Chapter 207
Chapter 207:
“Tell June to keep her allies under control,” Cole said, his voice carrying through the empty room as the guards reached the entrance. “Or I will personally ensure you never work in the fashion industry in this city again. I will dismantle everything your family has built, piece by piece, until there is nothing left p>
The guards shoved Vera through the front doors. She stumbled hard onto the cold concrete steps, her bare foot hitting the pavement. She caught herself before falling, barely.
The heavy glass doors slammed shut. The deadbolt clicked — a final, definitive sound.
Vera stood on the steps, her entire body shaking with fury. Her eyes burned.
She picked her heel up off the concrete and looked through the glass.
Inside, Cole was dabbing the water from Alycia’s hair with a napkin, his posture entirely composed, entirely tender.
Vera pulled out her phone. She raised it, aimed through the glass, and rapidly photographed the scene — more than a dozen clear, high-definition images.
She opened her encrypted chat with June, selected every photo, and hit send. Then she pressed the voice memo button and recounted in full — her voice shaking with adrenaline — exactly how Cole had deployed his wealth and his bodyguards to shield a woman who had poisoned his wife.
She released the button. The message sent.
𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗼𝗻
Vera drew a long, cold breath of night air, turned, and walked to her car.
This war was nowhere near over.
It was eleven o’clock at night.
The top-floor laboratory of Apex Bio was completely silent, save for the low, steady hum of the ventilation system. June stood at a high-powered electron microscope in her crisp white lab coat, her eyes fixed on the cellular block data scrolling across the monitor.
Her phone vibrated violently against the stainless-steel counter — once, then again, then continuously, rattling with a relentless urgency.
June straightened up, rolled the tension from her neck, and picked it up.
Her screen was flooded with over a dozen high-definition photographs from Vera.
She opened the first image.
Cole, wrapping his jacket around Alycia. Cole, gently blotting the water from her hair. His face a mask of fierce, unambiguous protection.
Immediately after the photos, a two-minute voice memo appeared. June tapped play.
Vera’s voice filled the sterile lab — thick with rage and the particular anguish of humiliation. She described Cole’s cruelty, the guards twisting her arms, being thrown onto the cold concrete steps. Her voice broke as she talked about how profoundly unfair all of it was to June.
June stood perfectly still and listened to every second of it. Her eyes stayed on the image of Cole’s face.
Six months ago, that expression — that tenderness, directed at another woman — would have shattered her. Her chest would have seized. Her lungs would have burned as though she were breathing broken glass.
Now, she felt nothing.
Her interior landscape was flat and still. No spike in her pulse. No tightening in her throat. The man in the photograph looked like a stranger — his aggressive posturing, his fierce guardianship of a fraud, looked less like power and more like a very small person doing very small things.
June pressed the voice memo icon. When she spoke, her voice was completely calm.