Chapter 229
Chapter 229:
The Vault was an ultra-exclusive, subterranean members-only club hidden beneath Manhattan’s financial district. The lighting was brutally dim, casting long, blood-red shadows across expensive velvet furniture. A low, heavy jazz bassline vibrated through the floorboards.
Cole sat alone in a massive VIP booth in the darkest corner of the room.
The glass table before him was a graveyard of alcohol. Three empty bottles of Ace of Spades and a half-empty bottle of cask-strength whiskey sat among pools of melting ice. Cole looked like a man who had been taken apart and badly reassembled. His silk tie was wrenched open and hung loosely around his neck. The top buttons of his shirt were torn. His hair was a chaotic mess. His bloodshot eyes stared blankly at the amber liquid in his crystal glass.
His mind was trapped in a torturous, endless loop.
A pool of blood. It never even had the chance to form.
June’s cold, dead voice drilled into his temples like a blade. She had killed it. She had killed his child without a second thought.
R𝗲𝗮𝘥 𝗳𝘳𝗈m yо𝗎𝘳 𝗉ho𝗻e о𝗇
A violent surge of rage boiled up his throat. Cole let out a guttural snarl, seized the crystal glass, and hurled it at the sofa across from him. It exploded on impact, sending shards and amber liquid raining down across the upholstery. A nearby waiter flinched but didn’t dare approach.
At that moment, the heavy velvet curtains separating the VIP area were pushed aside.
Crawford Love walked in.
He wore a perfectly tailored charcoal-gray cashmere overcoat. His posture was rigid and his face was a mask of absolute, freezing indifference. In his left hand he carried a thick legal folder — the final severance contract, cutting all early-stage joint ventures between the Love Group and the Compton conglomerate cleanly and permanently.
Crawford’s dark eyes swept the room and settled on Cole’s drunken, disheveled form.
Cole slowly lifted his head. When he saw Crawford standing there — immaculate, composed, and radiating quiet power — a nuclear detonation of pure jealousy went off in his chest. He grabbed the edge of the table and shoved himself upright, swaying slightly, his boots grinding broken crystal into the floor. He leveled a shaking finger at Crawford’s chest, a sick sneer pulling at his lips.
“Well, well,” Cole slurred, his voice thick with venom. “Look who it is. Did you just crawl out of my wife’s bed? Did you come here to gloat p>
Crawford’s footsteps came to a stop. The temperature in the room seemed to drop below freezing.
He walked slowly to the table without raising his voice, without reacting to the bait. He simply lifted the legal folder and brought it down onto the glass surface with a sharp, authoritative crack.
“Sign the severance papers, Cole,” Crawford said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “And keep June’s name out of your filthy mouth p>
Hearing Crawford speak her name with such effortless intimacy destroyed the last remaining thread of Cole’s composure.