6: Chapter 0006: You’re Fucking Your Own Cousin?
6: Chapter 0006: You’re Fucking Your Own Cousin?
Elena’s Point Of View “And an open marriage…
you’ll get.” The words escaped before I could think, dropping into the space between us like a lead weight.
I hadn’t planned to say them.
They simply tore free from some wounded, reckless place inside me… a place I didn’t even know existed until this moment.
Graham’s gaze shifted instantly.
The soft, pitying look he’d been forcing vanished completely, his eyes widening slightly before narrowing into something sharp and dangerous.
His grip on my waist didn’t loosen; it tightened, his long fingers biting deep through the thin silk of my slip, pinning me against him with bruising force.
I could feel each individual fingertip pressing into my skin, marking me.
“Who knows,” I whispered, my chin still tilting up, though my lips trembled so hard I could barely form the words.
My voice sounded strange to my own ears… brittle, foreign, like someone else speaking through my mouth.
“I might actually get pregnant now.
Since it’s entirely for the good of the family, right?” His face went dark, the skin across his jaw tightening until a muscle leaped near his ear.
The transformation was instant, terrifying.
“What the hell are you saying, Elena?” “You want an open marriage, right?” I let out a jagged, dry breath, my hands remaining flat against his chest, feeling the heavy, aggressive thudding of his heart beneath my palms.
The rhythm matched my own frantic pulse, two war drums beating in sync.
“I’ll be giving it to you.
Exactly what you asked for.” “I didn’t mean you can go out there and get yourself some riff-raff,” he growled, his voice dropping into a low, menacing register that made my skin prickle.
He leaned his weight into me, his chest pressing hard against mine, trying to dominate the small pocket of air left between us.
His breath came hot against my forehead, carrying the faint scent of whiskey.
“You are a Sinclair.
You carry my name.
If you think you’re going to humiliate me by…” “Oh, so the rules only apply to you, right?” I interrupted, my voice cracking, raw and ugly.
The hypocrisy of it all crashed over me in waves, threatening to drown me.
Heat flooded my face… anger, humiliation, grief all mixing together into something combustible.
I threw my weight backward, twisting violently until his fingers slipped on the silk and his hands dropped.
I stumbled away from him, my back hitting the edge of the mattress.
“Let go of me, Graham!
That’s what you want, and I’ll give it to you.
Get out!” He stood there, frozen on his knees for a second before slowly rising to his full height.
He towered over me, all six feet three inches of him, looking down at me as if he were looking at a complete stranger.
His mouth pressed into a thin, grim line.
The silence between us felt suffocating, thick with everything we weren’t saying… all the accusations, the betrayals, the broken promises that hung in the air like smoke.
He didn’t say another word.
He just turned on his heel and walked out of the bedroom, the door clicking shut with an awful, final sort of quiet.
The moment the latch caught, the strong face I’d been holding onto collapsed completely.
I dropped to my knees on the hardwood, burying my face in my palms, sobbing until my throat burned and my chest felt completely hollowed out.
The tears came in violent, choking waves.
I couldn’t stop them.
I didn’t even try.
What was the point?
There was no one left to see me break.
I didn’t go to work the next day.
By eight in the morning, the light coming through the heavy curtains felt too bright, too mocking.
It illuminated the disaster I’d become… the tangled sheets, the mascara-stained pillowcase, the emptiness beside me where Graham should have been.
The indentation in his pillow had already faded, as if he’d never been there at all.
I stayed in bed until my phone started buzzing on the nightstand, the vibration rattling against the wood like an accusation.
I picked it up with a numb hand, staring at the screen before sliding the answer bar.
“Clara,” I said, my voice thick and dry, barely recognizable even to myself.
“Ma’am?
Are you on your way?” she asked, her tone bright and efficient as always.
“The production team from the Houston plant is already in the main conference room…” “Handle it,” I cut her off, staring blankly at the ceiling molding, tracing the ornate patterns with my eyes.
The plaster roses and vines that had once seemed elegant now looked like they were closing in on me.
“Handle everything today, Clara.
Cancel my afternoon sessions.
I’m…
I’m not coming in.” A long pause stretched over the line.
Clara had been my assistant for three years; she knew I didn’t miss days.
I’d worked through migraines, through the flu, through my grandmother’s funeral.
I’d once given a presentation with a fever of 102.
“Are you sick?
Do you need me to call the family doctor?” “No.
Just…
take care of the office.
Please.” I hung up before she could ask anything else.
