[CONTENT TEMPLATE HERE]
Chapter 701:
Alycia was fast. Faster than she looked, fueled by whatever desperation had driven her to this public breakdown. She made it three steps up before Easton’s security team intercepted her—two men, efficient, professional, pinning her arms behind her back and forcing her to her knees on the wet concrete.
“Let me go!” Alycia thrashed, spit flying, mascara running in black rivers down her face. “She’s the monster! She’s the one who p>
“Enough p>
The voice came from below. Deep. Controlled. Absolutely familiar in its capacity for destruction.
Rе𝘤𝘰𝗆𝗺𝖾n𝘥 𝗀a𝘭ո𝗈𝘷𝘦𝗅𝗌.сom tо y𝗈u𝗿 frie𝗻𝘥𝗌
June looked down.
Cole stood at the base of the steps, black umbrella furled in one hand, the other in his coat pocket. He looked—she cataloged automatically, the habit of years—tired. More tired than she had ever seen him. The kind of exhaustion that came from sleepless nights and desperate decisions and the slow realization that everything you had believed about yourself was a lie.
He climbed the steps. Slow. Deliberate. The crowd parted for him, cameras finding the new angle, the better drama.
Alycia saw him. Her struggles stopped. Her face transformed—hope, desperation, the particular calculation of someone who had always known how to perform for men.
“Cole.” The voice was different now. Soft. Pleading. “Cole, thank God. They’re hurting me. She’s—” she jerked her head toward June, “—she’s destroying my family. You have to stop her. You have to p>
Cole reached the step where Alycia knelt. Looked down at her.
His expression didn’t change. Didn’t soften. Showed none of the guilt, the obligation, the desperate need to believe himself honorable that had driven every decision he had made for three years.
“Get up,” he said.
Alycia tried. The security men held her.
“Let her go,” Cole said. Not to the security men—to Easton, to June, to whoever controlled the situation.
Easton’s hand tightened on June’s back. “She attacked p>
“She’s pathetic.” Cole’s voice was flat, absolute. “Not a threat. Not anymore p>
The security men looked at June. She nodded, barely, and they released Alycia’s arms.
Alycia scrambled to her feet. Reached for Cole’s hand, his arm, his chest—any part of him she could claim.
“Cole, I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t let her p>
His hand moved.
Not a slap. Not a punch. Something more deliberate, more absolute. His palm connected with her shoulder and he pushed—hard, unforgiving—sending her stumbling backward.
Alycia’s heel caught the edge of the step. She fell, arms windmilling, and landed on the wet concrete three steps down. The sound of her body hitting stone echoed in the sudden silence.
The explosion of camera flashes was instantaneous, a wall of white light. A woman in the crowd screamed. Two uniformed court officers started down the steps, their hands moving toward their belts, but Cole’s own security detail materialized from the crowd, forming a human barrier.
“He just handed me a weapon that could bury him,” Easton murmured beside her, his voice a low, cold assessment of fact. “If I choose to use it p>
Cole didn’t look at her. Didn’t acknowledge her existence.
He looked at June.
His eyes were red. She saw that now, the detail her automatic assessment had missed. Red-rimmed. Bloodshot. The particular damage of sleeplessness and grief and whatever had finally broken in him.