All Chapters of The Billionaires Greatest Regret: Chapter 171 - Chapter 176

POV: Oliver Hale "I'm looking for Grace," the man said. "Grace Ashford. Please. I was told she was here." He stood in the hotel lobby beneath a chandelier that scattered light across the floor like spilled coins. Thomas had come down in his socks, because the baby had finally gone to sleep and he'd been in the middle of untangling a mandolin string. He stopped three steps from the bottom of the staircase and did not move. The stranger was heavyset, in his late sixties, with a salt-and-pepper beard and a rumpled gray raincoat. He leaned on a cane. When he shifted his weight, Thomas saw the limp, slight but unmistakable. Left leg. "Who's asking?" Thomas said. "My name is Anton Hale. I'm her husband's uncle." "Her husband's uncle is Gerald's brother." "Yes." "The one who hasn't spoken to Gerald in thirty years." "Yes." The man smiled without humor. "Is that what he tells people? I suppose it is easier." Thomas considered him. He was a gentle man by nature, a cellist who had spe

POV: Vivienne Ashford"Hold the pressure," the paramedic said. "Harder. Like this."Oliver held it. His hands were red to the wrist. Anton Hale lay on the cot in the cramped flat above the watchmaker, his raincoat cut open, his lips the color of ash. The paramedic worked with brisk, silent efficiency, a Swiss woman in a yellow jacket with a braid down her back. Behind her stood two police officers and an ambulance driver, and behind them, in the open doorway, Grace, who had run up four flights without remembering how."Uncle Anton," Oliver said. "Look at me.""I am looking.""Stay awake.""I'm trying. It's very warm in here.""It's not warm.""No?" Anton's eyes drifted toward the ceiling. "I thought it was. I thought it was summer. I was in the yard behind the old house in Maine, and you were standing on the porch with a fishing rod taller than you.""I was six.""You had a sunburn. Right across the nose.""You gave me your hat.""Did I?" A faint smile. "I don't remember that.""I do,

POV: Vivienne Ashford "It's a lot of paper for a man who taught English," Roman said. "He taught English for thirty-one years. That's a great deal of grading." Vivienne did not look up. She sat cross-legged on the hotel carpet with the manila folder open before her and its contents fanned out in careful rows, like a game of patience. Photographs, letters, a faded passport page, a yellow telegram. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon. "Don't tell me it's thin. It's the thickest thing I've ever had in my hands." He lowered himself to the floor beside her with a grunt. His knees were no more forgiving than hers. For a minute neither of them spoke. A tram rattled somewhere far below, its bell thin and bright. "Tell me what you've got," he said. "Dates first." She tapped the passport page. "Daniel Marsh. Born 1948, Dayton, Ohio. Entered the Soviet Union on the second of September, 1983, on a cultural exchange visa. A teaching placement at a school in Moscow. Left on the ninet