Chapter 136
Chapter 136:
“Ms. Erickson,” the bodyguard’s voice came through the speaker. “Mr. Compton has ordered me to hand-deliver this to you personally. I am not permitted to leave until you have received it p>
June stared at the screen for a long moment, then pressed the unlock button and waited at her front door.
Two minutes later she opened it. The bodyguard stood in the hallway and held out a black velvet box with quiet, professional deference.
June looked at it. Her pulse went flat. Her instincts already knew what was inside.
Her fingers were pale as she reached out and took it. She said nothing. She stepped back and closed the door, turning the deadbolt with a firm, metallic click.
She walked slowly to the living room and sat on the edge of the sofa.
She took a slow, unsteady breath. She pressed her thumb to the latch and opened the lid.
𝘍о𝘭𝘭o𝗐 𝘂ѕ оn
The Cartier orchid rested against the dark velvet. Beside it, a folded sheet of thick stationery in Cole’s sharp, aggressive handwriting.
June picked up the note.
Return to owner.
She stared at the three words.
No apology. No explanation. The cold, commanding tone was not a peace offering — it registered in her mind as the final confirmation of everything she had understood at the auction. It was the last turn of the blade. The entire spectacle — the merciless bidding, pinning her mother’s brooch on Alycia’s chest in front of hundreds of people — had been deliberate cruelty, and now that the game had served its purpose, he was discarding the object back to her like something he no longer needed.
A sharp, deeply bitter smile moved across June’s lips.
The towering arrogance of the gesture closed something inside her chest — a final, massive door swinging shut on its hinges. The very last microscopic fragment of hope she had kept buried so deep she had barely admitted its existence was ground into dust without ceremony.
June let the note fall to the floor.
She picked up the brooch. Her hands shook. She pressed the cold metal directly against her chest, over her heart.
Hot, silent tears spilled over her lashes and ran down her face. She wept for her mother. She wept for three years of her life given without reservation to a man who had never deserved a single day of them.
That night, a freezing autumn rain swept across Manhattan, lashing violently against the floor-to-ceiling windows of June’s bedroom.
June lay in bed, her body entirely depleted. The emotional weight of the past twenty-four hours pulled her under into a heavy, suffocating sleep.
The darkness shifted quickly into something vivid and terrible.
The temperature plummeted. She was surrounded by blinding white snow and the deafening roar of a blizzard. She was in the Swiss Alps. She was eighteen years old and standing at the deepest point of her depression.
A thunderous rumble rolled down the mountain — the unmistakable sound of an avalanche. A massive wall of white came crashing toward her, and then it hit, and the cold crushed the air from her lungs and the light from her eyes.