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Chapter 654
Chapter 654:
“Cole doesn’t care about you,” Susan said. “But he cares obsessively about Caleb. He offered two hundred million not because of the miscarriage — but because of guilt. He believes he betrayed his dead brother’s great love, and that guilt is eating him alive.” She leaned closer. “That guilt is the only weapon we have left. If you stay and refuse the money, he can never put this behind him. We use that. We use your suffering to drive him toward June until she breaks p>
Alycia opened her eyes slowly.
The pain in her abdomen pulled at her with every breath. She had nothing left to protect, nothing left to preserve. The hatred that had replaced everything else was steady and cold and remarkably clear.
She took the check copy and the exile agreement from her mother’s hands. Then, with both hands, she began to tear. The paper gave way in long, clean strips, then smaller pieces, then confetti that drifted down across the hospital bed in the silence of the room.
𝖳h𝖾 𝗺𝘰ѕ𝗍 𝗽оp𝘶𝗅ar 𝗇𝗈𝘷𝗲𝘭s оn ѕ.𝗰𝘰m
“I’m not going to South America,” Alycia said. Her voice was hollow and absolutely certain. “I’m staying in Manhattan. I will watch June Erickson lose everything she has left p>
Susan reached out and smoothed her daughter’s hair, her expression one of quiet, terrible satisfaction.
“Cole thinks he can buy his way out of this,” she said softly. “We’ll make him understand that some debts can’t be settled with money p>
Alycia looked at the pieces of paper scattered across her blanket. “Collect the shreds. Put them in an envelope and have a nurse deliver it to Cole’s assistant.” She paused, choosing the words with care. “Tell him the Compton family owes Caleb a life. Tell him I don’t want his money. I want him to spend the rest of his life understanding what he cost p>
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. In the quiet of the ward, mother and daughter made a silent, absolute pact — to spend whatever remained of their diminished lives as instruments of one final, consuming act of destruction.
The shredded remnants of the two-hundred-million-dollar check drifted through the sterile air of the VIP ward like grotesque confetti. Alycia released the last strip and watched it spiral down to join the torn exile agreement on her hospital blanket.
Beneath the thin pillow, her burner phone vibrated with sudden, vicious urgency. A text from a blocked number. Three words: the debt was due by midnight, and they knew where her mother was.
The slow, deliberate plan to dismantle Cole psychologically was a luxury she no longer had. She needed leverage now — immediate, undeniable, the kind that could only be created by the most extreme act available to her. The cold malice she had cultivated cracked open, and raw animal terror flooded in to replace it.
“Collect the pieces,” she said, her voice hollow. “Put them in an envelope. Have a nurse deliver it to Cole’s assistant p>
Susan stared at her daughter with something close to awe. The same woman who had been whimpering in pain an hour ago now radiated a focused, ferocious calm that was almost worse to witness.
“Tell him,” Alycia continued, her lips forming something that resembled a smile, “that the Compton family owes Caleb a life. That I don’t want his money. I want him to spend the rest of his life paying p>
Susan swept the scraps together eagerly. “He’ll come running. That guilt will consume him p>