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Chapter 645
Chapter 645:
Richard Beasley paced like a caged animal, his tie shredded, his eyes sunken and wild. His phone buzzed continuously on the side table — bank foreclosure notices, one after another, each vibration another nail in the coffin.
Susan sat curled in the corner of the sofa, her face still marked with bruises from the night before. Her eyes were hollow, her gaze fixed on nothing.
At the top of the stairs, Alycia stood in a silk nightgown, her face deathly pale. The humiliation of being publicly discarded by Cole at the Astor gala still turned like a blade in her chest.
“It’s all your fault!” Richard suddenly stopped pacing, pointing at Susan with unhinged fury. “If you could control yourself for five minutes, the Astor family never would have blacklisted us p>
𝖬о𝘴𝘁 𝗿eа𝖽 𝘁𝗵is w𝗲𝖾𝗄 o𝗇 ѕ.𝖼о𝘮
He lunged forward and grabbed Susan’s arm, dragging her from the sofa. She screamed — a raw, unraveling sound — and clawed back at him, her nails raking streaks across his face.
“You think you’re any better?” Susan shrieked. “Your only achievement in life is pushing our daughter into the Comptons’ path and calling it a plan p>
They collapsed onto the floor together, fighting among the broken glass, every trace of the dignity they had once performed entirely gone.
Alycia watched from the stairs, nausea rising in her throat. She had always known this family was fragile. She had simply never seen it shatter all at once.
“Enough! Both of you, stop!” She came down the stairs and tried to force herself between them. “What is the point of this? Cole has already thrown me out. We can’t even pay next month’s rent p>
The words struck Richard at his most exposed nerve. He shoved Susan aside and turned his gaze on his daughter.
“You dare say that to me? If you had managed to secure a real Compton heir, would any of this have happened? You useless, worthless p>
“If you hadn’t been so greedy,” Alycia snapped back, her voice breaking, “and forced me to go after June in the first place, I would already be Mrs. Compton p>
The words shattered the last thin thread of Richard’s self-control.
His eyes landed on the heavy crystal whiskey tumbler sitting on the coffee table. In a moment of blind, alcohol-fueled rage, he seized it and hurled it with all his strength at Alycia.
The impact was a sickening, dull crack. The tumbler struck her abdomen rather than her head, but the force drove the breath from her body. She folded backward with an inhuman cry and crashed onto the pile of broken glass behind her.
The room went absolutely silent.
Then Alycia’s gasps began — shallow, agonized, each one worse than the last. She pressed both hands to her stomach. Her face had gone the color of paper, sweat beading instantly at her temples. A bright streak of red spread rapidly down the silk of her nightgown.
Susan scrambled toward her on her hands and knees, her face transformed by horror.
“Richard — you’ve killed her. You’ve killed your own daughter!” Her voice cracked into hysteria.
Richard stared at his hands. The alcohol fog evaporated in an instant, replaced by cold, trembling terror.