Chapter 406

Chapter 399
Gemma’s POV
“Working standing up is more efficient… as Hemingway said.”
The statement hangs in the quiet study. I keep my face perfectly still. I’ve read enough to know it’s true… Hemingway did write standing up, a practice I always found vaguely masochistic.
What stuns me is that Cassian knows it. I never saw him crack
the spine of a novel in three years. His library was all finance, law, dry biographies.
I take a slow, steadying breath. The performative effort of it all is exhausting. “You don’t need to force conversations about things you don’t like just to engage with me,” I say, my voice
even.
“I’ll take the books and leave. We probably won’t have many chances to interact in the future.”
The thought is a cold, clear river in my mind, separating us forever.
He had three whole years to learn my interests. He never bothered. So what’s the point now? Does knowing about Borges or Hemingway’s quirks erase anything? Doesbuild 7
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< Chapter 399 bridge over the wasteland between us? “Gemma.” His voice is lower, rougher. “I’m trying to learn how to make you happy.” The confession, rare and raw, would have once sent my heart soaring. Now, it just feels like too little, excavated from the ruins far too late. “No need,” I reply, turning away from the shelves. “It’s meaningless.” I open the study door and call into the hall, “Emma, could you bring me a stool?” A mansion this size has to have one. I refuse to believe his absurd claim. When I return with a sturdy plastic step stool from the utility closet, I stop short. All my books… the complete anthologies, the leather–bound collections, are already neatly stacked inside the cardboard box on the floor. He did it while I was gone, the help I didn’t ask for. I set the stool down with a soft thud. “Thank you.” I say, the words polite and distant. I bend to lift the box and it’s heavier than I anticipated, the weight of all those words, all 2/7 11:07 +2 Bonus < Chapter 399 those years, condensed into one awkward bundle. As I straighten, preparing to maneuver through the doorway, he suddenly blocks my way. Without any words, he reaches out and takes the box from my arms, his movements smooth. The weight leaves me, a physical relief I didn’t want to acknowledge. I watch his back as he walks ahead of me, carrying it so easily. I open my mouth, but he speaks first, his voice drifting back to me. “You’re pregnant now. Don’t strain yourself and risk harming the baby, okay?” The practical logic of it disarms my stubborn pride. He’s right… the baby changes the calculus of everything, even my determination to never need him for anything again. I close my mouth and follow him downstairs in silence. At the front door, he pauses. “Did you drive here yourself?” I just nod. He carries the box out to my car, placing it carefully in the passenger–side footwell. As I’m pulling on my shoes by the door, his voice comes again, quieter now. “Hazel’s birthday is in a few days. You know how much Grandpa cares for her. With her leg… he’s quite worried. He wants to have a small celebration. Hazel has always adored 3/7 11:07 * +2 Bonus < Chapter 399 you. If you could come, it would mean a lot to both of them.” I pause, one shoe on. Is this another trick? A set–up to get me back to the manor? I search his face, but his expression is calm, open, with none of the usual guarded calculation. He looks… sincere. He hesitates, and I see the unspoken words hover… it would mean a lot to him too, but he swallows them back. Smart! That would have ruined it. Hazel… I think of the loyal, aging dog with her hurt leg, followed by the memory of Grandpa’s genuine distress. For them, it isn’t a trick. “I’ll see if I can make it,” I say finally, my voice softer. “If I have time, I’ll come over. But I can’t promise.” I see the flicker in his; for him, it’s enough. For now, it’s enough. I drive to the airport in a hazė, pull into the short–term parking and text Mr. Smith my location. I’m ten minutes early. The nervous energy from the manor has been replaced by a new, nameless dread about this meeting. 4/7 11:07 & +2 Bonus < Chapter 399 Thirty minutes later, the passenger door opens. Mr. Smith slides in, and the words die in my throat. “Mr. Smith, why did you-” I stop. The man beside me is a ghost of the steady, imposing figure I know. His head is shaved, revealing the pale curve of his skull. His face is drawn, the skin tight over his bones. But it’s his hands that snag my breath. They rest on his knees, bruised a sickly yellow and purple around the knuckles and the backs. I know those marks. I saw them on my mother’s hands during her worst days, from the relentless search for veins for IV drips. He gestures weakly toward the windshield. “Drive to the hospital, please.” His voice is a rasp. He hands me a pre–printed card with an address. I don’t ask questions. I just start the car, the dread solidifying into a cold, heavy stone in my stomach. At the hospital, it’s clear they were expecting him. Nurses in scrubs meet us at the entrance with a wheelchair, their 5/7 11:07 3 +2 Bonus < Chapter 399 expressions professionally neutral. They whisk him away before I can say another word. By the time I’m allowed into the private room in what looks like an intensive care unit, he’s already in the bed, an oxygen cannula under his nose, monitors beeping a soft, ominous rhythm. “Now,” I say, my voice trembling slightly despite my effort to control it, “can you tell me what’s going on?” Mr. Smith’s eyes, still sharp in his ravaged face, open. He just lifts a frail finger and points to the medical chart clipped to the foot of his bed. I move to it, my fingers cold as I flip through the pages. Lab reports, scans, physician’s notes. The terminology is clinical, brutal. The diagnosis, circled in red, seems to pulse on the page. Glioblastoma multiforme. I look back at him, my own face surely a mask of shock. “Brain cancer?” He gives the slightest, most weary nod. “I’ve known for a while,” he whispers, the sound papery. “I 6/7 11:07 +2 Bonus < Chapter 399 didn’t want Mikhail to find out. That’s why I sent him to Florisdale.” The pieces slam together in my mind with devastating force. Mr. Smith’s sudden distance. His insistence to let Mikhail go to Florisdale alone. The busy schedule‘ that kept him away. It wasn’t business, it was this. “So, you’ve known… and you sent him away to protect him from knowing. And this surgery abroad…” “If he found out about my cancer while by my side,” Mr. Smith interrupts, his voice gaining a sliver of fierce strength, “he would fall apart.” He holds my gaze, and in his eyes, I see the terrifying, lonely burden of a love so deep it requires a monumental lie. The protector, protecting his charge from the one thing he can’t fight. B Write your comment 1r Gifts 7/7 Cedella Cedella is a passionate storyteller known for her bold romantic and spicy novels that keep readers hooked from the very first chapter. With a flair for crafting emotionally intense plots and unforgettable characters, she blends love, desire, and drama into every story she writes. Cedella’s storytelling style is immersive and addictive—perfect for fans of heated romances and heart-pounding twists.