Chapter 331 - 0331: You Aren’t Bleeding Nearly Enough

Chapter 331: Chapter 0331: You Aren’t Bleeding Nearly Enough

Jaxx’s Point Of View

"She’s my wife," Graham wheezed, his voice bubbling with thick saliva and blood as he pressed his back harder against the crumbling drywall. He tried to draw his shoulders up, to find that old, pathetic corporate posture that usually made him look important in a boardroom, but his knees shook so violently his expensive trousers practically vibrated against his legs.

The fabric... probably worth more than most people’s monthly rent now bore dark stains and streaks of dust. Even in his current state, he clung to that sense of entitlement, as if expensive clothes could somehow shield him from consequences. "Elena is mine, Jaxx," he insisted, his words dripping with desperate ownership. "She belongs to me. I’m her husband. You’re just a thief hiding in the dark."

I stood there, completely motionless. My chest wasn’t even heaving anymore. The heat that had exploded in my skull when I first broke through that front door had frozen over, turning into something cold, stiff, and sharp, like a blade left out in winter. My bare skin felt freezing against the draft from the broken door, but the veins in my forearms bulged like thick ropes, pulsing with barely contained violence.

Every muscle in my body coiled tight, ready to strike. I’d seen men like Graham before... men who confused possession with love, control with devotion. They were the most dangerous kind, because they genuinely believed their own lies.

"Ex-husband," I said, my voice dropping so low it didn’t even sound like it came from a human throat. It was just a quiet, flat rumble that made the loose plaster on the baseboard vibrate. "You forgot about that little part, big bro. The ink on those papers is completely dry." I let the words hang in the air between us, watching his face contort with denial, watching reality try to penetrate the fortress of delusion he’d built around himself.

"And also... Elena doesn’t belong to anyone. She belongs entirely to herself, and you have exactly zero rights to claim ownership over her. Not today. Not ever again."

Graham let out a wet, spluttering laugh, his head bobbing against the wall as he wiped a smear of red from his chin with the back of his sleeve. The sound was desperate, unhinged... the laugh of a man who’d already lost but refused to accept it. Blood stained his teeth, making his smile grotesque. "You’re wrong. You’re so incredibly wrong, Jaxx. She’s mine. We built everything together. She belongs to me, and absolutely nothing you do in this lifetime will ever change that."

The delusion in his words made something dark twist in my gut. How many times had Elena heard these same possessive claims? How many times had she been made to feel like property instead of a person? How many nights had she lain awake, convinced she was trapped, that there was no escape from this man’s suffocating need to own her?

The thought made my jaw clench so hard I heard my teeth grind together.

I chuckled. It was a tiny, clicking sound in the back of my throat that had absolutely no humor in it. I tilted my head, looking down at his swollen, messy face with a look that usually made my guys at the docks drop their weapons without a word. "Well... bad for you, big bro," I murmured, stepping an inch closer until the shadow of my bare chest completely blocked out the light on his face.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop with my movement. "I’m here now. And the rules in this city have officially changed. Elena is my woman. If you breathe in her direction, you answer to me."

"Never!" Graham shouted, his eyes going totally wide and wild with a sudden, manic burst of adrenaline.

He swung his right fist toward my jaw with a clumsy, slow trajectory that was honestly embarrassing to watch. Years behind a desk had made him soft, stripped away whatever fighting instinct he might have once possessed. The punch telegraphed itself from a mile away, all shoulder and no technique. I didn’t even bother dodging. I just reached out, my left hand snapping around his wrist like a steel handcuff before his knuckles could even brush my skin.

With one fluid, brutal twist of my torso, I yanked his arm behind his back, spinning him around until his chest slammed hard against the white wall with a dull, hollow thud. The impact knocked the remaining air out of his lungs in a sharp gasp. Dust and small chunks of plaster rained down from the damaged drywall, creating a small cloud around us.

I kept his arm pinned high between his shoulder blades, twisting the wrist just enough to make the joints pop... a warning, not a break. Not yet. He needed to understand that his privilege, his money, his corporate power meant nothing here. This was my world now, and in my world, men who hurt women learned painful lessons.

"Let go of me!" he croaked, his cheek pressed flat against the cracked plaster. Sweat beaded on his temple, mixing with the blood and dust coating his skin. His breath came in short, panicked bursts.

I didn’t answer him. Words were wasted on men like Graham - men who only understood force and consequence, men who’d spent their entire lives buying their way out of accountability. I grabbed him by the scruff of his ruined collar and started walking toward the shattered front entrance, yanking Graham along behind me like a heavy, pathetic piece of trash.

