Semua Bab Satisfying the billionaire (mxm): Bab 151 - Bab 160

The word kept ringing inside my head. The accident that killed your father was not an accident. I read it four times. Five. Like the meaning might change if I stared long enough. Like somehow the sixth time those words would rearrange themselves into something less devastating. They didn’t. Max was already leaning over my shoulder, his breath quiet and careful beside my ear. He read it once and sat back slowly, like the weight of it had physically pressed him into the cushions. “Leo.” His voice was careful. Measured. The voice he used when he was trying not to show me how alarmed he actually was. “I see it,” I said. “That changes everything.” “I know.” I stood up. I couldn’t sit anymore. My legs carried me to the window the same way they always did when my brain needed somewhere to put the energy that had nowhere else to go. Outside Max’s window New York was doing what it always did, moving and breathing and existing without any awareness that my entire world was quietly col

The one sentence kept on playing in my head. I was there the night your father died. Everything else fell away. The coffee shop noise. “Say that again,” I said quietly. Diana Holt didn’t flinch. “I was there the night your father died. I was with Rachel.” My hands were flat on the table. I pressed them down harder. “You were with her,” I repeated slowly. “When she …” “When she caused the collision, yes.” Her voice was even. Practiced. Like she had carried these words for so long they had worn smooth inside her. “I have lived with that for eleven years.” Eleven years. I was twelve years old. My father was forty one. He had made pancakes that Sunday morning and hummed something off key at the stove and kissed my mother on the cheek when she complained about the noise. By that evening he was gone. And this woman had been sitting on the truth of it for eleven years. “Why are you telling me now?” My voice came out harder than I intended. “Why not eleven years ago? Why not when

I showed Max the message without speaking. He read it once. But didn’t say anything “Different numbers from Diana,” I said. “Yes.” He handed the phone back carefully. “Which means someone else has been watching you today.” I looked around instinctively. The pavement was full of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Nobody looked back. But that was the thing about being watched by someone who knew what they were doing. You never saw it until they wanted you to. “We need to go,” Max said quietly. “Now.” We got into a cab and Max gave his address and I sat back against the seat and watched the city slide past the window and tried to think clearly through the noise in my head. Someone had been at that coffee shop or nearby. Someone had seen me meet Diana. Someone knew enough about my movements to send that message at exactly that moment. The question was whether that someone was protecting me or threatening me. Both felt equally possible right now. My phone rang. Selina. This

Thursday arrived the way important days always do … too fast and too slow at the same time. I was awake before my alarm. Lying on Max’s couch in the early darkness, script sides face down on the coffee table where I had left them after running lines until midnight, I stared at the ceiling and did the thing my first acting coach had taught me years ago when I was seventeen and terrified before every performance. By seven I was showered and dressed in the clothes Selina had messengered over yesterday evening with a note that said simply, Look like the lead. Because you are. Dark trousers. A fitted charcoal shirt. Simple and sharp and nothing like the person who had been falling apart on this couch for the past two days. Max made eggs. I actually ate them this time. “How are you feeling?” he asked, leaning against the kitchen counter with his mug. “Like myself,” I said. And I meant it. Something had settled overnight. Not resolved. Not healed. But settled, the way a storm sometimes p

The audition callback came the next morning. Selina called at nine, her voice carrying that particular excitement she deployed when something significant had landed but she didn’t want to jinx it by sounding too human about it. “Carol Webb wants you back tomorrow,” she said. “Final callbacks. Three actors. You’re one of them.” “Okay.” I sat up straighter on Max’s couch. “What time?” “Two o’clock. And Leo … this is the one. Don’t overthink it.” She hung up before I could respond. Max appeared from the kitchen holding two mugs. “Good news?” “Final callback,” I said. He grinned wide and immediately. “I told you.” “You tell me everything is going to be fine regardless of evidence.” “And I’m always right regardless of evidence.” He handed me the mug and sat down. “How are you feeling after last night?” I wrapped both hands around the warmth. “Strange. Like something shifted but I don’t know yet what it shifted into.” “Did he give you what you needed?” “He gave me the truth,