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Chapter 442
Chapter 442:
The estate’s live-in doctor sprinted into the room with a medical bag and quickly assessed the old man’s vitals.
“His heart rate is spiking,” the doctor said sharply. “He is overstimulated. He needs absolute calm — no stress, no arguments p>
June stood frozen. She looked at the old man’s terrified, hopeful eyes. She looked at Brogan’s desperate, pleading face.
If she unpinned the brooch and rejected him now, the shock might genuinely harm him.
Ch𝘪𝗻𝘦𝘴e ո𝗼𝗏𝘦𝗅𝗌 𝗍𝗋𝗮𝘯𝗌𝗅atе𝖽 𝘰ո
She felt completely cornered.
Just then, an elegant woman in her fifties — Brogan’s mother — rushed to the table. She took in the brooch pinned to June’s chest and her father-in-law’s agitated state, and, drawing the most natural conclusion available to her, pulled June into a warm, firm embrace.
“Welcome to the family, dear,” she whispered.
June let out a slow, quiet breath of defeat. She would keep it on for the next hour, wait until the old man was settled, and return it to Brogan privately. That was the only rational path forward.
She looked down and reached up with her right hand, gently touching the platinum setting to check that the heavy pin was secure and wouldn’t tear her dress.
Up on the hill, Crawford saw her touch the sapphire. He saw the embrace from the older woman. He saw the quiet resignation settle across June’s face.
He read it as her final, silent acceptance of her new life.
Crawford lowered the binoculars slowly. They slipped from his fingers and hit the floorboard with a dull thud.
Every drop of blood drained from his face, leaving his skin the color of ash.
He had lost her. Completely and irreversibly.
His hand moved blindly toward the center console, fingers closing around the heavy crystal tumbler of neat whiskey. He squeezed. He squeezed with the full force of the apocalyptic despair tearing through him — until his knuckles turned white, until the joints cracked, until his nails broke the skin of his palm and dark blood welled up, seeping down his fingers and into the amber liquid.
He felt none of it.
He lifted the glass with a shaking hand and drained it in one raw, burning swallow. Then, with a guttural sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest, he hurled the empty tumbler against the armored interior of the door. The thick crystal didn’t crack — it exploded into a thousand glittering fragments.
He sat in the dark car, bleeding, staring at the distant lights of the estate, swallowed entirely by the abyss.
The drive from the Hamptons back to Manhattan was a blur of torrential rain and suffocating darkness. Crawford had followed them the entire way — a silent, armored ghost haunting their journey.
His Maybach sat idling in the deep shadows across from June’s apartment building in Tribeca. The midnight storm hammered the roof of the car.
He pushed the heavy door open and stepped out into the downpour without an umbrella.