The concern in her voice had been too much to bear.
I wasn’t sane enough to go to the company.
If I sat in front of those clients today, if I had to look at another legal binder or negotiate another delivery margin, I would lose it completely.
I would scream.
I would shatter into a thousand pieces right there in the boardroom, and they’d have to sweep me up with the coffee grounds.
Instead, I spent the entire afternoon in the backyard garden, pulling weeds with my bare hands until the dirt got wedged deep under my fingernails and my skin scratched against the rough mulch.
I didn’t wear gloves.
I needed to feel something sharp, something real, to keep my mind from circling back to the image of Graham’s gray eyes under the kitchen lights.
The physical pain was a relief, something I could control when everything else was spinning out of my grasp.
Each pulled weed was a small victory, a tiny act of destruction I could manage.
By dusk, the Texas heat had left me coated in sweat and dust.
My muscles ached from hours of kneeling on the hard ground.
Blisters had formed on my palms, small badges of my suffering.
I went back upstairs, took a long, mindless shower, and changed into a pair of faded sweatpants and an old t-shirt.
I felt entirely detached from my own body, like a ghost walking through the massive, quiet hallways of our home.
The house had never felt so empty, so cavernous.
Every room echoed with memories I couldn’t bear to examine.
I came downstairs around six to get my phone off the kitchen island.
The house staff had already prepared a dinner I knew I wouldn’t eat and left it warming on the stove.
The smell of roasted chicken made my stomach turn, bile rising in my throat.
I was just reaching for the counter when the heavy wooden front door clicked open down the hall.
My heart did a stupid, hopeful little leap.
Graham was home early.
Maybe he’d thought about it.
Maybe the night apart had broken through that terrifying logic of his.
Maybe he’d come to his senses and realized what he was throwing away.
Maybe he’d walk through that door with flowers, with apologies, with some explanation that would make this all make sense.
“Graham?” I called out, stepping out of the kitchen and into the grand foyer.
My voice echoed in the high-ceilinged space, bouncing off marble and crystal.
The name died in my throat.
Someone else entered right after him.
She was shaking out a light cardigan, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders in glossy waves.
It wasn’t a stranger.
It was a face I had seen at every major Sinclair Thanksgiving dinner, every family charity gala in Dallas.
It was Lillian.
His cousin.
The one he had introduced to me countless times as the quiet, sweet relative from the East Coast branch of the family.
The one who always smiled politely and asked about my work with genuine interest.
The one I’d actually liked.
And she was heavily, unmistakably pregnant.
The roundness of her belly stretched tight against her jersey knit dress, the fabric clinging to the undeniable evidence.
She had to be at least five or six months along.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my bare feet gluing themselves to the Persian rug.
The air left my lungs completely.
My vision narrowed to a pinpoint, focusing only on that swollen belly, that damning curve.
Everything else in the room… the chandelier, the antique console table, the fresh flowers in their crystal vase, faded into insignificance.
I already knew the answer.
The pieces were falling into place with a sickening, brutal precision, but my brain still fought it.
I still held onto a tiny, pathetic shred of hope that I was wrong, that this was some terrible misunderstanding.
“What is going on here, Graham?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm, pointing a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking toward the woman standing in our hallway.
The tremor in my fingers betrayed the composure I was desperately trying to maintain.
I sounded like someone else… someone cold, someone in control.
Someone who wasn’t dying inside.
Graham didn’t look guilty.
He didn’t even have the decency to look uncomfortable.
He reached out, his hand settling firmly against the small of Lillian’s back, guiding her forward into the house as if she belonged there.
As if she owned the place.
As if I were the intruder in my own home.
The gesture was protective, possessive… the way he used to touch me.
“Elena, this is Lillian,” he said, his voice completely level, looking at me with those dead gray eyes.
No warmth, no apology, no explanation.
Just cold, hard facts delivered like a business report.
“And she’s carrying my child.” The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
A sharp, high-pitched ringing filled my ears, so loud I could barely breathe through it.
My knees threatened to buckle.
This couldn’t be real.
This couldn’t be happening.
Not in my house.
Not with his cousin.
Not with a baby… a baby I’d been trying to give him for five years.
“What?!” I choked out, a wild, disbelieving laugh tearing from my throat as I took a step back, my spine hitting the foyer wall.
The cool plaster steadied me even as my world crumbled.
My hands pressed flat against the wall behind me, anchoring me to reality.
“You’re…
you’re fucking your cousin, Graham?”