Chapter 606

Chapter 605:

Then the heavy doors to the lounge swung open.

Every head turned. The cameras swiveled.

Gaston Collins stood in the doorway in a dark, impeccably tailored Italian suit that seemed to absorb the light around him. His presence was so immense, so physically commanding, that the air in the room felt immediately thicker.

The show’s producers, including Penelope, stared with their jaws slack. This was not on the schedule.

Gaston ignored them all. His eyes found Jocelyn, and he walked directly to her, his long strides closing the distance between them. He leaned down — in full view of a dozen cameras — and pressed a slow, tender kiss to her cheek.

“Am I late, my queen?” he murmured, his voice a low rumble intended only for her, though captured perfectly by her lapel microphone.

Jocelyn’s face lit up with a mixture of shock and genuine delight. “What are you doing here? I thought you had a board meeting p>

“The meeting was moved,” Gaston said smoothly, settling into the seat beside her. He accepted a leather-bound notebook and a Montblanc pen from his assistant. “I wouldn’t miss a class on our child for anything p>

He made himself comfortable, his posture entirely relaxed — as though attending a parenting seminar for expectant mothers was the most natural thing in the world for a man who controlled a global financial empire.

Across the room, Chelsea’s face had turned a pale, sickly green. Her own husband was, at that precise moment, screaming at traders on the floor of the stock exchange. Gaston’s presence alone was a silent, devastating refutation of every condescending word she had spoken.

𝘑𝘰𝗶𝘯 𝘰𝘂𝘳 co𝗆𝗆𝘶ո𝗂𝘁у 𝘰n ѕ.𝗰𝗼𝗺

The lecture continued. Gaston proved to be the most attentive student in the room. He opened his notebook and began taking meticulous notes, his elegant handwriting filling the page in careful lines — the different meanings of a baby’s cries, the optimal angle for burping, the recommended thread count for crib sheets.

A cameraman, sensing the moment, zoomed in for a tight close-up of the notebook.

The image of the Wall Street titan — the ruthless corporate predator — diligently studying how to be a good father was a cultural event in real time. It was a complete and total dismantling of his public persona.

Halfway through the lecture, the expert turned to the subject of pregnancy-related edema.

Without a word, Gaston leaned forward. In front of everyone, under the full glare of the studio lights, he gently took Jocelyn’s ankle in his hand and ran his thumb slowly along her skin, checking for any sign of swelling.

The gesture was so intimate, so entirely unselfconscious and suffused with care, that it felt like an intrusion to watch. He was not performing for the cameras. In that moment, the cameras, the other women, the entire world outside of her simply did not exist to him.