The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 22

The Heiress He Underestimated

Chapter 22 The Garden (2)

“You offered real air,” she said softly, sitting on the bench beside him, leaving a careful foot of space between them.

For a while, they just sat in silence. It wasn’t awkward. It was a shared silence, a mutual exhaustion from the games they both had to play. She let the quiet, the cold, the realness of it, seep into her bones, washing away the sticky residue of Xan’s false charm and her father’s expectations.

“I think your sister is trying to hack into my company,” she said finally, the words coming out flat in the still air. “Nethys Medical.”

He didn’t look surprised. He let out a long, slow breath that fogged in the cold. “Lyra.”

“Yes. The attacks got more aggressive tonight. She’s not hiding her tracks as well.”

“She’s sending a message,” he said, his voice low and weary. “To me. She knows I’m making moves. Acquiring medical companies. She thinks I’m desperate, wasting the family legacy on a lost cause. She wants to undermine my efforts. To scare off my new… associate.”

He meant her. Lyra saw her as a target, a vulnerability.

“She thinks she can scare me off?” Elera asked, a hint of steel entering her voice.

For the first time that night, he looked directly at her, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “No. I don’t think she does. I think she’s trying to scare me. To show me my new alliance is weak. She has always believed my judgement is flawed.”

There was a deep, old hurt in those words. A sibling wound that had festered for years.

“Why?” Elera asked gently.

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