The Hidden Empress Stripping Her Secrets After Divorce novel Chapter 622

The voice on the other end spoke for a few more seconds.

"It wasn't you?" Lawrence's grip slowly tightened, the heavy pen twisting painfully between his fingers. "Then who the hell was it?"

He shoved his chair back violently; it scraped against the floorboards with a dull, heavy groan. Pacing over to the heavy drapes, he turned his back to the window, dropping his voice so low he sounded like a madman muttering to his own ghost.

"I don't care who gave the order. Listen to me very carefully—he is completely untouchable. No one lays a finger on him. He might be the only true bloodline the Lancaster family has left. Do you hear me? The only heir."

The line went dead silent. It wasn't the silence of a hung-up call; it was the suffocating silence of someone processing a devastating truth. Lawrence could hear the faint, rhythmic breathing through the speaker, as the man on the other end weighed the gravity of the revelation.

"Enough. Stand down. I'll handle the investigation myself."

He ended the call, tossed his phone onto the mahogany desk, and stood rigidly by the window, his back toward the door.

The heavy curtains blocked out everything. The amber glow of the desk lamp stretched his shadow across the floor, making him look like a frail, withered old man.

Outside in the hallway, Penelope stood completely paralyzed, a tray holding a bowl of creamy soup balanced in her hands.

She had only come to bring him something to eat. The housekeeper had spent all afternoon simmering it, claiming it was good for his health. Lawrence had been working relentlessly, his complexion worsening by the day, and she had just wanted him to have something warm before bed.

She had walked up to the heavy oak door, raised her knuckles to knock—

And then she heard it.

*"He might be the only true bloodline the Lancaster family has left."*

Penelope's hand froze in mid-air.

The soup was still steaming, the porcelain bowl burning her palms, but she couldn't let go. A deafening ringing exploded in her ears, like a thousand hornets swarming inside her skull, their frantic wings battering her sanity to pieces.

The true bloodline. The only heir.

Wasn't Christian the true Lancaster heir? Wasn't he his son? The son she had raised for twenty-eight years... how could he suddenly not be the rightful heir?

She stood completely rooted to the spot, as if her feet had been nailed to the floorboards. Lawrence was still speaking inside, but the words were just static now. All she could hear was *"the only heir"* looping relentlessly in her mind, like a broken record violently skipping over the same groove.

Her fingers began to tremble uncontrollably. The edge of the bowl rattled against her rings, emitting a frail, fragile clinking sound.