All Chapters of The Heiress Returns: Reclaiming My Legacy: Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Chapter 180 Gavin's POV I knew there was something off, something fundamentally changed in Piper's demeanor the moment she saw Damon standing there in the crowd. It was in the way her smile faltered, not completely disappearing but losing its genuine warmth, becoming something more performative. t was in the way her voice softened almost imperceptibly, like air catching in her throat before words could fully form. It wasn't dramatic or obvious, not enough for most people to notice or comment on, but I did. I noticed everything when it came to her. The nervous swallow that made her throat work, the way she suddenly looked anywhere but directly at him, as if eye contact might betray something she wanted to keep hidden. And it told me everything I needed to know. So this was the man who was supposed to be my rivalry. I remembered seeing him once before, briefly, during that morning I'd driven to Piper's apartment building looking for Hannah and had encountered Piper and Damon, b

Chapter 182 Damon's POV We had moved from the benches to the open field where the Halloween crowd was thickest with families with kids running around with glow sticks and candy bags, couples laughing and taking endless photos, fireworks booming above in bursts of red and gold that painted the sky. Street performers were doing fire acts, a band was playing somewhere to our left, and the energy should have been infectious, celebratory. It should've felt festive, alive, full of that particular magic that only Halloween nights can create. Instead, something about the night carried a weight I couldn't shake, a tension sitting heavy on my shoulders that I couldn't quite name or explain. Maybe it was the awkwardness with Piper still lingering in my chest like a bruise or it was just exhaustion from too many late nights and too much coffee. But something felt off, wrong in a way that made my instincts prickle with warning. My phone buzzed insistently in my pocket, breaking through my th

Chapter 184 Hannah's POV Everything happened in slow motion. The laughter, the bright lights, the music, all of it faded into a distant hum, like someone had turned down the volume on the entire world. One moment I was smiling at Lucas, my fingers brushing fake cobwebs off his sleeve, teasing him about how he had somehow managed to get them tangled in his hair too. His eyes were crinkled at the corners the way they did when he was genuinely happy, and I was thinking about how perfect this night had been despite everything we had been through. Then… BANG! The sound was deafening, monstrous, the kind that ripped through your chest and stole the air from your lungs. It was not like the fireworks we had been hearing all night — those were celebratory, distant, contained. This was violent, immediate, wrong in every possible way. The sound echoed through my bones, rattling my ribcage, making my ears ring with a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else. I froze —

Chapter 186 Damon's POV Everything was blurry. The world had turned into a slow, bleeding haze of color and sound—sirens, screaming, the muffled thump of footsteps. But above it all, I could hear Lucas. He was shouting my name over and over, his voice cracking like it hadn't in years. I wanted to tell him to calm down, to stop making that sound…it hurt hearing him like that... that was a different kind of pain altogether. But my mouth wouldn't move the way I wanted it to. My body felt so heavy, like I was sinking into the earth. Like gravity had decided I belonged somewhere beneath the surface, pulling me down with invisible hands. My limbs were lead weights, unresponsive, disconnected from my brain's desperate commands. I could taste blood, it filled my mouth every time I tried to breathe. My chest burned, each inhale shallow, ragged. The air wouldn't come properly anymore. My lungs felt like they were full of something thick and wet, drowning from the inside. Every breath was a

Chapter 188 Lily's POV The flashing red and blue lights painted the night in chaos, strobing across faces frozen in horror, across the scattered debris of what should have been a perfect evening. Hands grabbed me — rough, cold, metallic cuffs clicking tight around my wrists with a finality that should have terrified me but instead only fueled the fury burning in my chest. I could hear the panicked voices, the shouts of the crowd, the echo of sirens bouncing through the square like war drums announcing my failure. "Get off me!" I screamed, thrashing against the two officers dragging me across the pavement, my heels scraping against the ground as I fought their grip. The feathers of my peacock costume scattered around me like torn wings, beautiful plumage reduced to trash littering the street. How poetic. How perfectly symbolic of everything that had gone wrong. "You don't understand! I didn't kill who I wanted to kill!" The words tasted bitter on my tongue, acidic with disappointme