Chapter 150
Chapter 150:
“Ex-wife,” Kegan corrected, his eyes cold as bare metal. “And soon to be nothing to you at all p>
“She assaulted Charla!” Hilliard announced, his voice pitched as a public accusation — the only narrative he had left to stand on.
Kegan laughed. It was a dark, humorless sound that somehow managed to be more threatening than silence.
“You think Cali pushed her?” He looked down at Charla, who was still on the deck, nursing her ankle with a carefully maintained expression of suffering.
Charla shrank back. Kegan’s presence alone had a weight to it that made the space around him feel smaller. “She did! She’s completely out of her mind p>
Kegan reached into his vest and produced a ruggedized tablet. He tapped the screen and turned it toward Hilliard.
“My bird sees everything,” he said simply. “Show him the thermal feed p>
The screen displayed high-contrast footage from the helicopter’s thermal camera — crisp, unambiguous, ruthlessly clear. Three heat signatures on the deck. Cailin standing still. Charla stepping backward, glancing deliberately down at the rope cleat, and then throwing herself to the fiberglass with practiced precision. There was no push. There was barely any contact at all.
Hilliard watched the footage to the end. He didn’t freeze. His expression didn’t crumble. It simply hardened — glacially, absolutely — into the face he wore when a situation had been definitively resolved. It was math. It was physics. It was the truth laid flat.
He looked down at Charla.
“You lied.” Not a question. A verdict.
𝖭𝗈𝘃𝘦l𝗌 𝗂𝘯 𝘁𝘳𝖾𝘯𝗱 𝗼ո
“I — I tripped! It was an accident! The deck is slippery and I was frightened!” Charla stammered, the color draining from her face as she realized precisely how deep the trap had closed around her.
Hilliard looked at Cailin. He saw the contempt in her eyes. He saw the exhaustion behind it. And he saw, with a clarity that arrived too late to be useful, the finality of a woman who had already turned away from him long before this moment.
He took a deliberate step away from Charla, opening a chasm of space between them. “I am done with your games p>
He turned back to Cailin and reached out. “Cailin, I p>
Before his fingers could brush her coat, Kegan stepped into the space between them and shoved Hilliard back with a force that sent him stumbling across the wet fiberglass.
“You don’t get to talk to her,” Kegan said, his eyes carrying a lethal quiet that was somehow more dangerous than shouting.
The adrenaline, the betrayal, the jealousy, and five years of unresolved fury all ignited at once in Hilliard’s chest. He could not be manhandled by a mercenary in front of his wife. His pride would not allow it.
“Stay out of this, Aguirre!” Hilliard roared, and lunged forward.
Kegan didn’t step back.
His right fist came around in a brutal, precise arc and connected squarely with Hilliard’s jaw.
Hilliard tasted blood. He wiped his lip with the back of his hand and charged, tackling Kegan around the waist like a linebacker.
Message from Noa: Hope you have a great weekend dear readers. God loves you and Noa wishes you all the best. (ɔO‿=)ɔ ♥