Chapter 327 - 0327: Jaxx Is Much Better Than A Hundred Of You Combined

Chapter 327: Chapter 0327: Jaxx Is Much Better Than A Hundred Of You Combined

Elena’s Point Of View

"He’s using me?"

I actually laughed. The sound wasn’t bitter... it erupted as a loud, completely unhinged burst of pure, hysterical amusement that bounced off the high white ceilings of the foyer. The yellow towel on my head wobbled dangerously, and a stray, wet lock of hair slapped against my forehead, but I didn’t care.

The absurdity of the moment struck me with full force... here I stood in my dripping wetness, clutching that white bath towel to my chest like a shield, facing down the man I used to share a bed with. The man whose breathing patterns I once knew better than my own. The man who now felt like a stranger wearing a familiar face.

How had we come to this? How had love turned into this grotesque parody of intimacy?

Graham nodded, his eyes wide, brimming with frantic, sweaty desperation that made his expensive haircut look incredibly stupid. He took half a step forward, his polished leather shoes leaving a faint, dull smudge on my clean hardwood floor. I watched that mark appear and felt a flash of irritation... even now, he was leaving his imprint on my space without permission. Some things never changed.

"Yes! Yes, he is, Elena," he insisted, his voice cracking slightly. The sound reminded me of how he used to plead for just five more minutes of sleep on Sunday mornings, back when we were happy. Back when I thought we were happy. "You have to believe me. You have to listen to me just this once. He’s not who you think he is."

I sneered, the skin around my nose tightening into a sharp, ugly knot. My reflection in the hallway mirror caught my eye... I looked feral, wild, nothing like the composed woman I’d been trying to rebuild. My mother would have been horrified. The thought made me smile wider.

"And where exactly has believing you gotten me, Graham? Tell me," I said, letting the question hang in the air between us like smoke. "Look at me right now and tell me where it got me."

I gestured wildly with my free hand, almost losing my grip on the towel around my chest before quickly snatching it back. The vulnerability of standing there half-dressed only fueled my anger. I’d been vulnerable with this man before, and look where that had led me.

"The last time I believed you, I ended up sitting in a lawyer’s office signing away two years of my life while your father smiled in the corner like a vulture," I continued, my voice gaining strength with each word. "So if Jaxx is using me, then what the hell were you all those years? What makes you any better than him?" My voice dropped lower, more dangerous. "At least he’s honest about his mess. At least he doesn’t pretend to be a saint while stabbing me in the ribs."

"Elena..." His voice carried a pleading note that once would have melted my defenses. Now it just made me want to laugh again.

"No! I’m talking now," I snapped, my voice rising a comically sharp octave as I felt the cold air from the hallway vent hit the bare skin of my shoulder blades. I shivered, but my blood was boiling too hot to care. The goosebumps spreading across my arms felt like tiny soldiers rallying to my cause, each one a testament to my rage.

"If you have nothing more to say than some pathetic, recycled warnings about your brother, then please leave. I am busy. I have things to do, and none of them involve listening to your voice."

Graham’s face twisted, his cheeks turning a weird, mottled shade of gray under the foyer lights. He looked sick, actually physically ill, and some small, buried part of me almost felt sorry for him. Almost. That part was getting smaller every day, and I was grateful for it. Pity had kept me trapped for too long.

"Elena, you have to listen to me! I know him. I know who he truly is," he said, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. The knuckles went white with the pressure. "He’s my half-brother, a bastard who grew up in the dark, and he’s up to absolutely no good. He’ll only hurt you, sweetheart. He’ll make you cry. He’s not good for you, he never has been!"

The word ’sweetheart’ hit me like a slap. How dare he use that term now, after everything? That word belonged to a different version of us, a version that no longer existed. He had no right to resurrect it from the grave of our marriage.

"You have absolutely no right to tell me who’s good for me and who’s not, Graham!" I yelled, my teeth grinding together so hard my jaw audibly clicked. The sound echoed in my skull, a physical manifestation of my rage. I took a step toward him, my bare foot slapping loudly against the floorboards. The cold wood against my skin grounded me, reminded me this was real. "You lost that right the exact second you let that girl into our bedroom. He’ll hurt me? Let him hurt me!"

The words tasted like freedom on my tongue, wild and dangerous and completely mine. "Even if he breaks my heart into a million tiny pieces and throws them in the harbor, it wouldn’t be half as painful as what you did to me. It wouldn’t even scratch the surface." My voice broke slightly on the last word, and I hated myself for that momentary weakness. I swallowed hard, forcing the emotion back down where it belonged.

