If you are looking for While I Was Bleeding Out He Lit Lanterns For Her Chapter 1 read online…
Chapter 564
Chapter 564:
Soft country music drifted through the speakers. The California sun scattered light across the ocean to their left, turning the water a deep, shifting blue. June kept her eyes on the winding road, her shoulders loose, her expression unhurried — more at ease than Crawford had seen her since New York.
He sat in the passenger seat with his face arranged in perfect calm while his fingers moved silently and rapidly across his encrypted phone screen. He was deploying an invisible net around the Carmel villa, ordering his elite security team into position with instructions to use lethal force if any of Cole’s men approached the property while he was gone.
Two hours later, the SUV pulled to the curb outside the private aviation terminal at SFO.
Crawford unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to look at her. For a fraction of a second, the mask slipped — something raw and deeply reluctant moving beneath the surface before he controlled it.
“Stay at the villa. Rest,” he said quietly, his dark eyes holding hers. “As soon as I’ve dealt with this in New York, I’m coming back p>
June smiled, reading nothing into it beyond ordinary courtesy. “Don’t worry about me. Go save your company p>
Before Crawford could reach for the door handle, a loud, urgent voice cut through the terminal noise.
“Crawford! Thank God you made it p>
June looked out the window. It was Will — the Silicon Valley executive from the inn — sprinting toward the car with an expensive leather briefcase clutched in both hands, tie askew, face glistening with perspiration. He looked precisely like a man watching his life’s work detonate in slow motion.
𝘈𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯
He leaned down to Crawford’s window and launched into a rapid, breathless stream of financial jargon — short positions collapsing, secondary markets under assault, stock buybacks that needed to be authorized before the markets moved another point.
The performance was immaculate. June felt a genuine pang of guilt for occupying Crawford’s morning.
“Go,” she said, waving him off. “You’re already late p>
Crawford gave Will a brief, imperceptible look of approval. He turned back to June, squeezed her shoulder once, and stepped out of the car.
He walked up the air stairs to his waiting Gulfstream G650 without looking back. The moment the cabin door sealed shut behind him, the warmth in his face extinguished completely. His eyes went flat and cold.
“Cole wants a war,” he said to the staff assembled inside the jet. “Let’s give him one p>
The counterattack began before the Gulfstream had finished climbing.
Crawford controlled the largest media empire in the country, and within the hour he put it to use. Anonymously sourced leaks began flooding financial blogs and news networks — reports of accounting irregularities and concealed toxic debt buried inside the Compton Group’s subsidiary structure. The stories spread faster than any press release could have managed.
Cole didn’t flinch. He drove deeper, using massive leverage in the futures market to squeeze the supply chains of the Love Group’s manufacturing partners at their most vulnerable points.
The two most powerful men on Wall Street were dismantling each other in broad daylight.