The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 191

His face was so gaunt it was almost unrecognizable.

His eyes were deeply sunken, his cheekbones jutting out harshly. Due to the prolonged cold and biting rain, his lips had taken on a sickly, bloodless, purplish hue.

Those beautiful eyes she had once been so hopelessly infatuated with had lost all of their former elite arrogance and icy detachment.

Replaced by something she had never seen in him before.

A boundless, irretrievable regret—the look of a man who had been completely hollowed out of all hope and pride.

He just stood there, looking at her with a shattered, almost begging gaze.

Like a traveler on the verge of dying of thirst in the desert, catching sight of a mirage in the distance.

Knowing it was fake. Knowing it was an illusion.

But still, uncontrollably, reaching out his hand.

Finally, the moment Annelise was about to brush past him.

Hackett spoke.

"Anne—"

His voice was so hoarse it sounded as though it had been repeatedly ground down by sandpaper.

The name he had once called out countless times with the utmost tenderness and affection now slipped from his lips like the despairing cry of a dying man.

The sound was mostly swallowed by the roaring rain.

But Annelise heard it.

Her footsteps paused.

Only for a second.

So briefly it was almost imperceptible.

But it was that one-second pause that caused a faint, dying glimmer of light to suddenly erupt in Hackett's dead, dim eyes.

He thought...

He thought she would at least look at him one more time.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify