All Chapters of LOVE BENEATH RIVALRY : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

After he left, slowly—hesitantly—Elisa opened the file.Her fingers trembled as they brushed against the thick stack of documents, the paper edges rough beneath her skin. She did not know what she expected to find. A name, perhaps. A signature. Some impersonal record of death that would allow her to breathe without fear. Anything but what lay before her.The first document caught her eye immediately.Property transfer deeds.Her breath hitched.She flipped one page. Then another. Then another.Her eyes widened as recognition set in, disbelief tightening her chest in a way that had nothing to do with her condition. Each page confirmed the same impossible truth—every property once owned by her father, every asset belonging to the Darkhorse family, every estate that had been stripped from her and erased from her life, had been officially returned.Registered in her name.Her hands shook harder.“No… this isn’t…” she whispered, her voice barely audible in the empty room. “This doesn’t mak

Two months had passed since Elisa’s discovery of Leonard’s death—and of his donation to her.Time had moved forward in the way it always did. For Elisa, those two months had felt both unbearably long and terrifyingly brief, as though grief had stretched certain days into endless tunnels of ache while swallowing entire weeks whole without her noticing.Her body healed faster than her mind.She had been enrolled in a structured recovery program almost immediately with monitored physical rehabilitation. Every breath her new heart took inside her chest felt like a reminder of something both miraculous and unbearable. She lived because someone else had chosen not to.She survived because Leonard had decided she should.The knowledge never softened. It only learned how to sit quietly in her chest, heavy and constant, like a second, invisible weight pressing down on her ribs.When the day finally came for her discharge, the hospital corridors felt strangely unfamiliar, despite having become

Elisa barely had time to register the shift in the room when a small body crashed into her with reckless, unrestrained force.“Mom!”The word was loud, bright, childish in a way that made her chest ache instantly. Luca’s arms wrap around her legs with clumsy urgency, his weight tipping her slightly backward as he clung to her as though she might vanish again if he loosened his grip. His fingers gripped her dress, his face burying itself against her, breath warm, uneven, real.Elisa reacted on instinct.She bent down, scooping him up without hesitation, pulling him fully into her arms as though shielding him from the world itself. He hugged her just as tightly, legs wrapping around her waist, forehead pressed to her cheek.“I missed you,” he said earnestly, his voice small and thick with emotion, the words tumbling out without restraint. Then, almost immediately, as if his little heart cannot hold everything at once, he added, “Why did your meeting take so long? I thought it would neve

Damian was shocked by her words and actions.The moment her arms wrapped around him from behind, it felt as though the world had tilted off its axis. Her body pressed against his back with a desperation that caught him entirely unguarded, her grip tight, trembling, almost frantic, as though if she loosened it even for a second, he would disappear—vanish the way she had five years ago. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his coat, clutching, refusing to let go.“I’m sorry,” she apologized profusely, the words tumbling out of her in a broken rush. Her body trembled slightly—no, not slightly, visibly—small involuntary shakes running through her frame as she pressed her forehead into his back, her breath warm, uneven, shaky. “I’m so sorry… I… I didn’t mean for any of this to happen… I never wanted to hurt you…”And then, weakly, almost inaudibly, as if confessing something she had been holding inside her lungs for years, she muttered the words that shocked him to the core“Don’t leave.”Th

The silence after his question was thick enough to suffocate.Damian stood there, still slightly leaned forward from where he had rushed to her side, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and restrained panic. His chuckle lingered in the air—hollow, sharp, utterly disconnected from humor—as his mind struggled to reconcile what she had just said with everything he knew about Leonard.“What?” he asked again, slower this time, his voice lower, more deliberate, as though enunciating carefully might somehow force reality to correct itself. “Say that again.”Elisa swallowed.Her throat felt raw, scraped bare by the weight of what she was about to repeat.“It was Leonard,” she repeated, this time louder, clearer, her voice trembling but unyielding. “Leonard was my donor.”The words landed heavier the second time.She exhaled shakily, her shoulders sagging as though the confession itself had drained her of strength.“I don’t know why,” she admitted immediately, as if anticipating