Chapter 236
Chapter 236:
He looked absolutely horrific. He was still wearing the same dark suit from the night before — violently wrinkled, stained with dried alcohol and dirt, his tie gone, his hair a greasy, chaotic mess. But it was his face that was the most shocking. His jaw was swollen with a deep purple bruise from Crawford’s punch. His nose was crusted with dried blood from his own hands. His eyes were sunken into black hollows of sheer exhaustion.
He had been sitting there all night. The hospital’s Chief Administrator, too frightened to provoke him further, had quietly ordered the security staff to leave him alone, and a bubble of tense, untouchable space had formed around the broken billionaire.
At the sound of her heels, Cole’s head snapped up.
When his bloodshot eyes found June’s face, a violent, full-body tremor tore through his massive frame. He pushed himself off the bench. His legs were numb from hours of sitting, and he stumbled forward, his boots dragging against the linoleum floor, moving like a dying man who had just spotted water in the desert.
June stood perfectly still.
She didn’t gasp. She didn’t recoil at the sight of his injuries. Her dark eyes moved across his ruined face with a sweep that was slow, clinical, and entirely unmoved. She looked at him with the same emotional detachment she reserved for a failed experiment — the flat, objective gaze of someone recording a result, not feeling one.
Cole stopped three feet in front of her. His chest heaved. He opened his mouth and his throat produced only a broken, pathetic wheeze.
𝘈𝖽𝗱i𝗰ti𝘃е 𝗇𝗼𝘷𝖾𝗹s o𝘯
Then the unthinkable happened.
Cole Compton — ruthless, arrogant, bowing to no one — let his knees give way.
He dropped like a stone.
The impact of his knees hitting the hard floor echoed down the quiet corridor. Several nurses at the far end of the hall went still, eyes wide, watching the King of New York fall.
Cole didn’t care who was watching. He didn’t care about his dignity. He raised his trembling, blood-stained hands and reached desperately for the hem of June’s trench coat.
June’s reaction was instantaneous.
The moment his fingers came within an inch of the fabric, she took a sharp, deliberate half-step backward. It was a tiny movement. It was devastating. It was not a step of fear — it was a step of pure physical revulsion, the kind of instinctive recoil reserved for something toxic and contagious.
The rejection drove through Cole’s chest like a serrated blade.
“June,” he sobbed. The tears broke free at last, streaming down his bruised cheeks and mixing with the dried blood on his chin. “I saw them. I saw the records. The ectopic pregnancy — the bleeding —” His head bowed until his forehead hovered inches from her shoes.
“I am so sorry,” he wept, his voice fracturing into a raw, high-pitched cry. “I didn’t know. I was on that yacht while you were dying. I hurt you when you came home. I am a monster. I am nothing. Hit me. Kill me. Do whatever you want — but please, please forgive me p>
He looked up, his eyes naked with desperate pleading. “Give me a chance to fix it. I will spend the rest of my life making it right p>
June looked down at the massive, powerful man sobbing at her feet.