Chapter 237
Chapter 237:
Six months ago, seeing Cole cry would have shattered her. She would have dropped to her knees and held him without hesitation. Now, looking at his tears, she felt absolutely nothing. Her internal emotional landscape was a flat, frozen tundra extending in every direction without end.
“Are you done?” she asked. Her voice was perfectly level — no anger, no sadness, no inflection of any kind.
Cole’s breath caught.
“Do you think kneeling on a dirty hospital floor changes the past?” June continued, her tone carrying the cold precision of a clinical observation. “Do you think your tears can regenerate the fallopian tube I had to have cut from my body p>
Cole let out a choked gasp and shook his head frantically. “No — I know I can’t fix it, but I love you p>
𝖰𝘂𝗮𝗅i𝘁𝘆 t𝘳а𝗻𝘀𝗅𝗮𝘁𝘪oո𝘴 𝗈𝘯 ѕ.𝘤𝘰𝘮
“You don’t love me, Cole,” June said, cutting cleanly through his words. “You are having a panic attack because your ego cannot process the reality of what you are. You aren’t crying for my pain. You are crying because your own conscience is suffocating you. This entire performance is about you feeling sorry for yourself p>
The surgical precision of it stripped away his last defense.
“No! I swear to God, I love you!” Cole screamed, reaching for her again.
June took another step back. She looked down at him with the calm, absolute weight of final judgment.
“I don’t hate you, Cole,” she said quietly.
A tiny, desperate spark ignited in his eyes.
“I don’t hate you,” she repeated, her gaze turning to black ice, “because to me, you are already dead. And I don’t waste my energy hating a corpse. You will never have my forgiveness, because dead men don’t get second chances p>
She didn’t wait for a response.
June turned on her heel and walked past him, her posture perfectly straight, her heels clicking in a steady, unhurried rhythm down the corridor toward the ICU. She didn’t look back once.
Cole remained on his knees, staring at the empty space where she had been standing.
The spark in his chest went out.
He let out a long, guttural, animalistic howl of pure despair and collapsed forward, pressing his forehead against the cold tiles, weeping without restraint as the reality of his eternal punishment settled over him like a stone.
Five minutes earlier.
Just twenty yards down the corridor from where Cole now wept on the floor, the hallway bent in a sharp ninety-degree turn toward the private cosmetic surgery wing.
Alycia Beasley stood perfectly still behind a heavy, marble-clad structural pillar.
She had dressed to avoid the paparazzi — oversized black Chanel sunglasses covering half her face, a silk Hermès scarf wound tightly around her hair. She was scheduled for a discreet dermal filler appointment to maintain her flawless, carefully curated look. Her mother, Susan, had insisted on it, booking the city’s most exclusive doctor after Vera’s public humiliation had left Alycia looking, in Susan’s words, visibly stressed and haggard.
She had just rounded the corner when she heard the heavy, unmistakable sound of a man’s knees striking the floor.