The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 415

Ever since that late night in Giselle's bedroom, when she had wrestled the bloody shard of glass from Gideon's hands and fled, Nora rarely saw him.

He didn't want to see her. He imprisoned her in this suffocating cage, using this humiliating confinement to punish her, physically isolating her to manifest the apocalyptic hatred burning in his chest.

And she was too terrified to face him. She was terrified of looking into those bloodshot eyes, terrified of hearing his shattered voice demanding Giselle's life in return.

Every time she remembered the blood gushing from his wrist, remembered his manic willingness to throw away the Hayes Group just to bring his sister back, it became incredibly hard to breathe.

The chasm of a lost life lay between them, turning every encounter into a double-edged sword of mutual torture.

Avoiding each other became the only unspoken agreement they had left.

But Nora was still trapped in this cage.

In the rear courtyard of The Hayes Manor, a private memorial room had been arranged. In the center of the room sat a long mahogany altar table.

In the center of the mahogany altar table sat an engraved memorial plaque, and behind it, a black-and-white photograph of Giselle Hayes flashing her brightest smile.

The table was flanked by massive arrangements of fresh white lilies, and the air was thick with the suffocating scent of melting wax and floral perfume.

Every morning, precisely when the antique grandfather clock at the end of the hall struck eight, the heavy thud of the bodyguards' leather shoes would sound outside her door.

Every day, two stone-faced bodyguards would drag Nora from her guest room and march her into this dimly lit memorial room.

"On your knees."

The command was always the same, the tone utterly stripped of human emotion.

Nora submissively bent her legs, kneeling on the freezing stone tiles in front of the plaque.

She raised her head, her gaze locking onto the black-and-white photo on the altar.

The girl in the picture wore that radiant pink diamond necklace, her eyes crinkling, her smile brilliant and full of life.

Nora had to kneel here for four full hours every day. From the early morning straight through to noon.

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