His leather shoes dragged uselessly across the hardwood, leaving long, black scuff marks all over the foyer. He tried to find his footing, stumbling and gasping, but I didn’t slow my pace. Each step was deliberate, measured, a physical manifestation of every ounce of rage I felt on Elena’s behalf.

As I dragged him out onto the stone porch, I glanced over my shoulder for a split second. Elena was still curled up on the edge of the velvet couch, the white towel wrapped tightly around her trembling shoulders, her face buried in her hands as her chest hitched with quiet, exhausted sobs. The sight of her... broken, terrified, reduced to this trembling shell, made my heart give a strange, violent twist. She deserved so much better than this nightmare.

The cold rage in my stomach hardened into absolute concrete. Every tear she shed was another debt Graham would pay. I made that promise to myself right then, watching her shoulders shake with silent anguish.

I hauled Graham down the front steps, his knees barking against the stone before I threw him onto the gravel driveway right next to the front tire of my Mercedes. He collapsed into a messy, groaning heap, clutching his ribs and coughing up more dark red fluid onto the pristine white stones. The metallic scent of blood mixed with the air, sharp and unmistakable.

I reached into the open driver’s side window of my car, my fingers wrapping around my phone on the console. The cool glass screen felt grounding against my heated skin, pulling me back from the edge of doing something I might actually regret. I unlocked it, my thumb quickly scrolling down to Roman’s name, and hit dial. It rang exactly once before his gruff voice came through the speaker.

"Yeah, boss? You back at the house already?"

"I want you to come to my location as soon as possible," I said, my voice completely level, completely devoid of any emotion. I kept my eyes fixed on the back of Graham’s head as he tried to crawl toward his sedan, pathetic and desperate, leaving a dark smear across the white gravel. "There’s a piece of trash out here on the driveway that needs handling."

There was a short pause on the other end, the sound of a car engine instantly roaring to life in the background. Roman didn’t ask questions. He never did. That was why I trusted him... he understood the unspoken language of loyalty, the code we lived by. He knew that specific tone in my voice, the one that meant someone had crossed a line they could never uncross. "I’ll be there as soon as humanly possible, Jaxx. Ten minutes."

"Make it five," I said, dropping the call and tossing the phone carelessly back through the window onto the leather seat. The device landed with a soft thud, and I turned my full attention back to Graham, who had managed to prop himself up on one elbow. His expensive watch caught the moonlight, glinting mockingly. All that money, all that power, and it meant nothing now.

Out here, bleeding on gravel, he was just another man who’d hurt someone I cared about. And that was a mistake no amount of wealth could fix. I’d make sure he understood that before this day was over... that some debts could only be paid in fear and pain.

I stepped over to Graham, my heavy boot coming down directly onto the center of his shoulder blade, pinning him flat against the gravel before he could crawl another foot. He let out a sharp, pathetic yelp, his fingers clawing desperately at the stones as if they might offer him some escape.

"I might have been silent before, Graham," I murmured, leaning down slightly so my voice would carry over the low purr of my car’s idling engine. The words came out measured, controlled... a stark contrast to the fury churning beneath my skin. "I stayed in the background while you played your little corporate games, watched you scheme and manipulate from the shadows. But not anymore."

I pressed down harder with my boot, feeling him squirm beneath the pressure. "She’s with me now, and I won’t tolerate you coming anywhere near her. You stay away from her... or else, the next time you attempt a stunt like this, it’s a body bag they’ll be carrying away from this property. Do you understand me, big bro?"

But as the words left my mouth, the image of Elena’s bruised, reddened shoulder flashed across the back of my eyelids... vivid and searing. I saw her crying, her small, trembling form huddled on the floorboards, trying desperately to hold onto that towel while this pathetic excuse for a man forced himself onto her. The memory of her quiet sobs, the way she’d flinched when I’d first approached, the violation written across every inch of her body, it all crashed over me like a tidal wave.

The cold, calculated rage in my chest suddenly shattered, and a fresh, toxic wave of pure, unadulterated anger built up all over again, roaring through my blood like a freight train barreling down broken tracks. My hands began to shake... not from fear, but from the sheer effort of restraining myself from doing something I might not regret.

I let out a low, guttural growl that sounded like an animal breaking out of a cage, primal and raw. My hand slid down to the pocket of my trousers, my fingers wrapping around the familiar, cool silver casing of my small pocket knife. The weight of it felt right in my palm, comforting in a twisted way. With a sharp, metallic click that cut through the afternoon air, the two-inch steel blade flicked out into the sunlight, gleaming dangerously.

"I’m not satisfied yet, brother," I hissed, my teeth grinding together until my jaw ached with the pressure. "You aren’t bleeding nearly enough for what you did inside that house. Not nearly enough for the terror you put in her eyes."