The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 318

"After my parents were gone, my grandfather was the only family I had left."

Gideon let out a scoff. A habitual, ruthless glint flashed in his eyes, though it quickly dissolved the moment he looked back at Nora.

"I was young then, completely oblivious to how brutal the power struggles within a major family could be. With a corporate empire as vast as the Hayes family's, there were countless eyes secretly coveting the heir's position. I just followed behind my grandfather, learning bit by bit—learning how to scheme, learning how to be ruthless."

He closed his eyes and paused for a long time, as if sifting through the deliberately sealed, almost decaying fragments of his memory.

"Later, during a premeditated family feud, I was set up by those greedy bastards at the bottom. I was secretly smuggled out and dumped straight into St. Jude's Children's Home on the west side of the city."

He stared into the void, his voice so eerily calm that it sent a chill down the spine.

Nora stood quietly by the bed. Her hands unconsciously balled into fists, her slender fingers curling tightly inward.

St. Jude's Children's Home.

That godforsaken purgatory on earth, filled with vicious curses and endless starvation. It was the place where she had spent the darkest years of her entire childhood.

How could she not know the absolute misery of living there?

She remembered the rancid food that was impossible to swallow, the short-tempered director swinging a cane through the air, and the dilapidated dormitories that leaked freezing wind all winter, without a single whole blanket in sight. Every night, the sound of children's teeth chattering from the cold echoed in the dark.

Gideon's voice continued to echo through the room, heavy with the weight of his past.

"I couldn't figure out why my grandfather hadn't come for me yet, and I had no way of finding my way home. I even thought to myself, countless times, that I might as well just die in that place. After all, the Hayes family was full of people who wanted me dead, and maybe my grandfather simply couldn't find me."

"Until later, when I met Giselle."

"Giselle was so tiny back then. On her first day there, she huddled in the corner all by herself, crying endlessly."

A clear sense of nostalgia and tenderness surfaced in Gideon's eyes. "Her face was covered in dirt, and her voice was completely hoarse from crying. The older kids bullied her and snatched her things, but she didn't dare fight back. She just hugged her knees, crying out that she wanted to go home, that she wanted her mom."

"I watched her from the shadows. Seeing her cry so pathetically, hearing her beg for her home... in that moment, I suddenly realized that I missed my home, too."

As he spoke, a bitter, self-deprecating smile touched his lips.

"But I had no parents left. Where was my home supposed to be?"