The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 130

“July 9th. A boy gave Giselle a love letter. The envelope was pink. I burned it. Giselle doesn't need these useless things. She only needs to stay in the Hayes family.”

“September 1st. Giselle started high school. She looks much more grown-up in her new uniform. On the way to drop her off, she kept holding my hand, saying she was scared. I told her I would always be here. No one will ever bully her.”

As the dates progressed, the handwriting grew sharper and more mature, but the content remained entirely centered around one person.

Nora flipped to the diary in the middle of the stack. The dates aligned with her freshman year of high school.

That was the year she was cornered by thugs in a dark alley, and Gideon had saved her with a metal pipe.

Nora searched the pages until she found the entry for that exact date.

“Giselle got lost today because she wandered off to play. When I found her, she was terrified.”

She kept flipping.

She reached the diary from her first year of college.

Nora scanned the pages, her eyes darting across the brief but heavily detailed entries.

“November 12th. That girl from Nora's family came looking for me at school again today. Giselle saw her and asked who she was. Giselle wasn't happy. I need to keep my distance from Nora. Giselle's feelings are the most important thing.”

Nora's eyes locked onto that sentence about herself, staring at it as if it were nailed to the page.

That relentless, agonizing pursuit she had once worn like a badge of honor, that devotion she treated as her most precious treasure—in Gideon's diary, it was nothing more than a nuisance that upset Giselle.

To protect Giselle's feelings, he hadn't hesitated to blacklist her as someone he needed to stay away from.

The color drained from Nora's face bit by bit, until she was as pale as paper.

“December 8th. Giselle tried on her new haute couture gown today. She asked me if she looked beautiful. She looked beautiful. Grandfather said Giselle is grown up now, and eventually, she'll get married. Married. I don't know why, but I hate that word.”

“June 18th. Giselle's birthday. When she cut the cake, she made a wish to stay with me for the rest of her life.”

She had used these rational excuses to justify his toxic bias in her own mind over and over again.

She had convinced herself that family and romance were entirely different things, and that as long as she clung to the title of Mrs. Hayes for long enough, he would eventually give her the love she deserved as his wife.

She had burned ten years of her life trying to carve out a tiny corner in this man's world, desperate to prove her worth.

She had exhausted every ounce of her soul trying to understand his coldness and isolation, lying to herself that if she just waited long enough, she could eventually melt this block of ice.

Staring at the torn diary page that read 'I need to keep my distance from Nora,' her stomach violently churned. A suffocating wave of nausea and pure despair crashed over her.

She reached out a ghostly pale finger, trying to close the leather cover of the diary.

Suddenly, an explosive, furious roar shattered the silence.

“Who gave you permission to touch those?!”