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Chapter 546
Chapter 546:
The strength left his body all at once. His spine curved, and he looked precisely like a man who had just been shot through the chest and hadn’t yet fallen.
He opened his fingers and released her wrist. He took one slow, dragging step backward, clearing the path to the staircase.
June didn’t hesitate. She didn’t look at his face again.
Her heels struck the hardwood in sharp, clean clicks as she walked past him and headed straight for the stairs without a backward glance.
Cole stood in the dim corridor like a hollow statue, listening to the sound of her footsteps growing fainter with each step. A minute later, the heavy thud of the front door closing reverberated up from below.
His knees gave out.
He went down hard, knees striking the carpet, and buried his face in his hands. A low, ragged sound tore itself from somewhere deep in his chest — not quite a cry, not quite a word. Just the sound of a man coming completely undone.
The sun finally broke through the clouds over Manhattan the following morning, but its brightness did nothing to lift the heavy weight pressing down on June’s chest.
She sat behind the sleek desk in her Chief Scientist office at Apex Bio, staring at a screen filled with cascading experimental data. The numbers were a blur. She couldn’t hold a single thought in place.
𝖳𝗋𝖾𝘯d𝗶n о𝗻 g𝖺𝗅ո𝗼𝗏е𝗹s.c𝗼𝘮
Every time she closed her eyes, Cole’s desperate, hollowed-out face appeared in the darkness. The memory of his broken begging in the corridor made her throat tighten with a suffocating anxiety she couldn’t shake loose.
The truth settled over her, cold and certain. As long as she stayed in New York, Cole would never stop. The Compton family’s wreckage would eventually drag her down with it.
June took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing air into her constricted lungs.
She opened the company’s internal HR portal and submitted a request for two weeks of paid time off. Given that she had just dismantled the core barrier for the Gen-2 cancer drug, the executive board approved it in under three minutes.
She pulled up a travel site and booked a first-class ticket on a United Airlines flight departing that afternoon for San Francisco. She needed the quiet, isolated coastline of Carmel-by-the-Sea. She needed her nervous system to remember what stillness felt like.
At 2:00 PM, June walked out through the glass doors of the Apex Bio building, pulling a small silver Rimowa suitcase behind her. She stepped to the edge of the busy sidewalk and raised her hand to hail a cab to JFK.
A massive, gleaming black Maybach glided through the traffic and stopped precisely in front of her.
The tinted rear window descended with a soft hum.
Crawford Love’s face appeared, handsome and relaxed, wearing an effortless smile.
“Heading to the airport?” he asked, his tone perfectly casual, as though running into her here were simply good luck. “Traffic on the expressway is a nightmare right now. Get in — I’ll drop you off p>
June’s hand tightened around her suitcase handle.