Chapter 253:

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Without a second thought, Blake swept her up into his arms. “Move!” he shouted to the room at large, and charged for the door.

He was moving far too fast, his focus narrowed to a dangerous point.

I had just risen from my seat to check a data point on another monitor, and I was directly in his path. There was no time to react. His large, solid body slammed into my shoulder with tremendous force.

The impact sent me stumbling backward. My left arm struck the edge of the table, and a sharp pain shot through my elbow.

And Blake didn’t even pause. He didn’t look back.

His eyes, his entire world, were fixed on the “unconscious” woman in his arms. He stormed out, his panicked footsteps echoing down the hallway.

𝘚hа𝗋𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝗿 𝘵𝗵𝗈𝘶g𝘩𝗍𝘴 о𝗻 𝘨a𝗹𝘯𝗼𝗏e𝗹𝘴.𝘤𝘰𝘮

The conference room fell into dead silence. Everyone stared, stunned.

“Corinne!” Casey was the first to move, rushing to my side. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I shook my head, cradling my arm. My elbow was throbbing, but I couldn’t feel the pain, not really. I stared at the empty doorway where he had disappeared.

There was no heartbreak, no sadness. Those illusions had been dismantled months ago. What I felt was a cold, absolute clarity.

Blake’s reckless collision in a corporate boardroom, witnessed by senior project directors and recorded on high-definition security cameras, had shattered any remaining illusion of his stability. Charging past his responsibilities and violently injuring an executive partner just to cater to Dayna’s dramatic theatrics was a fatal misstep.

I looked down at my left arm, the elbow already swelling and aching sharply. The injury was real, but so were its legal consequences. As Casey hurried to support me and insisted we head straight to the emergency room, I felt an undeniable sense of vindication. Blake hadn’t stopped, and in doing so, he had handed me an unassailable evidentiary advantage.

Corinne POV

Casey insisted on taking me to the nearest hospital. The emergency room smelled of antiseptic and anxiety. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a pale, clinical glow across the vinyl floor.

The doctor examined my arm with careful, practiced hands, pressing lightly on the joint and rotating my wrist to assess the damage. “It’s a hairline fracture,” he said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “Not a bad one, but it needs a cast. You’ll have to keep it immobilized for at least two weeks.”

I nodded and watched as a nurse wrapped my arm in plaster. The material felt cool at first, then warmed as it set against my skin.

Casey handled the paperwork at the front desk, his face a mask of barely contained fury. “That bastard,” he muttered under his breath as he walked back to me. “He’s a bastard, Corinne. You have to finish this custody battle and cut him out of your life. Now.”

I sat on a vinyl bench, the cast still drying on my arm. “Yes. I do.”

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