[CONTENT TEMPLATE HERE]
Chapter 800:
The answer hit Cole like a wrecking ball to the sternum. It was his own fault. His own arrogant assumption. He had handed her the script, and she had simply read the lines. He had built this seven-year tragedy with his own two hands.
He turned his back on her and did not look at her again. He pulled out his phone, his thumb moving with cold, robotic precision, and dialed his head of security.
“I’m sending you a location,” he said, his voice stripped of all emotion. “Secure the asset. Don’t let her leave the room. I’ll deal with her when I’m done p>
He walked out through the broken doorway and down the hallway. He had to confirm the final piece of the puzzle. He had to face the thing that terrified him more than murder.
The Maybach flew down the highway toward Long Island. Cole’s mind was a chaotic reel of memories — Caleb’s voice on the phone, June’s quiet endurance, the scar on her back, the way she sometimes looked at him as though searching for someone else behind his eyes.
An hour later, the car skidded to a stop at the entrance of the Long Island Cemetery.
Cole shoved the door open. A cold, steady drizzle had begun to fall from the gray sky. He stumbled across the wet grass, his expensive leather shoes slipping in the mud, and ran past rows of gray headstones, his lungs burning with every breath.
He reached the Compton family plot and stopped dead. His knees gave out beneath him. He dropped heavily onto the wet, muddy grass in front of Caleb’s marble headstone.
His eyes fell to the base of the stone.
Iոst𝗮𝘯𝗍 𝘢𝖼c𝖾s𝘀 о𝗇 ѕ.𝖼𝗈𝗺
A fresh bouquet of flowers rested against the marble, placed there less than three hours ago. They were not the standard cemetery roses or lilies. It was a custom arrangement of white Swiss Edelweiss and vibrant Blue Gentians.
Cole stopped breathing. The air trapped in his throat felt like a block of ice. Those two flowers grew only at the high altitudes of the Alps. Caleb had written about them in his letters, noting that he had shared the secret of those flowers with no one except the girl in the snow.
Alycia knew nothing of these flowers. For seven years, she had brought nothing but generic red roses to this grave.
Cole reached out with a trembling hand. His fingertips brushed the soft, white petals of the Edelweiss, and the cold rainwater soaked into his skin.
He turned his head slowly. Fifty yards away, he could see Vivian Erickson’s headstone. Resting against it was a bouquet of white calla lilies, wrapped in the exact same florist paper and tied with the exact same black ribbon.
The circle closed. The trap snapped shut around Cole’s soul.
The girl who had stood on the edge of the cliff. The girl Caleb had loved more than his own life. The girl Caleb had begged Cole to protect.
She had been sleeping in his bed. She had been living in his house.