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Chapter 322
Chapter 322:
It was the ultimate ultimatum — a threat backed by hundreds of billions of dollars and a terrifying, obsessive will.
Cole stared at him. He saw the absolute certainty in Crawford’s eyes. This was not a bluff. Crawford was perfectly willing to trigger a global financial crisis to free June.
But the financial threat was nothing compared to the psychological trap closing around Cole from every direction. He had two months — two months to marry the woman he despised because of a drunken, manufactured mistake, and two months to watch the woman he loved walk into the arms of his executioner.
A profound, suffocating darkness swallowed his mind. He was completely trapped. There was no exit.
“Now,” Crawford said, stepping back and pointing a steady finger toward the door, “take your pathetic guilt and get the hell out of my sight p>
Cole said nothing. He did not have the strength to argue.
He pushed himself off the wall, turned around with hunched shoulders, and walked out of the hospital room. He moved like a ghost. Julian glanced at Crawford — an expression caught between awe and deep concern — then sighed heavily and jogged out after him.
The heavy glass door clicked shut.
Crawford was finally alone.
He let out a long, shaky breath. The adrenaline drained away, and the full, savage weight of his injuries crashed over him. He stumbled backward and sat heavily on the edge of the hospital bed. With his trembling right hand, he reached for his smartphone on the bedside table and pressed the power button.
𝘋оո’𝗍 m𝘪𝗌ѕ 𝗻𝗲𝘸 𝘳е𝘭𝘦𝗮sе𝘀 о𝗻 𝗴𝘢𝗅ոo𝗏е𝗹s.𝘤𝗼m
The lock screen lit up.
The background image was a candid photograph of June — standing in her laboratory in her white coat, hair tied back, leaning over a microscope with an expression of intense, beautiful focus.
Crawford stared at the screen. The cold, ruthless CEO vanished.
He raised his thumb and stroked the glass over her image — gently, reverently.
“Sixty days, June,” Crawford whispered into the empty room, his voice thick with quiet, absolute devotion. “Just hold on for sixty days. I am going to get you out p>
The countdown had officially begun.
Forty-eight hours did absolutely nothing to ease the suffocating pressure crushing Cole’s chest.
He sat behind the massive mahogany desk in his top-floor office at the Compton Group’s Boston headquarters. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a breathtaking view of the city skyline, but the sky was overcast, its dark, oppressive gloom a perfect mirror of the room.
The desk was a chaotic disaster — stacks of high-priority acquisition files and legal documents piled haphazardly across the polished wood.
He had not read a single page.
He sat motionless in his heavy leather chair, staring blankly at the wall. The shadows beneath his eyes looked like bruises. He had not slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blood on the hotel sheets, followed immediately by the terrifying, empty void in June’s gaze.
And underneath it all, relentless as a ticking bomb, Crawford’s voice echoed in his skull.
Two months. Sixty days.