The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 508

The ink on the ledger slowly bled into a dark stain.

Nora's heart inexplicably sank.

It was obvious who had done it.

In this remote, insular town, Vincent Shaw had run his bookstore for years, always kind to others, never causing a stir.

Just yesterday afternoon, he had merely helped her move a few flower pots. By this morning, his reputation was in ruins and he had vanished from the town entirely overnight.

In a quiet place where even out-of-town license plates were a rare sight, there was only one person capable of making a local business owner disappear overnight without even enough time to pack his bags.

It was the man sitting in the corner. There was no one else.

She slowly lifted her head.

Gideon was sitting there bright and early as usual, completely engrossed in an English financial report.

Sensing her gaze, he slightly raised his eyes. The coldness he wore while reading business documents vanished instantly, replaced by an almost docile softness.

Yesterday, right before the rain, when Vincent had been helping her, this man had simply walked up, wrapped an arm around her, and politely declared, "I am Nora's husband."

After she coldly pushed him away, he obediently pulled his hands back.

He hadn't spoken a single harsh word to her. Instead, he had submissively stepped back, apologizing with downcast eyes.

That image of a man stripped of all his sharp edges, acting so humble and compliant, had made her chest feel suffocatingly tight, sparking an unnameable irritation.

She thought he had genuinely changed. She thought he had finally learned to restrain his obsessive need for control.

He hadn't.

To her face, he played the submissive, accommodating partner, but behind her back, he used the most ruthless, tyrannical methods in the dead of night to uproot and destroy anyone who dared get close to her.

The suffocating anger surging in her chest felt like a blazing fire, reigniting the emotions she had finally managed to calm down over the past few days.

She slammed her pen onto the ledger, stood up abruptly, and closed the distance between them in a few strides.

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