The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 165

The Heiress He Underestimated

Chapter 165 Standing On Sacred Wounds

Xan found the house empty when he came back.

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The housemaid he has is there but there was no sign of Sarah’s presence. The air in the penthouse made his skin prickle. Her favorite throw blanket was crumpled on the floor by the sofa. The book she’d been reading or pretending to read for weeks lay splayed on the coffee table, spine cracked. A half–drunk glass of water sat on the kitchen counter with a faint lipstick mark on the rim.

But Sarah was gone.

Panic, cold and sharp lanced through him. He checked her room. The bed was made with near precision, a habit from her years in the locked institution. The closet doors stood open. revealing her neat, dark wardrobe. Nothing seemed out of place except for the absence of her.

“Sarah!” he called, his voice echoing in the vast, sterile space.

No answer.

He pulled out his phone and called her. It went straight to voicemail. He texted and still got no response. The tracking app he’d discreetly installed on her phone after the first time she’d disappeared on a bad night showed her location was offline. She’d either turned it off or destroyed the phone.

His mind raced with different thoughts. The confrontation at the coffee shop had shattered her. He’d seen it happen in real time, the foundation of her reality turning to dust. He knew, with a sickening certainty, where she would go.

The crash site.

It was a place of pilgrimage for her twisted grief. Over the years, she’d dragged him there a dozen times, forcing him to stand in the chill while she stared at the scarred tree, her face always a mask of pain and fury. “This is where they died because of her, she wouldd whisper. It was her altar, her proof of victimhood.

Now that proof was gone, replaced by a truth far more monstrous Where did you go w your sacred ground was poisoned?

He grabbed his car keys, his heart doing a frantic drum agatust his ribs. He didn’t bother with his usual driver. He needed the speed in driving. The sleek sports car roared to life in the underground garage, and he shot out into the late afternoon traffic, weaving between cars with a recklessness born of pure dread

The drive to the intersection of Lakeside and Pine took twenty minutes that felt like twenty years to him. His mind replayed the coffee shop scene on a loop. Sarah’s face, white with shock

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Chapter 165 Standing On Sacred Wounds

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and then the tears. The dawning horror and the eruption of rage. You’re choosing her. Those words were a knife twist to him.

He wasn’t choosing Elera. He was choosing the truth. But to Sarah, they were the same thing.

As he neared the old, winding lakeside road, the sky darkened, threatening another downpour. The trees here were thick and old, pressing in on the asphalt. He rounded the final bend, and there it was.

The intersection.

And Sarah.

She was just standing there in the middle of the empty road, about ten yards from the massive, gnarled oak tree that still bore the faint, dark scar of the impact. She was wearing the same black clothes from the coffee shop, her hair whipping in the rising wind. She looked impossibly small and fragile against the backdrop of dark forest and bruised sky.

Xan pulled his car to quick stop, the tires crunching on gravel. He got out, the door closing with a soft thunk that sounded too loud in the quiet.

“Sarah,” he called, not wanting to startle her.

She didn’t turn around. She didn’t seem to hear him. She was just staring at the tree, her body rigid.

He walked closer, slowly, like approaching a wild animal. “Sarah, it’s me. It’s Xan,”

Nothing.

He reached her side. Her face was blank and empty. Her eyes were fixed on the scar on the tree trunk, but they weren’t seeing it. They were seeing something else, something playing on a screen inside her skull. The traffic camera footage, maybe. Her father’s smile and her beautiful mother’s face.

“Sarah, talk to me. Please.”

A single tear tracked a clean path through the dust on her check. Then another. She dicht just sob. She just… poured out everything, her tears flowing

“It’s real,” she whispered, the words so soft they were almost carried away by the wind “Isn’t it?”

He didn’t know what to say. Lying to comfort her was what he’d always done. Of course it’s not real, sweetheart. She’s lying. We’ll prove it. But that he was the bedrock of her sickness. The truth was the only medicine left, even if it was poison

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick. “I think it is.

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nished

He touched

tracing the

Chapter 1666 Her Silent Awakening

“He looked at themselves contimed, her voice gaining a strange, de terhen che that he had put in the meat After he hit the tree. He looked at them to make And then he looked at me And he smiled. I remember it now

remembere

Xan felt a chill that had d nother to do with the weather She was aroma had been buried under turus ad trauma and five years of a false tafe/Fluten

raw and sharp.

‘He killed them, she said aid ww is not a question but a statement

“Yes.

“For money.

Yes,

“Because they said no.

“Yes”

my woul

She finally tumed her head to look at matimeves were mosds And Expens white room, screaming that I was wrote. Five prod

The emptiness in her voice was worse sorry I didn’t know, I believed you

and che be a vene

You and the many thing Ey

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