Chapter 144
Chapter 144:
There was no fear in her eyes. Only a cold, concentrated disgust — pure, clinical, and entirely without heat.
“Mr. Compton,” she said. The formal address landed like a open-handed slap. “Until your lawyers finalize the divorce papers, I will not share the same breathing space as you. Looking at your face makes me physically ill p>
It was not an argument. It was a diagnosis. The quiet precision of it paralyzed Cole’s vocal cords entirely.
He stared at her. His fists closed at his sides. Every instinct in him wanted to scream, to threaten, to force submission by sheer volume. But under the dead, hollow weight of her stare, he could not produce a single word.
June took two steps forward. She closed her hand around the brass handle of the heavy wooden door. She met his eyes directly.
And with a single, controlled, violent surge of strength, she slammed it in his face.
BANG.
𝖯o𝗽𝗎l𝘢𝗋 𝘀𝘵𝘰r𝗂𝖾𝘴 о𝗻
The sound reverberated down the long, empty corridor and dissolved into silence.
Cole stood motionless on the other side of the door. A cold, creeping wave of something he had never felt before moved through him from the feet up — not rage, not wounded pride, but genuine terror. The illusion of control had not slipped. It had been removed, deliberately and completely, and placed somewhere he could not reach.
She was never coming back to his bed.
He knew it with a certainty that offered no room for argument.
The last three days had been a blur of self-inflicted punishment. June had barely slept, pushing herself to the edge of collapse. Late one night, Silas had found her unconscious at her office desk, a half-finished data model still glowing on the screen. He had stood in the doorway for a long moment, his expression hardening, before quietly pulling the door shut and making a call.
“It’s Silas,” he said into his phone. “I need you to fast-track the hiring process for Dr. Erickson’s executive assistant. The top candidate — Chloe. Get her in here by tomorrow. This cannot continue p>
Morning sunlight flooded the ultra-modern glass lobby of Apex Bio headquarters.
June stood near the sleek espresso bar at the center of the lobby, wearing a perfectly tailored beige suit, a thick stack of clinical data reports in her left hand. Her posture was sharp and commanding. Since moving into the isolated guest room at the estate, she had channeled every ounce of her energy and intellect into the final phase of the Neuro-X second-generation trials, leaving nothing in reserve for anything else.
Chloe — a brilliant, high-energy Ivy League graduate with bright blonde hair — stood beside her, tablet in hand, practically vibrating with focus. She was watching June the way someone watches a force of nature.
“The control group data from the European trials needs to be isolated,” June said, her voice calm and precise. She pointed to a specific column of figures. “Run the regression analysis again. If the variance exceeds zero-point-two percent, flag it immediately p>
“Got it, Dr. Erickson,” Chloe said, her eyes wide with genuine admiration.