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Chapter 440
Chapter 440:
He had the Ghost Team watching her. He knew she was safe. But his obsessive, territorial instincts had made it impossible to stay behind. He needed to see this with his own eyes.
In their world, a weekend trip to a family estate was never a casual outing. It was a signal — unmistakable and loud. It meant meeting the patriarch. It meant a relationship serious enough to seek family approval.
The Bentley slowed and turned through the massive wrought-iron gates of the Clements Estate.
Crawford’s driver pulled the Maybach off the main road and navigated up a secluded, wooded hill overlooking the back of the property. The car stopped.
Crawford picked up the military-grade binoculars from the leather seat beside him, rolled down the tinted window, and raised them to his eyes. Cold, salt-laced air rushed in. He adjusted the focus dial.
The massive stone terrace of the estate snapped into sharp clarity.
He watched the Bentley park. He watched Brogan and June step out.
An older man with silver hair and a cane — Old Mr. Clements — was waiting on the terrace.
Crawford watched the old man pull Brogan into an embrace. Then he turned to June.
𝖱е𝗮𝗱 wi𝗍𝘩𝗼𝗎𝗍 in𝘁𝘦𝗋𝘳𝗎𝗽𝗍i𝗈n𝘴 𝘰n
He didn’t merely shake her hand. He took both of her hands in his, his face flooding with genuine, overwhelming warmth and joy.
Crawford’s chest tightened.
He watched Old Mr. Clements place a familiar hand on June’s shoulder and turn to the estate manager standing nearby. The old man smiled with unmistakable pride and spoke a few words.
Crawford couldn’t hear the audio, but he had spent decades reading rooms and people from a distance. He was an expert at reading lips.
His brain processed the movement of the old man’s mouth.
My future granddaughter.
The words hit Crawford like a hollow-point round.
They shattered through his ribs and tore straight into his heart.
He had believed June was simply using Brogan as a shield. He had told himself it was a corporate strategy, nothing more.
He had no idea she had gone this far. She was meeting the family. She was being openly, warmly claimed as the future of a rival dynasty.
He thought of the medical report locked in his safe. He had believed he was the only man who truly understood her brokenness — the only one positioned to protect her.
He had been wrong. She didn’t need his protection. She had found a new fortress entirely.
A wave of suffocating jealousy and absolute despair crashed over him — a physical weight that compressed his lungs until he had to force himself to breathe.
His hands gripped the binoculars so tightly the casing creaked under his fingers. His arms shook.
He sat in the dark car, hidden among the trees, watching the woman he was prepared to burn the world for smile on another man’s terrace.
He felt like a starving dog pressed against a butcher’s window.
He didn’t know that the worst was still to come.
The atmosphere inside the grand dining room of the Clements estate was warm and unhurried.