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Chapter 642
Chapter 642:
“I have a wife.” Cole stood. His chair scraped against the floor, the sound violent in the hushed room. “June Erickson. The only woman I will ever marry. The only—” his voice cracked, just slightly “—the only woman I have ever loved p>
The board members exchanged glances. Eleanor’s expression didn’t change. She reached into the portfolio again, withdrew a photograph, and slid it across the table.
“Then explain,” she said, “why your wife left the Astor gala on the arm of Easton Hahn. Why they arrived together, matched like a bridal couple. Why—” she tapped the photograph “—his vehicle remained in the private garage of his Upper East Side residence for nine hours and counting p>
Cole looked down.
The image was grainy, taken from a distance, but unmistakable. June in her gray velvet dress. Easton’s hand at her waist. The Aston Martin’s distinctive silhouette.
His lungs stopped working. He felt his heart physically — a fist clenching and releasing in his chest, irregular and desperate.
“You’re lying p>
“I never lie.” Eleanor’s voice softened, almost pitying. “She’s moved on, Cole. While you’ve been burning your empire to ash, she’s been building a life. Without you. With him p>
Cole’s hands found the table’s edge. His knuckles whitened. The bandages on his right hand spotted with fresh blood as the wounds reopened.
“She doesn’t love him.” The words were a prayer, a curse, a denial of everything the photograph suggested. “She can’t. She p>
𝗠o𝘳𝘦 𝗇о𝗏𝘦𝗅𝘀 о𝗇.со𝘮
The boardroom door burst open.
Cole’s chief of staff stood in the threshold. His face was gray.
“Mr. Compton. I apologize, but—” he glanced at Eleanor, at the board, at the disaster his interruption represented “—it’s urgent. Regarding Dr. Erickson p>
Cole was already moving — around the table, past his grandmother, his shoulder brushing the doorframe as he reached the hall.
“Sir.” The chief of staff’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The surveillance team. Hahn’s car. It’s still there. They spent the night together. Confirmed p>
Cole’s breath stopped.
The hallway tilted. The expensive carpet, the abstract art, the recessed lighting — everything blurred into a wash of color and noise.
He thought of June’s face in the firelight. Her polite thank you. The way she had walked away without looking back.
And now this.
Cole’s fist struck the wall. Plaster cracked. Pain shot through his knuckles, distant and irrelevant.
“Get the car.” His voice didn’t sound like his own — too low, too rough, scraped raw by something that felt like grief but burned like rage. “Now p>
He didn’t wait for Eleanor’s command. Didn’t wait for the board’s judgment. Didn’t wait for anything.
Cole Compton ran.
The Range Rover’s engine screamed.
Cole drove like a man possessed — three red lights, two near-misses with delivery trucks, one collision with a garbage can that sent it spinning into a pile of recycling bags. He didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. His hands gripped the wheel at ten and two, the leather already darkening with sweat and blood from his reopened burns.
Hahn’s car. In her garage. All night.
The words looped in his skull, each repetition carving deeper, until he could no longer distinguish the thought from the pain in his chest.