The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 73

The sleek black sedan glided to a smooth halt outside Arthur's office building.

The driver stepped out and opened the door for her.

"I will be waiting right here at six o'clock sharp, ma'am."

Stepping out in her sensible flats, Nora looked up at the towering glass facade she had grown to love.

She offered a curt nod of thanks before spinning around and marching through the automatic doors.

The bullpen was already buzzing, the frantic clicking of keyboards echoing across the open floor. Nora settled into her quiet corner desk, booted up her monitor, and pulled out the revised concept sketches from the night before.

If things went as usual, she'd be fielding a barrage of insults from Sloane before she even finished her coffee.

It didn't matter how meticulously she refined her drafts; Sloane would always manufacture a crisis just to assert her dominance.

Nora mentally braced herself for the inevitable screaming match in the manager's office.

Yet an entire morning drifted by. The lead designer's door opened, and Sloane marched out with a stack of schedules. Dropping a clipboard onto Nora's desk, Sloane kept her face aggressively neutral, actively avoiding eye contact.

"Supplier timeline for next week. Review it."

Sloane barked the order and practically sprinted away, completely abandoning her usual tactic of publicly eviscerating Nora's aesthetic choices.

Nora blinked in surprise at the retreating woman but quickly pushed the odd interaction out of her mind.

Pulling out her tablet, she dove back in. The Parisian spinoff line still needed structural tweaks; with Sloane off her back, she could finally sink her teeth into the actual work.

Dusk rolled in, signaling the end of the shift.

The heavy door sealed out the city noise. The new-car smell suddenly felt entirely foreign. As the streets blurred past, Nora gripped the straps of her tote until her knuckles turned white.

Stepping into the manor, she spotted her favorite flats sitting perfectly by the door. Mrs. Gable quickly informed her that every single item from her rental had been meticulously packed and relocated straight back to the master closet.

Just like that, she had been violently reset into her freezing, miserable marital home.

The living room was completely void of any masculine energy. The dead flowers had been swapped for fresh lilies, but they did absolutely nothing to mask the suffocating gloom of the house.

Dragging her feet upstairs, she completely bypassed the master suite, barricading herself in the furthest guest bedroom. Setting up her drafting easel by the window, she aggressively forced herself to ignore her own pathetic surrender.

The following days morphed into a bizarrely calm routine.

She dutifully rode his chauffeured car to and from the office. Gideon didn't issue any more threats, and he rarely even showed his face at the manor. For the most part, it was just Nora and the silent cleaning staff.