shame," Graham managed to hiss through his teeth, his eyes shining with sadistic delight. "An embarrassment. And you will always be one. Nothing you do, no company you buy, no woman you touch will ever erase what you really are."

The final word detonated inside my chest.

I lost control entirely.

My fist smashed into his face a second time... harder, faster, unhinged. The sickening thud of flesh on bone shattered the quiet of the night. His head slammed back against the brickwork, leaving a dark smear on the wall.

I didn’t stop.

My fists rained down on him in a relentless, brutal rhythm. Left, right, left. Each blow was a release of years of silence; each strike a punishment for every word he’d ever spoken. I hit him until his face became a swollen mass of dark bruises and split skin, until his frantic protests dissolved into weak, gurgling groans, until his entire body went limp in my grip.

Somewhere beneath the fury, a small, distant part of me registered horror at what I had become, but it was too far away to matter.

Finally, I stilled.

My chest heaved violently, my breath coming in harsh, ragged plumes of white in the cold air. Sweat slicked my forehead, mixing with the rain that had just begun to drizzle from the black sky. My hands shook... not from exhaustion, but from the terrifying, dark euphoria echoing through my veins.

I lowered him slightly, the corner of my mouth twisting into a smirk. Cold. Detached. Utterly void of humanity.

"You seem to have forgotten..." My voice came out low, guttural, vibrating deep in my throat.

Slowly, almost casually, I wiped the thick, wet blood from my bruised knuckles directly onto the front of his silk shirt, smearing it across his chest like a mark of ownership.

"...who the fuck I am."

Graham’s head lolled weakly to the side, blood pouring from his split lip and swelling eye. His breathing was a wet, rattling gasp, but his eyelids flickered open just enough to look at me. Deep in his pupils, past the agony, there still burned a flickering ember of defiance, faint, but unmistakably alive.

I didn’t give him another second to cultivate it.

My right hand slid fluidly down to my waistline, my fingers wrapping around the cold, textured grip tucked beneath my jacket. The sharp, mechanical shhhk of steel sliding free from leather cut through the sound of the rain like a razor.

I drew the heavy, matte-black pistol.

The cold weight of the metal in my palm was instantly grounding. Absolute. Unforgiving. It felt more honest than anything either of us had said all night.

With a slow, deliberate motion of my thumb, I pulled back the slide. The sharp, metallic clack-clack of a round chambering echoed through the alleyway like a death knell. The dark steel of the barrel caught the faint overhead light, steady as a rock in my grip as I brought it up.

I pressed the cold muzzle directly against the center of his forehead.

Graham’s entire body went rigid. His swollen eyes blew wide open, his blood-caked lips parting in a silent, horrified gasp. The defiance, the corporate pride, the Sinclair arrogance, every single drop of it evaporated in a single heartbeat, replaced by pure, unadulterated, primal terror. I crouched lower, bringing my face right into his space, so close he could see the absolute dead calm in my eyes... the storm had passed, leaving behind only an icy, pitiless void.

My index finger rested lightly on the trigger, resting on the tension point with the gentle caress of a lover.

"Say your last prayer, Graham."