Chapter 254
Chapter 254:
His head snapped up, bloodshot eyes locking onto Julian’s phone screen with predatory, terrifying focus. He saw Crawford in his pajamas. He saw the hotel room. He heard his wife’s voice — calm, intimate — in another man’s bedroom at one in the morning.
A monstrous logic seized his mind instantly.
She is in a hotel room with him. At this hour. They are together.
The jealousy hit Cole like a bullet fired directly into his skull. The guilt and remorse that had consumed him for hours evaporated in an instant, replaced by a raging, uncontrollable inferno of possessive madness.
Cole lunged across the booth and ripped the phone from Julian’s hand. He drove his face into the camera, his eyes completely unhinged, burning with a wild, demonic fire.
“Put her on the screen!” he roared, his voice tearing out of his throat. “Let me see my wife, you son of a bitch p>
Crawford looked at the screen. When he saw Cole’s twisted, psychotic face staring back at him, a slow, deeply cruel smile spread across his lips.
He didn’t panic. He didn’t explain the separate bedrooms.
Instead, he looked directly into the camera and delivered a single, calculated blow.
𝘉𝖾 t𝗵e f𝗶rѕ𝗍 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝖾а𝖽 𝘰𝗇
“You’re interrupting, Cole,” Crawford said, his voice soaked in dark, possessive mockery.
Before Cole could scream another word, Crawford pressed the red button. The screen went black.
Cole stared at the dead screen for exactly one second.
Then he let out a guttural, animalistic howl of pure agony. He raised his arm and drove Julian’s phone into the brick wall. The device exploded into fragments. He shoved the marble table out of his way, sending bottles and glasses crashing, and stormed out of the VIP booth — his massive frame radiating pure, murderous intent.
He tore his backup phone from his pocket with hands shaking so violently he could barely unlock the screen, and dialed June’s number, ready to unleash everything left inside him.
The freezing New York rain battered Cole’s face as he burst out of the underground club and onto the dark street. He stood beneath a flickering streetlamp, completely oblivious to the downpour soaking his expensive suit, pressing his phone to his ear with a death grip, his knuckles bone-white.
The phone rang. Each tone drove into his skull like a needle.
Inside the Boston hotel suite, June had just returned to her bedroom. Her encrypted backup phone began vibrating on the nightstand. She frowned, crossed to it, and picked it up. She didn’t recognize the New York number, but the relentless ringing suggested an emergency. She pressed answer.
Before she could speak, a wave of pure, unhinged rage exploded through the speaker.
“Where the hell are you?” Cole screamed, his voice completely hoarse and vibrating with desperate, psychotic fury. “Why are you in his room? Did you sleep with him p>
June’s body went completely still. The sound of his voice extinguished every trace of warmth in her instantly, her eyes hardening into two chips of black ice.
“You are out of your mind,” she said, her voice flat and entirely devoid of emotion.
Her absolute calm poured gasoline on his fire.