The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 326

A sneer curled at the corner of Gideon's lips.

The woman had really leveled up her game.

Outside the door, Lucia was utterly stunned. She stared at Nora's pale, resolute face, gazing into the dead, stagnant calmness in her eyes.

Lucia's excitement gradually bled away, replaced rapidly by an intense heartache.

"Nora."

Lucia grabbed Nora's freezing fingers, her voice trembling with profound worry. "Have you... truly moved on?"

A long, suffocating silence gripped the corridor.

Behind the door, Gideon was waiting for the exact same answer.

His body stood rigid behind the panel. A trace of panic—one he didn't even recognize himself—churned furiously in his dark, icy eyes.

If she dared say 'yes,' he swore that the day he walked out of this hospital would be the day the Xavier family and Lawrence Atelier were entirely eradicated from The Metropolis.

He would absolutely not allow a woman who had deceived him and exploited the guilt of the Hayes patriarch to simply walk away unscathed.

Yet, Nora didn't answer.

Some wounds had festered so completely that she no longer had the energy to slice them open and display them to the world.

Had she moved on?

A ten-year obsession, a habit branded straight into her very marrow—how could she just wipe it away overnight as if dusting off a table?

But what was the alternative?

She wouldn't even offer a denial. She refused to spare even a single shred of reluctance.

The man stood silently in place, waves of pure frost radiating from his massive frame.

He slowly lowered his eyes, his thick lashes casting heavy shadows over his pale cheeks, completely masking whatever he was truly feeling in that moment.

Gideon released his vice-like grip on the handle.

The women's trench coat he had meant to hand over slipped silently from his fingers, tumbling onto the freezing hospital floor, folding into a crumpled heap of discarded fabric.

He turned around, strode back toward the bed with his long legs, and quietly sat back down.

He picked up the unread business documents from the nightstand and flipped open the first page.

His eyes traced over the dense lines of numbers and clauses for ten straight minutes, but he didn't absorb a single word.