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Chapter 319
Chapter 319:
Cole turned his head slowly. His dead, hollow eyes found Crawford’s and locked on.
Crawford’s mocking question hung in the sterile hospital air, sharp and lethal.
Cole did not react with his usual explosive anger. He did not yell. He did not charge at the bed.
Instead, his broad shoulders collapsed entirely inward, as though the invisible strings holding his arrogant posture together had been severed all at once. He took a slow, unsteady step backward until his spine met the heavy metal doorframe. Then he slid down the wall, his expensive trousers scraping against the paint, until he hit the floor.
𝘔𝗈r𝗲 𝘯o𝗏е𝘭𝘴 𝗈𝗇 𝘨𝘢𝗅n𝘰𝗏еlѕ.𝗰о𝗺
He sat on the cold linoleum, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. He raised both hands and buried his face in his palms, fingers digging into his hair and pulling at the roots. A violent, uncontrollable tremor moved through his massive frame.
Crawford’s mocking smile faded slowly. His dark eyebrows drew together.
He was a master of reading human behavior. He had expected rage. He had expected denial. He had not expected the total, absolute psychological collapse of a billionaire CEO sitting on a hospital floor.
The room was completely silent for a full sixty seconds. The only sound was Cole’s ragged, wet breathing.
Finally, Cole lowered his hands.
He stared at the floor tiles. His eyes were entirely vacant.
“I made a mistake,” Cole whispered. His voice was so hoarse it sounded as though his vocal cords were bleeding. “I made an unforgivable mistake p>
Crawford’s muscles tensed. He narrowed his eyes at the broken man on the floor.
“What did you do?” Crawford demanded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register.
Cole closed his eyes. A single tear escaped, cutting a clean line through the ash-colored exhaustion on his face.
“Last night… I was drinking,” Cole rasped, forcing the words out of his throat as though swallowing razor blades. “I blacked out. And I… I touched Alycia p>
The confession dropped into the room like a block of solid lead.
Crawford froze. For exactly one second, his brain processed the information.
Then a wave of pure, volcanic rage erupted inside his chest — not the calculated anger of a businessman, but the raw, violent fury of a man who understood that the woman he loved had been bound to a piece of absolute garbage.
Crawford’s eyes widened, burning with a terrifying, lethal fire. He threw the heavy hospital blankets off his body and tried to rise, but the stabbing agony of his fractured ribs immediately drove him back against the pillows. He let out a sharp, breathless gasp. The rage in his eyes did not diminish by a single degree. He reached across with his right hand and ripped the new IV line straight out of his forearm. Blood spattered across the white sheets.
“You son of a bitch!” Crawford roared. The sound tore his throat and filled the room. It was a roar of absolute, unfiltered disgust.