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Chapter 439
Chapter 439:
“I just got off the phone with the Deputy Secretary of Defense,” Cole continued, leaning back in his chair. “I informed him that Beasley Pharmaceuticals poses a severe commercial integrity risk. They have been permanently removed from the approved vendor list p>
Alycia’s eyes went wide with horror. That contract was the only thing keeping her family’s struggling company alive.
Cole finally looked up at her. His eyes were filled with cold, clinical disgust.
“That is just a warning shot,” he said. The threat in his voice was absolute.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk.
“I do not care what games you and your greedy parents think you are playing,” Cole said, each word precise as a scalpel. “But you need to understand your reality. You, and the child you are carrying, are my responsibilities. You are not my family p>
𝖨𝘯𝘁е𝗻ѕ𝖾 𝘳𝘰𝘮𝗮ո𝖼𝗲 𝗈n
He severed any remaining illusion of warmth with surgical efficiency.
“If you, or anyone sharing your last name, ever attempts to manipulate the press or my family again,” Cole continued, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper, “I will not simply cancel a contract. I will personally finance every one of your competitors to bleed you dry. I will lobby the state to have your manufacturing sector brutally re-regulated. Within a year, the name Beasley will be synonymous with bankruptcy and fraud in this city p>
Alycia began to tremble. Her knees knocked together beneath the elegant dress.
She finally understood the full, terrifying scope of the monster she had tried to cage. He wasn’t merely a wealthy man. He was an apex predator capable of crushing her entire bloodline with a single phone call.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to beg. But the freezing indifference in his eyes choked every word in her throat.
Cole looked at her shaking form and felt nothing — no satisfaction, no pleasure. Only the mild weariness of scraping something unpleasant off the bottom of his shoe.
He waved his hand toward the door. “Get out p>
Alycia turned and stumbled from the office, her carefully constructed illusion in ruins behind her.
Cole was left alone in the silence.
He had dealt with the parasite. But the crushing, suffocating weight of what he had done to June remained, pressing down on his chest until he couldn’t draw a full breath.
The sky over Long Island was a bruised, heavy gray.
Crawford sat in the back of his armored Maybach in complete silence, his driver maintaining a steady, discreet distance behind the dark blue Bentley cruising down Montauk Highway.
Just an hour ago, Crawford had sat in this exact seat, parked across the street from June’s apartment building. He had watched Brogan Clements step out of the Bentley and open the passenger door with the ease of a man entirely comfortable in his own life.
He had watched June walk out of the lobby in a simple, elegant lavender dress. She had given Brogan a brief, professional nod — maintaining a deliberate physical distance — before climbing into the car.
That image was currently burning a hole through his brain.