Chapter 372
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Chapter 372:
Jocelyn lay exhausted, her head resting on Gaston’s bare, sweat-slicked chest. The strong, steady beating of his heart filled her ear. His large hand was buried in her tangled hair, stroking her scalp with a slow, hypnotic gentleness.
The room was completely silent.
“By the way,” Gaston said, his voice remarkably calm, almost conversational. “Do not bother going to the legal department tomorrow. I had my lawyers pull the prenuptial agreement from the vault p>
Jocelyn’s eyes snapped open. The sleepy haze vanished instantly.
She pushed herself up on one elbow and stared down at his relaxed face.
“What do you mean you pulled it?” she asked, her heart skipping a beat. That contract was the absolute foundation of their financial separation — the document protecting his hundred-billion-dollar empire.
“I put it in the industrial shredder,” Gaston replied smoothly. He reached up and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
Jocelyn stopped breathing. “Gaston, are you insane? Without that prenup, if we divorce, I am legally entitled to half of the Collins Group. You just exposed your entire family legacy p>
Gaston let out a low, dark chuckle. His hand slid from her hair to the back of her neck, gripping her firmly.
“Divorce is not a word that exists in my dictionary, Jocelyn,” he stated. The absolute, terrifying certainty in his eyes made her shiver. “I am never letting you go. My money, my empire, my life — it is all yours. I want you to have the power to destroy me if I ever fail you p>
𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝖻𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖾𝗑𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗂𝖾𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝗈𝗇
The sheer magnitude of his surrender struck her like a physical blow. He had handed her the blade and bared his throat.
Tears spilled from Jocelyn’s eyes. She collapsed back onto his chest, burying her face in his neck, weeping silently beneath the overwhelming weight of his love.
The next morning.
Miles away in a Chelsea apartment, Carmen Golden was jolted awake by her cell phone ringing. She fumbled blindly for it on the nightstand.
“Hello?” Carmen mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
“Carmen!” Mrs. Golden’s voice shrieked through the speaker — a hysterical, blood-curdling scream of pure terror. “It’s your father! He was in a pile-up on the highway! There is so much blood, Carmen! They are taking him to the ER p>
The sleep evaporated from her brain in an instant. A cold, paralyzing spike of adrenaline drove straight into her heart.
She threw the blankets off, her hands shaking so violently she dropped the phone onto the floor.
Carmen ran three red lights. Her tires screeched as she slammed the car into the emergency drop-off zone of Mount Sinai Hospital. She sprinted through the sliding glass doors of the ER. The smell of industrial bleach and metallic copper hit her immediately, turning her stomach.
The waiting area was a chaotic blur of screaming patients and rushing nurses.
Carmen spotted Mrs. Golden sitting on a hard plastic chair in the corner. Her mother’s expensive blouse was soaked in dark, drying blood. She was rocking back and forth, sobbing hysterically into her hands.
Carmen rushed over and dropped to her knees, throwing her arms around the older woman.