Sham Marriage Quit Real Heiress Strikes Back novel Chapter 343

Chapter 343 The Episode

Nathan’s eyes were bright with a kind of feverish excitement.

Finished

“Oh, and there’s one more thing almost forgot to tell you,” he said softly. “Camille is carrying Evan’s child, and I’m not letting either Evan or Daniel get away with anything. As for the baby in her womb… a bastard with no father worth naming. Who knows what it’ll grow into once it’s born?”

He was so consumed by the thrill of his own revenge that he failed to notice the slightest movement in Catherine’s little finger.

A moment later, Camille returned from the restroom.

Nathan’s expression changed almost instantly, all that dark satisfaction vanishing as he slipped back into his usual gentle, polished self. “Let’s go,” he said, taking her hand and leading her out.

They had only just reached the first floor when Camille suddenly stopped.

“My bag,” she said. “I left it upstairs. Hubby, wait for me a second.”

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She hurried back up, grabbed the handbag from the sofa, and was about to leave when something at the edge of her vision made her freeze.

Catherine’s hand, resting on top of the blanket, moved again.

Nathan had already been waiting downstairs for nearly ten minutes by the time Camille still hadn’t come back down. He was just about to call her when his phone rang first.

“Hubby, I think my mom reacted.”

Camille’s voice was full of excitement.

Nathan paused for a fraction of a second, then slowly smiled.

“Is that so?” he said. “That’s wonderful news.”

On the first day of the new year, Alexander took Elena to see the snow.

He had reserved a hotel high in the mountains a place where the ocean stretched endlessly beyond the windows while the hotel itself sat tucked among the woods, surrounded on all sides by deep, unbroken white. Everything outside looked silent, as though the whole world had been wrapped in stillness. Elena sat by the floor–to–ceiling window with a blanket around her shoulders, her head resting on Alexander’s lap as she watched the snow fall in soft, endless drifts.

“I almost wish the world would end today,” she murmured suddenly.

Alexander took a sip of red wine and pinched her cheek lightly with cool fingers.

“Tired of living already?”

“No,” Elena said with a smile. “I just feel so happy right now that if the very last second of my life could stay frozen in this moment, I think that would be enough.”

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Chapter 348 The Episode

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“That’s nonsense.”

He set his glass aside, cupped her face in both hands, and bent to kiss her forehead and the bridge of her

nose.

“You and the baby are going to live a very long life.”

Elena wrapped her arms around his neck and looked up at him.

“Can’t I just stay here and not go back?”

She had already tried every possible approach to persuade him to let her remain by his side, and every one of them had failed. She had argued that the weather here was cold but manageable, that his mother and grandfather would only worry more if she were forced to leave too soon, and even that she could keep working remotely if he was concerned about the company, but none of it had made any difference.

“No.”

Just as she had expected, he refused again without hesitation.

“Dr. Newton said three months at most,” he told her. “When that’s over, I’ll go back.”

He knew she wanted to stay because she wanted to be with him, but to him, nothing mattered more than her safety and the baby’s.

“Go back on the fourth,” he said at last, after seeing how downcast she looked.

Originally he had wanted her to leave on the third day of the new year, so delaying it by one more day was already his compromise.

That was enough to bring a little of her smile back.

They spent the entire day in the mountains, letting themselves be reckless in the way only two people in love could be, and by nightfall Elena had fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, she thought she heard the sound of something breaking.

The noise jolted her awake at once.

The curtains had not been drawn, and in the pale reflected light from the snow outside, she could make out the room clearly enough to understand what had happened. Alexander was sitting shirtless on the sofa. The kettle they had used to boil water had fallen to the floor, and the wineglass beside it had shattered into pieces.

Elena’s breathing slowed abruptly.

She threw back the blanket as quietly as she could, slipped out of bed, and reached for the bottle of pills on the table before walking toward him.

He was sitting with his back to her.

“Ari…”

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Chapter 343 The Episode

Finished

The moment her hand touched his shoulder, he reacted as though startled out of something dark and immediate. He turned sharply that Elena froze, because the look in his eyes was unlike anything she had ever seen from him before. They were cold to the point of being frightening, dark and oppressive, stripped of every trace of warmth she knew. Instinctively she stepped back, but her heel caught on the edge of the rug, and she fell hard onto it.

Before she could even get up, he was already on his feet and standing over her.

At nearly six–foot–three, he cast an almost overwhelming pressure, and as he looked down at her with that glacial, hollow gaze, a kind of fear Elena had never known before rushed through her all at once.

“Ari…”

She did not even bother trying to stand again.

Instead, she lifted her hand, holding out the medicine toward him.

“Take this,” she said, her voice trembling despite her effort to steady it. “You’re not feeling well right now. Just listen to me and take the medicine first.”

He kept staring at her.

Elena could hear her own heartbeat pounding so loudly it seemed to fill the room.

Then, little by little, something in him seemed to shift. A trace of reason surfaced again, faint but visible. He pressed a hand hard against his forehead, his whole body radiating a restless, mounting agitation, and Elena seized that moment at once. She hurriedly shook out the pills, meaning to feed them to him before he could resist again.

“Get away from me.”

The second her hand touched him, he shoved it aside.

“Get out.”

He dropped back onto the sofa, curling in on himself as if he were trying to hold something together by force, his voice rough and unsteady when he shouted at her.

It was the worst episode Elena had ever seen him have.

Panic surged through her.

She scrambled to the bedside table, grabbed her phone, and called Dr. Sullivan.

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