The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 90

Someone deliberately raised their voice, as if terrified Nora wouldn't hear. “Did you hear that? Giselle laid it all out. She climbed the ranks by exploiting a dead man, and now she actually thinks she's somebody.”

The mocking, disdainful laughter wove together into a suffocating net, strangling Nora's throat. She felt it growing harder and harder to breathe, her heart fiercely compressed by an invisible force until the pain made her fingertips tremble.

Nora's face turned completely ashen, completely drained of blood. Her stomach churned violently, a thick wave of nausea rising in her throat.

She could endure Gideon's lack of love and his coldness, but she absolutely refused to let Giselle trample on her bottom line, using Silas as a tool to humiliate her.

The memory of the old man clutching her hand and pleading from his hospital bed was still vivid in her mind, yet Giselle was publicly twisting it into Nora's calculated extortion.

She gritted her teeth, clenching her hands tightly into fists, fully prepared to fire back, to throw all the pent-up grievances and filthy truths right back into Giselle's face and rip off her hypocritical mask.

“Nora.”

Gideon finally spoke.

“Go lay your flowers for Silas.”

The man's deep, steady voice pierced through the fine mist of rain in the cemetery.

Gideon stood just a few steps away, his towering frame completely shielding Giselle behind him.

That seemingly casual command brutally severed the counterattack Nora had been about to unleash.

He didn't reprimand Giselle for her insolence or for starting the conflict, nor did he stop the relatives from spitting their venomous mockery.

The malicious sneers from the crowd ceased the instant Gideon spoke. The extended family members exchanged glances and reeled in their blatant ridicule, restoring the solemnity required for a memorial. No one dared to challenge the authority of the Hayes Group's patriarch in a moment like this.

Nora knew perfectly well that Gideon's interruption was, in his mind, a way to rescue her from an agonizing situation.

“I don't want to see any unpleasantness happen in front of Silas's resting place.”

He had predicted this exact scenario. With that warning, he had shackled Nora ahead of time.

As long as she talked back to Giselle here today, as long as she caused Giselle to shed a single tear, the blame for ruining the memorial's atmosphere would be pinned entirely on her head.

Arguing here was pointless. Making a scene at Silas's grave would only solidify Gideon's belief that she was an unruly, unreasonable lunatic. It would only give the Hayes relatives more gossip to sneer over over tea, nailing her firmly to the pillar of shame.

The dead were gone. She refused to make the scene any uglier in front of an elder who had shown her such grace.

Nora lowered her eyelashes and gave a slight nod.

“I understand.”