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Chapter 421
Chapter 421:
Alycia Beasley lay against a pile of silk pillows. A private nutritionist had just cleared away her organic breakfast tray. Outside the heavy oak door, two former Mossad agents stood guard, exactly as Cole’s chief assistant had arranged.
Cole was somewhere over the Atlantic, flying to Zurich to finalize a massive corporate merger.
He had left orders to protect her. He had given her a fortress.
But he had not given her a ring.
Inside the Beasley family living room on the Upper East Side, the atmosphere was frantic.
Richard Beasley paced back and forth across the carpet, his face slick with nervous sweat.
“He just left?” Richard demanded, his voice cracking. “He left her alone in that hospital? What if Eleanor Compton makes a move while he’s gone? She could crush us p>
Susan Beasley sat on the edge of the sofa, her eyes cold and burning with a predatory, toxic greed.
No𝘃𝗲𝗅𝘀 𝗂n 𝗍𝗿𝗲𝘯𝗱 oո
“No, Richard,” Susan said sharply. “This is a gift. This is our window p>
Richard stopped pacing and looked at his wife.
“With Cole in the city, we have to play by his rules,” Susan explained, her voice dropping to something deliberate and malicious. “But he is sitting in a signal-proof boardroom in Switzerland. We need to take this pregnancy and force it down the throat of every person on Wall Street. We have to make it a public fact before he gets back p>
She snatched her phone off the coffee table and dialed Alycia’s private number.
Alycia answered on the second ring.
“Darling,” Susan hissed into the phone. “You cannot sit in that bed and wait. Cole gave you guards, but he did not give you a public statement. You have to force his hand p>
Alycia hesitated, glancing nervously at the closed door of her suite. “Mom, Cole explicitly warned me not to talk to the press p>
Susan let out a sharp, mocking laugh.
“Men are all the same, Alycia!” she snapped. “The more obedient you are, the more they ignore you. You need to create a storm — one so massive that the Compton family has no choice but to accept you as the mother of the heir p>
Alycia’s deep, gnawing insecurity finally won out. She needed the validation. She needed the world to know she had won.
“Okay,” Alycia whispered. “Do it p>
Susan hung up. A triumphant, ugly smile stretched across her face.
She immediately dialed a number she had kept saved for years. The phone rang three times before a gruff voice answered — a senior editor at Page Six of the New York Post.
“I have a massive exclusive for you,” Susan said, her voice trembling with manufactured urgency. “It will crash your servers. Cole Compton, the prince of Wall Street, is going to be a father p>
She heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end.
“The mother is Dr. Alycia Beasley, an Ivy League medical researcher,” Susan continued, feeding the bait. “I am sending you exclusive photos of her checking into the VIP maternity ward at Mt. Sinai right now p>
Susan had paid a paparazzo three days earlier to photograph the entrance from a specific, flattering angle across the street.