"That’s not fair," he whispered, his hands twitching against the sides of his trousers. His fingers drummed a nervous rhythm against the expensive fabric, a tell I recognized from countless arguments we’d had before. I used to find that habit endearing. Now it just irritated me.

"Not fair?" I let out another sharp, ugly chuckle, my eyes tracking a stray drop of water as it rolled down his cheek... sweat, probably, or maybe he was actually pathetic enough to cry. I hoped it burned. "He’ll make me cry? Graham, that is your absolute specialty. Don’t go pinning your personal talent onto another person."

I felt the weight of every tear I’d shed over him pressing against my chest, threatening to suffocate me. But I wouldn’t let them fall now. Not in front of him. Never again in front of him.

"I gave you my entire heart. I gave you my devotion, my nights, my mornings, every single piece of my identity until I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror," I said, each word deliberate, measured. I wanted him to feel the weight of them. "And what did you do with it?"

My voice trembled with the force of my emotion, but I pushed forward. "You threw it all into the garbage for another woman. Did you think of our vows when you were holding her? Did you think about the love we once shared? Did you even give it a single thought?"

The silence that followed felt heavy, suffocating. I could see him searching for words, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. The sight would have been comical if it weren’t so pathetic. This was the man I’d promised forever to. This weak, fumbling creature who couldn’t even defend his own actions.

"Elena, it wasn’t like that with Lillian, you know it wasn’t... "

"Jaxx is much better than a hundred of you combined!" I screamed, the sheer force of it making the wet towel on my head completely unravel. It slid down my neck, landing with a heavy, wet thud against my collarbone, but I didn’t even blink. My hair hung in wet ropes around my face, water dripping onto my shoulders, but I felt powerful in my dishevelment. I felt like a warrior, battle-worn and fierce. I just stared him down, my chest heaving against the tight cotton of the bath towel.

"Yes, he has his own space for adjustments. Everyone does; no one is perfect! He’s a lunatic, he’s arrogant, he has a million secrets, and his temper is a disaster..." I paused, gathering my thoughts, feeling the truth of what I was about to say settle into my bones. The words formed themselves, clear and undeniable. "But you see you? You’re a monster, Graham. A blood-sucking, pale demon who doesn’t know how to do anything but drain the life out of the people who care about you."

The words hung between us, final and irrevocable. I watched them land, watched him flinch as if I’d physically struck him. His face went slack, all the fight draining out of him in an instant. Good. Let him feel even a fraction of what he’d put me through. Let him carry that weight for once instead of making me bear it alone.

Graham stumbled back two full steps, his heel catching on the edge of the wicker basket he’d brought. The basket tipped over with a dull creak, three expensive sea-salt dark chocolate bars sliding out onto the rug... the same brand I used to keep in my desk drawer at the office, back when I still believed his small gestures meant something.

The sight of them now felt like a cruel joke, a reminder of how little he’d ever truly known me. He’d memorized my favorite chocolate but never bothered to learn the deeper parts of me, the parts that mattered. He looked down at them, then back at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping on dry land.

"Elena, please," he muttered, his voice dropping into a low, pathetic whine that made my skin crawl. The sound of it... that particular pitch of desperation transported me back to a hundred other arguments, a hundred other moments when he’d used that exact tone to avoid accountability. "Please don’t say that."

"I begged you, Graham!" The words tore from my throat, the memory of those final weeks in his apartment flashing behind my eyelids like hot grease spattering across bare skin. I could still see myself there, curled into the corner of that ridiculous velvet sofa, my voice hoarse from pleading, my dignity in tatters at his feet. My eyes burned with the familiar sting of unshed tears, but I refused to let a single drop fall in front of him. Not anymore. Never again.

"I sat on that velvet sofa... the one your mother picked out because you couldn’t make a decision without her approval, and I begged you until my throat was raw. But you just kept choosing Lillian over me. Time and time again. Every single day, every single argument, it was always her."

The bitterness coated my tongue like ash, acrid and choking. "All because she was carrying your child. As if that erased everything we’d built together, as if I’d become invisible the moment she announced her pregnancy."

My breath came faster now, the words gaining momentum like a avalanche I could no longer control. "You humiliated me in front of your family. Made me feel so worthless that I used to stay in the shower for hours, trying to scrub the failure off my skin. The water would run cold and I’d still be standing there, shaking, wondering what was fundamentally wrong with me. What defect I carried that made me so easy to discard."

