If you are looking for While I Was Bleeding Out He Lit Lanterns For Her Chapter 1 read online…
Chapter 658
Chapter 658:
“Get her inside,” he said to the firefighters, not raising his voice. “And get me my lawyer p>
He turned toward the access door and pulled out his phone.
Behind him, Alycia Beasley’s sobs broke the silence — ugly, uncontrolled, the sound of someone who had gambled everything on a bluff and been called without mercy.
The rooftop door slammed behind Cole with a sound like a coffin lid closing.
He stood in the hospital corridor, his phone pressed to his ear, listening to his chief of staff’s rapid briefing. The words blurred together — legal options, media strategy, the Cayman Islands trust that needed immediate activation — but his mind kept returning to the image of Alycia’s face the moment she had understood that the game was over.
Forty minutes. He had spent forty minutes neutralizing her while June—
His hand tightened on the phone until the case cracked.
“Sir?” His chief of staff’s voice, careful and concerned.
“Handle it,” Cole said. “The exile agreement. Two billion. I want her and her entire family on a plane to Argentina tonight. If they resist—” he paused “—remind them of Rikers Island. Remind them what happens to frauds who push their luck p>
He ended the call.
ѕ𝘩𝖺𝗿𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝘳 f𝘢𝗏𝗼𝗿𝗶t𝘦𝘴 f𝘳о𝘮
The elevator chimed. Cole stepped inside and watched his reflection in the polished steel doors — a man with bloodshot eyes and bandaged hands, a man who had spent his evening on a hospital rooftop instead of doing the one thing that actually mattered.
The lobby doors opened onto the night. His Range Rover waited at the curb, engine running. Cole paused at the entrance, his hand flat against the glass. Through it he could see the glow of the Time Warner Center, where his team had tracked June’s car. She was there right now, moving through the world without him — the world he had been methodically trying to clear of wreckage, just to become someone worthy of breathing the same air as her.
His phone buzzed. A message from his Ghost Team captain: Target remains at Masa. No movement.
Cole pushed through the doors. The cold air struck his face like a slap.
“Time Warner Center,” he told his driver. “Fast p>
The Rover surged into traffic. Cole sat in the back, the crumpled transfer agreement still folded in his coat pocket, pressing against his ribs like a broken promise.
He had believed money could resolve this. He had believed that sheer force of will, applied with sufficient pressure, could bend the world back into the shape he needed it to take. June had looked at his three-billion-dollar offering with the same indifference she might give a discarded receipt.
The realization burned. But it also clarified.
Money was noise. Power was irrelevant. The only currency that had ever held any weight with June Erickson was something he had spent three years destroying and could not manufacture now.
Trust.
The Rover turned onto Columbus Circle. His phone buzzed again. Subject departing Masa. Accompanied by Easton Hahn. Proceeding to vehicle.
He was too late.