Five Years Wasted Now They Beg Her Back novel Chapter 66

Unless… he was after something else.

But what could she possibly have that he wanted?

Grace couldn’t make sense of it.

She secretly raised her eyes, stealing a quick glance at the man not far away.

He stood with his back to her before the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, one hand tucked into the pocket of his robe, the other holding a glass of red wine. His posture was relaxed, yet elegant.

Outside the window was the glittering nightscape of Jarrow City.

The city lights below him were as small and distant as stardust.

And he was like the sovereign of this nocturnal kingdom, ruling over the galaxy of lights.

Regal, powerful, and utterly unattainable.

Sensing her questioning gaze, Damien’s thoughts drifted back, uncontrollably, to many, many years ago.

Ten years ago, at St. Clarion Academy.

It was the top school in Jarrow City, a place every child of a wealthy family was desperate to get into.

And sixteen-year-old Grace was the most out-of-place misfit there.

She had just been brought back from her grandmother’s house in the countryside by the Hart family.

Her thick country accent and faded, worn-out clothes made her stick out among the well-dressed, eloquent children of the rich, like an ugly duckling that had stumbled into a flock of swans.

Everyone looked at her with disdain.

And her “dear sister” Lilian was the worst of them all.

To everyone’s face, Lilian would affectionately link arms with her and call her “sister.”

But behind her back, she and her so-called “best friends” used every trick in the book to ostracize and humiliate her.

They poured ink in her schoolbag and tore her homework to shreds.

They even locked her in the empty equipment room during gym class.

It wasn't that Grace hadn't asked the Hart family for help.

That year, the Clarke family faced an unprecedented crisis.

Damien's father had been framed and was entangled in lawsuits, and the company was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Overnight, the golden boy of the city’s elite became a pariah everyone avoided.

The same people who used to follow him around, fawning over him and calling him “Mr. Clarke,” turned around and became the ones who kicked him the hardest.

His situation was even more difficult than the Ward family’s had been when they went bankrupt.

Because he had once stood so high, the fall was that much more brutal.

For the first time, Grace felt the cruelty and cold reality of the world so clearly.

It was a rainy afternoon.

Trying to escape Lilian and her group, she had run blindly up to the rooftop of the main school building.

And that’s when she saw it—a scene she would never forget for the rest of her life.