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Chapter 801:
And Cole had tortured her. He had let a counterfeit parasite steal her money. He had mocked her pain. He had hung up the phone while she bled out on an operating table, killing the child they had created together.
The cold rain soaked through Cole’s suit jacket, chilling his skin to the bone, but he did not feel it. He remained kneeling in the mud before Caleb’s grave, staring at the Edelweiss until his vision blurred into a gray smear. He was a hollow shell, entirely emptied of his arrogance and pride.
His phone began to vibrate violently in his wet pocket.
Cole pulled it out with numb fingers. The screen showed the number for the upstate Compton estate. He pressed answer and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Mr. Cole,” the head butler’s voice sounded frantic. “It’s Madam Eleanor. She collapsed in the drawing room. The doctor is here. Her heart p>
The words acted like a physical shock to Cole’s system. He dragged himself up from the mud. His legs felt like lead weights. He stumbled back to the Maybach and threw himself into the driver’s seat.
Two hours later, the car tore up the long, oak-lined driveway of the Compton estate in upstate New York.
Cole ran through the heavy front doors and straight into the first-floor medical suite. The family doctor was adjusting an IV drip beside Eleanor’s bed. His grandmother looked incredibly frail, her skin paper-white against the pillows. She lay sedated, her heart strained to its limit by the relentless weight of the family scandals.
Cole stood at the foot of the bed. The guilt in his stomach twisted like a physical blade. He had brought this chaos to his family. He had brought the Beasleys into their lives.
𝗥om𝗮𝗻с𝘦 𝗮ոd p𝘢𝘴𝗌іо𝗻 o𝘯
He gave the doctor a silent nod and backed out of the room. He wandered down the thick Persian carpet of the main hallway like a ghost haunting his own house.
His feet carried him to the end of the corridor without his conscious permission. He stopped in front of a heavy oak door — Caleb’s bedroom. It had been locked and untouched for seven years, preserved exactly as Caleb had left it before he went to Switzerland to die.
Cole reached out. His hand shook as his fingers wrapped around the cold brass doorknob. He turned it. The door was locked tight, unyielding. He didn’t hesitate. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the heavy oak, the wood groaning in protest. He hit it again, the brute force cracking the doorframe until the deadbolt tore free.
The smell of dust covers and sharp mothballs hit him as the door swung open. The furniture was draped in white sheets, making the room look like a graveyard of memories. The air was stagnant and dead.
Cole walked slowly toward the large window. He grabbed the edge of the white sheet covering the writing desk and yanked it off. A cloud of fine dust exploded into the air.