The memory of those showers made my stomach turn... the pruned fingers, the chattering teeth, the desperate hope that somehow the water could wash away the shame. "You made me feel completely disgusted with myself, Graham. With my own reflection. With every choice I’d ever made that led me to you."

"I never wanted you to feel that way," he whispered, his hands reaching out into the empty air between us, grasping at nothing. His fingers trembled slightly, and for a moment he looked almost human again, almost like the man I’d once loved, the one who’d brought me coffee in bed on Sunday mornings and laughed at my terrible jokes. Almost. But that man had been a fiction, a performance he’d maintained only as long as it was convenient.

"But you did it anyway!" The words shot out like bullets, each one aimed with precision at the heart of his excuses. My fingers clenched into the white terrycloth until my knuckles turned yellow, the fabric bunching in my fists as if I could squeeze out all the rage, all the hurt, all the wasted years.

"And because of that, because you made me feel like some broken, unlovable thing... I went around hurting everyone else. I became the worst version of myself because I believed your lies about who I was."

The confession felt like ripping off a bandage, exposing raw skin to air. "I pushed Jaxx away when he tried to help me, told him he didn’t understand, that he should mind his own business. I yelled at Clara over nothing... over a misplaced file, a forgotten appointment, because I was so full of self-loathing I couldn’t contain it anymore. I treated my board of directors like enemies, second-guessed every decision, because I thought I was the issue. I thought I was defective, that something fundamental was wrong with me."

My voice cracked, but I pushed through, needing him to understand the full scope of the damage he’d caused. "I stopped eating properly. Started drinking wine alone at night, staring at my phone, waiting for texts you never sent. I canceled plans with friends because I was too ashamed to let them see what I’d become. But now I know the truth. I know I never was broken."

The realization still felt new, fragile, like something I had to protect. "You were the issue, Graham. Your entire, pathetic, spineless existence was the problem. Your inability to be honest, to choose, to be a decent human being, that was always the poison. And I am so glad you are finally out of my life for good."

The silence that followed felt massive, oppressive. It filled the foyer like heavy smoke, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. The grandfather clock’s ticking seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness, each second a small hammer blow against the tension. Graham stood there, his shoulders hunched under his perfect Italian wool jacket... the charcoal one I’d helped him pick out last Christmas, back when I still thought we had a future, looking like a man who had just been dismantled piece by piece by a woman in a bath towel.

His carefully constructed image, his polished exterior, all of it crumbling under the weight of truth. There was something almost poetic about that, I thought distantly. Something fitting about him being reduced to nothing while I stood here in terrycloth, more powerful than I’d ever been in designer clothes and makeup.

"I never want to have anything to do with you ever again." My voice dropped into a dangerously quiet, level tone that felt far more real than all the screaming, more honest than any declaration I’d ever made. The calmness surprised even me... it came from somewhere deep and certain, a place that had finally stopped questioning its own worth.

I glanced over at the grandfather clock ticking steadily near the kitchen entrance, each second marking the end of an era, the death of a version of myself I’d never mourn. "Your five minutes are up, Graham. Actually, it’s been six. Now get the hell out of my house."

He didn’t move for three seconds. He just stared at the blue flowers on the stool... delphinium, I noticed absently, Jaxx’s favorite, the ones he’d brought this morning with that easy smile that never demanded anything from me, his bottom lip trembling slightly in that way that used to make me feel guilty. That trembling lip had once been my weakness, the thing that made me want to take back every harsh word, to smooth over the conflict, to make myself smaller so he could feel bigger.

But today it just made me feel slightly sick to my stomach, disgusted that I’d ever fallen for such transparent manipulation. How many times had I watched that lip quiver and immediately backed down, apologized for things that weren’t my fault, accepted blame for his failures?

"Elena..." His voice broke on my name, splintering into something that might have been genuine emotion or might have been another performance. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. The absence of feeling was almost startling... no anger, no sadness, no residual affection. Just a vast, peaceful emptiness where he used to live in my chest.

"I said leave," I whispered, pointing a single, trembling finger toward the open courtyard where the afternoon sun was still burning the pavement, heat waves shimmering above the stone like liquid glass. The heat out there would be brutal, unforgiving, exactly what he deserved. "Before Jaxx gets back. Because if he finds you standing in this hallway, Graham, I won’t do a single thing to stop him from breaking your jaw."

The words should have shocked me... I’d never been a person who threatened violence, but they felt right, protective, like drawing a line in permanent ink. "And honestly?" I met his eyes one last time, letting him see the steel that had replaced whatever softness he remembered, whatever pliable version of me he’d grown comfortable manipulating. "I’ll probably enjoy watching it happen."