CHAPTER FIFTY

Adrian's POVPatterson called on a Thursday, mid-afternoon, while I was standing in the study reading the same clause in the Hendricks amendment I'd read four times already that week without once absorbing it."Mr. Cole. Sorry it took as long as it did." Her voice carried the particular relief of someone finally closing a loose thread they'd been chewing on for days. "I found the name. It wasn't in the formal visitor log — I told you it wouldn't be — but one of our night staff kept a personal notebook back then, informal sign-ins for anyone who came through after hours without a scheduled appointment. Old habit of hers, thankfully. She still had it.""And.""Felicity Marsh." She said it plainly, no weight attached on her end, a name that meant nothing to her beyond a line in an old notebook. "Came through asking almost the exact same questions you did. About a year ago, based on the date next to the entry."I said nothing for a moment, turning the name over, waiting for recognition to

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Ava's POVNora was down for the night, Marta gone home an hour ago, and I sat on my own couch with a glass of wine I'd poured and mostly forgotten about, the Meridian Holdings discovery still turning over in my head like a stone I couldn't stop worrying with my thumb.I picked up my phone twice to call Sophie, to run the shell-company thread one more time before I let myself sleep on it, and put it down both times, because Sophie had already gone home to her own life, and this particular itch didn't actually need solving tonight. It needed something else. I sat with that realization a moment before I let myself admit what the something else was.I called Ryan.He answered on the second ring, no urgency in his voice, which told me he hadn't assumed a crisis the way he usually did lately when my name came up on his screen after nine at night. "Hey. Everything okay?":Everything's fine. I typed, since a video call felt like too much and a voice call meant Sophie's voice standing in for m

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Ryan's POVI texted her at five. Dinner. My treat, no reason. Say yes.Ava: No fever, no crisis, no forgotten granola bar to guilt me with?Correct. Just dinner.Ava: Bold of you.I contain multitudes.Ava: Come at seven. Nora goes down around seven-thirty, so you'll get maybe twenty minutes of chaos before it's just us.I showed up at six-fifty with a bag from the Italian place near my building instead of the usual Thai, figured the evening deserved a change of routine to match the change in occasion, and Ava opened the door in leggings and an oversized sweater, hair loose around her shoulders in a way I rarely saw outside her own apartment, feet bare against the hardwood."You look like you're about to run a board meeting," I said.‘I'm not.’ She stepped back to let me in, and something about the easy way she did it — no hesitation, no calculation, just an open door — landed heavier in my chest than it probably should have for something so small. ‘That's the whole point of tonight,

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Adrian's POVI fired an intern's draft back to him three separate times over a formatting inconsistency that would have taken me thirty seconds to fix myself, and only realized how disproportionate my reaction had been when Grady quietly closed my office door on his way out, the kind of gesture that meant — everyone on this floor currently thinks you're impossible to work with today.He wasn't wrong. It had been impossible for four days running, ever since a sheet of paper with two names on it had gone into my desk drawer and stayed there, unresolved, sitting like a live wire I kept circling without ever once touching.I threw myself at the Hendricks close instead, at three other deals that didn't strictly need my direct attention, at a due diligence file from the Chicago team that I read cover to cover twice purely because reading it meant I didn't have to think about anything else. Work had always been the one place my discipline never failed me. It failed me considerably less well

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Ava's POVPriya spread three folders across the conference table, each one thicker than it had any right to be for what amounted, in the end, to a dead end wearing a legal binder's clothing."Meridian Holdings dissolved eighteen months before Daniel's collapse became public," she said, flipping to a tabbed page. "The registered agent — the same lawyer we found on three other shell entities during last year's forensic audit — filed the dissolution personally. No successor entity named. No forwarding address for the principals."‘So it's a dead end.’"Not entirely dead. The mail-forwarding address currently using that suite number, the one your investor calls route through — it's a legitimate corporate services firm, been operating there for two years. They took over the lease after Meridian vacated. On paper, there's no direct line connecting the two." Priya closed the folder, frustration written plainly across her face, the specific frustration of a lawyer who preferred clean answers

All Chapters of The Muted Wife’s Return: Chapter 51 - Chapter 55

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR