The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 206

He had long lost any clear recollection of the faces he had helped.

He couldn't even remember his own exact appearance from those years, so how could he remember those kids?

The only node in his childhood memories that truly cleared up was the day Giselle was sent there.

He still remembered that scrawny little girl, lacking even a pair of shoes, crying out that she wanted to go home. She cried and cried until her voice went hoarse.

Annoyed by her crying, the director grabbed his cane and was about to whip her.

At that time, Gideon had been standing under the eaves not far away. He didn't know what he was thinking—perhaps he simply saw his own dying self in those cries.

When he saw the director raise that rough cane high, his face twisted in rage as he swung it down toward the defenseless girl, some inexplicable urge made him rush forward, using his frail body to block the heavy blow.

From that moment on, his life finally found an anchor in that hellhole.

He wanted to survive alongside this girl, giving her all his patience and all his broken crackers.

That was why, when the Hayes family later arrived with a fleet of black sedans to bring him back to The Metropolis to reclaim his title as the eldest grandson, he asked for nothing else, only taking Giselle with him without hesitation.

Gideon pulled his hand back, tossing the tear-soaked tissue into the trash bin.

He turned to look at the city lights blurring past the window, his gaze gradually growing deep.

All his impressions of Nora started when he was seventeen.

That year, this eldest daughter of the Xavier family, who was practically a nobody and somewhat marginalized in their social circle, inexplicably started trailing behind him out of nowhere.

No matter what aristocratic gathering or private club he attended, whenever he looked back, he would always see Nora's eyes—burning with a fiery, stubborn intensity that thoroughly baffled him.

He actually always found Nora strange.

The way she looked at Giselle always carried an inexplicable hostility and rivalry, as if Giselle had stolen something that originally belonged to her.

He had always chalked this hostility up to female jealousy, assuming Nora was trying to compete for the power and status of Mrs. Hayes.

But today, her devastated look on the steps of St. Jude's, combined with these drunken ramblings spilled under the influence of alcohol.

These fragments seemed to point darkly toward some past he had forgotten.

Gideon's gaze shifted back to Nora's face.

Could what she said today mean she really did cross paths with him at that orphanage?