GUILTY DEVOTION のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 141 - チャプター 150

Nicholas was losing track of time as days turned into weeks. He’d forgotten what sleep felt like and what calmness sounded like. All that remained in his world were endless loops of meetings, legal filings, and half-hearted meals eaten between phone calls that led nowhere.Even with all this, he had Cassie in mind because he couldn’t let her go yet. Every morning, before he opened his laptop or even spoke to anyone, he’d pull out his phone and stare at her contact.He would type, delete, and retype messages that would never be delivered.Please talk to me. I don’t know what happened. Tell me you’re safe.But the messages always bounced back coldly: Message not delivered. Her number was gone and disconnected.The first time it happened, he’d thought it was a network issue. By the hundredth, he realized it wasn’t the service but her.She was gone.*** He hired about three private investigators, each more expensive than the last. He didn’t care about the cost. Money meant nothing when e

She’d done everything right, or so she thought.After graduating from the university abroad, Cassie found work in a small communications firm in Malta. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was stable. She drafted PR pitches for tourism campaigns, translated copy, and wrote brand stories for local cafés.On good days, she found meaning in her work. On bad days, she reminded herself she was doing it for her son. The boy had inherited her eyes and Nicholas’s intensity. He laughed easily but slept lightly, as though he didn’t want to dream.Ryan had left a year after they’d moved from the dorm. He was gone one morning with no note or explanation, just silence. Cassie didn’t chase him. His presence had become a heavy chain anyway, so she learned to survive on her own.Bills, rent, and work became a life of constant motion and never luxury. She never spoke to her mother after she graduated, and her stipend was cut off. Victoria told her to survive on her own with Ryan, unaware that they were no long

The antiseptic sting of the hospital hit Nicholas the moment he walked in. His lungs tightened as though the air itself didn’t want to let him breathe. The white walls, the hum of machines, and the steady echo of hurried footsteps. All of it felt foreign and weird, but he didn’t have time to process it, thanks to the weird heartbeat roaring in his chest.Cassie had finally reached out to him. After five years of silence, heartbreak, and distance that stretched across borders, he was here. Standing in the same building as her, in the same city, breathing the same air.But the reason for their reunion wasn’t love. It was desperation. His hands trembled as he filled out the hospital forms. His signature, once bold and firm, was jagged and uneven. He could barely keep the pen steady.Charles stood beside him, his cousin’s usual calmness replaced with quiet worry. “Nick,” he said gently, “slow down. You’ll tear the paper.”Nicholas didn’t stop writing. “If I don’t get these filled, they ca

The hospital ward was calmer than usual that night. The machines beside the little bed hummed softly, a steady noise that filled the silence Nicholas and Cassie shared. Their son lay sleeping under a thin white blanket, with his soft curls draping behind his ear a bit and an IV taped to his arm. Every shallow breath he took was a miracle in motion, and neither of them dared to look away.Nicholas sat in the chair beside him, his elbows resting on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Cassie stood by the window, arms wrapped around herself as though holding her body together was the only thing stopping her from falling apart.It had been hours since the doctor left. Several hours since the truth crashed through the walls of the lives they’d both built to survive. But survival didn’t look like this; it looked like bleeding quietly.When Nicholas finally spoke, his voice was so low Cassie almost missed it. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you hide this from me to this point?”Cassie

The late afternoon sunlight pierced through Genevieve’s thin curtains, dust motes swirling like ghosts in the stale air. Her apartment was nothing like the penthouse she once shared with Nicholas. There were no marble floors or gleaming chandeliers. Just peeling wallpaper, a cracked mirror, and a half-empty wine glass on the floor beside the couch.Genevieve stared at her reflection in that mirror, tracing the faint lines around her eyes. Therapy, she thought bitterly. They said it would help.The court had ordered it after the divorce hearings. She’s entitled to weekly sessions and mandatory progress reports. They called it emotional rehabilitation, but she called it punishment.Her therapist, Dr. Brant, kept using phrases like "closure" and "self-accountability." Genevieve would nod, smile, and pretend she cared. But every word slid right off her, because she didn’t want to close anything. She didn’t want to heal. She wanted Nicholas back at all costs.He was the only man who had ev