Chapter 309:

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The drunk man on the floor started to groan, trying to get up. Preston kicked him, hard, in the ribs. “Stay down.”

The man screamed. The bartender reached for the phone. “I’m calling the police!”

Preston ignored him. He turned to Elisa, his expression softening into a look of intense, possessive concern. “Are you alright? Did he hurt you?”

Elisa couldn’t speak. She could only stare at the empty doorway where August had stood.

𝖣о𝘯’t mіѕs ո𝗲𝗐 𝘳𝗲l𝖾𝘢se𝘴 оո 𝗴𝗮𝗹𝘯о𝘷e𝗹s.𝘤𝗼𝘮

The next few minutes were a blur of shouting and flashing lights. The NYPD arrived quickly, their sirens screaming outside. They separated Preston and the unconscious man, taking statements from the witnesses.

“You,” a cop said, pointing at Elisa. “You’re the one he grabbed. We need you to come down to the precinct. Give a statement.”

“I’ll come with her,” Preston said immediately, stepping to her side. He placed a proprietary hand on the small of her back. “I am Preston Vance, and my legal team will be representing her.”

Elisa wanted to shrug him off, but she was numb. She let him guide her out of the bar, past the flashing cameras of the paparazzi who had somehow already gathered, and into the back of his waiting armored SUV, trailing the police cruiser.

As the car pulled away from the St. Regis, Elisa looked out the window. She saw the lights of the hotel, the glittering façade of the world she had just been thrown out of.

And she knew, with a cold, absolute certainty, that the woman she had been was gone. The wife who had hoped for a reconciliation, the woman who had still cared what August thought — that woman was dead.

She had been publicly humiliated, falsely accused, and left to rot by the man she had married. And now she was sitting in the back of a billionaire’s car with a man she didn’t trust, heading to a precinct to explain why she had been harassed in a bar.

She looked at Preston, who was typing furiously on his phone. She didn’t trust him. But she didn’t have to. He was a tool. Just like the law. Just like the data.

She would use whatever she had to. She would climb out of this hole, and she would drag August Chambers down into it with her. It was about survival.

The fluorescent lights of the NYPD Midtown South Precinct hummed with a sterile, indifferent buzz. They bleached all the color from the room, turning the pale green walls a sickly gray and Elisa’s skin to porcelain.

She sat on a cold metal chair, her hands resting on the steel table. The angry, purple bruise on her right wrist, where the drunk man had grabbed her, stood out like a brand.

A tired-looking officer across from her typed slowly on a keyboard, his voice a monotone drone. “So, you’re stating that the suspect made an unwanted advance, and when you refused, he grabbed you.”

Elisa nodded, her throat tight. “Yes.”

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