[CONTENT TEMPLATE HERE]
Chapter 753:
A black Maybach had pulled onto a service road a hundred yards away, its lights off, nearly invisible in the deluge. Cole had gotten out alone, leaving his driver behind. He hadn’t been tracking June. He’d been tracking Easton. Since she had gone to his apartment, a discreet, low-level surveillance on Easton’s known vehicles had been his only way to ensure she was safe without breaking his own five-block perimeter rule. When the SUV left the city in a storm, heading for Long Island, he knew with a sick certainty that this was the only place she would go.
The first she knew of his presence was the shadow that fell across the stone, blocking the rain. She looked up, wild-eyed, and saw him standing there in a black suit already soaked through, his hair plastered flat, his face pale and stricken.
He was holding an umbrella. He let it fall.
“Get away from her.” The words came out as a scream, raw and ragged. “Don’t you touch her. Don’t you come near her p>
She was on her feet, staggering, her hands raised like claws. She would fight him. She would die before she let him desecrate this place further, before she let him see her like this—broken and bleeding and—
Cole moved.
He crossed the distance between them in two strides, and then his arms were around her, pinioning her arms to her sides, crushing her against his chest, holding her so tightly she could not breathe, could not move, could do nothing but scream into the fabric of his shirt.
She fought him. Pounded her fists against his shoulders, his back, anywhere she could reach. But she was weak—so weak—and he was not letting go, and after a moment the screaming stopped and she went rigid. A choked, guttural sob escaped her before she fell into a cold, violent tremor, her body shaking uncontrollably in his hold, no longer fighting it.
“Enough,” Cole said. His voice was rough and broken, his chin pressed against the top of her head. “Enough, June. Enough p>
The rain had not stopped. It fell in sheets, driven sideways by the wind, turning the cemetery into a landscape of water and shadow.
𝖳h𝗲 𝖻𝘦𝗌𝘁 𝘳evie𝘄𝘀 𝘰𝗇
June shivered violently in Cole’s arms, her body a taut wire of shock and grief. The fight had drained out of her, leaving only the shaking—the endless shaking she could not control.
Cole’s hand moved through her hair, stroking, smoothing. The gesture was automatic, unthinking, the way one might soothe a frightened animal.
“You’re freezing,” he said. “We need to get you warm p>
He started to release her, his hands moving toward his own ruined suit jacket, but he stopped when he saw the heavy waxed-cotton coat she was already wearing. His hands paused in midair for a fraction of a second before he changed the gesture, pulling the collar of her coat tighter around her neck, his fingers brushing her skin.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a phone—waterproof, expensive—and dialed a number from memory.
“This is Cole Compton,” he said. His voice had shifted, becoming hard and cold, the voice he used in boardrooms and negotiations. “I’m at the Long Island Family Cemetery. I want the gates locked. No one in or out until I say otherwise. And I want your security chief on the phone in sixty seconds p>
He ended the call. Dialed another.