The Billionaire Husband Who Tried to Kill Me 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 31 - 챕터 40

POV: DavidI woke up and knew immediately that she was gone. Not because of any sound or movement. The loft was quiet. It was the specific quality of the quiet that told me. The kind that comes from being alone in a space rather than the kind that comes from someone sleeping nearby. I had been attuned to her presence for weeks in a way I had stopped pretending was purely professional.I sat up and looked at the partition. No sounds. No movement behind the bookshelf. I found the note on the kitchen counter.Gone for an hour. I'm safe. Don't panic.I read it once. Then I stood very still for a moment with the note in my hand and made myself breathe slowly before I did anything else. Because the first thing I wanted to do was put my fist through the kitchen cabinet and that would not help anyone.I knew where she had gone. The letter from Victoria, delivered through Mrs. Adaeze, which Olivia had told me about and then gone very quiet about in the particular way she went quiet when she ha

POV: MarcusI sent Leo to the hospital at nine in the morning. I did not tell him explicitly what managing the situation meant. I never did. That was the elegant part of having someone like Leo. In six years he had learned to read instructions the way experienced people read between lines, filling in the gaps himself, carrying out the implied without requiring the literal. It kept my hands clean. It kept Leo useful.He left without asking questions, which was what I paid him for. I turned back to the call I was on with Wheeler, walking the length of Olivia's former office with the phone against my ear. The morning light was coming through the floor to ceiling windows, falling across the mahogany desk in long rectangles, and I still felt the particular satisfaction of standing in a room that used to belong to someone else."The bar complaint response is due in eighteen days," Wheeler was saying. "Chen will file a counter. He'll argue fabrication of evidence, metadata discrepancies on t

POV: OliviaI sat with Zara's words for a long time after David ended the call. Webb represented a woman in a civil suit against my adoptive father. Twenty years ago. Sealed records, settled out of court, buried quietly the way things got buried when the person being accused had enough money and enough connections to make problems disappear before they became public.My adoptive father had been doing this for twenty years. And the judge currently assigned to my case had sat across from him in a courtroom and known exactly who he was.David was watching my face from across the table with the careful attention he always gave me when he was trying to assess how I was doing without making me feel examined."Say what you're thinking," he said."I'm thinking that my entire life was arranged by people who knew each other." I kept my voice level. "That every relationship I thought was accidental or natural had architecture behind it. My parents dying. The adoption. Meeting Marcus." I looked a

POV: David"How long ago did he make the call?" I asked.Olivia already had the phone away from her ear, already reading my face, already understanding what was happening from the way I had crossed the room and picked up the case files before she could answer. She spoke back into the phone. "How long ago?"Her mother's voice, tinny from the speaker. "Yesterday evening. Around seven."Fourteen hours. They had known the address for fourteen hours. The only reason they had not come sooner was timing, positioning, making sure they had enough people in place.They could be outside right now."Hang up," I said.Olivia ended the call and moved immediately, no questions, no hesitation. This was what weeks of being hunted did to a person. She had stopped needing explanation before she acted.I went to the case files first. Everything Camille had given me, the Vasquez photographs, the marina picture with her adoptive father's face, the payment records Leo had photographed, Rena's documents, Vic

POV: LeoI knew before my editor confirmed it. I had known the moment I saw Wheeler's name appear on my work phone at eight forty that morning, a call I did not answer, followed by a second call from an internal number I recognized as Marcus's private office line. Two calls in four minutes on a morning when I had not reported for work, had not answered any messages, and had not completed the courier delivery from the previous day.They knew.I was sitting in a coffee shop three neighborhoods from my apartment, the personal phone in front of me, the work phone face down beside it. I had ordered something I was not drinking. The coffee shop was busy enough that nobody paid attention to a man sitting alone at a corner table, but that was going to change the moment Marcus put the right people looking for me.I picked up the personal phone and called David. He answered on the first ring. "Leo.""They know it was me." I kept my voice low and steady. "Wheeler called twice. Marcus's office ca