Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Bill‍ionaire’​s Muse: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

Adrian’s POVOnce the police were gone, the house seemed to settle into an uneasy quiet.Dad lasted only a few more minutes before leaving too, carrying the officers’ questions—and whatever answers he had managed to give them—out with him. I watched him disappear down the hallway, then turned back to Meghan and Sophie. Sophie hadn’t moved much. She was still beside Meghan, one hand covering hers, while Meghan kept staring at the floor as if the right explanation might somehow be hiding there.I couldn’t sit around waiting for one.My phone was already in my hand by the time I stepped away from the table. I found Naomi’s number, glanced once at Meghan, and moved toward the other side of the room. “I need to make a call,” I told them, not waiting for either of them to respond.Naomi answered on the second ring. “Adrian?”I leaned my shoulder against the wall and lowered my voice. “You’ve heard about the collapse, right?” There was no point dressing this up as a casual call. I needed to

(Meghan’s POV)The morning came too quietly.I opened my eyes and immediately remembered the building.The news from the night before returned in pieces, starting with haran telling me that five people had died, then the police sitting in the living room, and finally the words that had left me too stunned to properly respond. I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling while I tried to convince myself that the investigation would clear everything up.I knew what I had recommended at the site. I had pointed out the problem with the support and told Naomi that the engineers needed to check it before anything was closed up. I hadn’t told anyone to use an unsafe method, and I certainly hadn’t done anything that should have brought a building down.Once they went through the plans and spoke to everyone who had worked on the site, they would understand that.At least, that was what I needed to believe.I reached for my phone from the nightstand, expecting to see a few missed calls from Imogen o

NAOMI POVThe television in my office had been playing the same report for nearly twenty minutes, but I hadn’t bothered turning it off. Meghan’s photograph appeared beside footage of the collapsed building while the reporter repeated the same questions about her qualifications and Harlan’s decision to hire her.“Questions are now being raised about the qualifications of the designer who recommended changes to the structure shortly before the collapse. Vaughn Holdings has yet to issue a detailed statement regarding the five fatalities.”I lowered the volume and leaned back in my chair. Meghan was taking the blame exactly as I had expected. Her reputation was already being dragged through the mud, people were questioning Harlan’s judgment, and nobody was asking why the instruction that caused the failure had appeared after Meghan left the site.A knock came at the door, and one of the project coordinators stepped inside. “Naomi, Adrian and Meghan went to the engineering firm this mornin

Adrian's POVDigital records had one annoying habit. They remembered things people preferred to forget, and that was becoming a problem now that my investigation was moving faster than I expected.I sat across from the engineering firm’s project manager while he pushed a printed copy of the upload history toward me. Meghan sat beside me, reading through the pages carefully. The instruction had been uploaded at 4:47 p.m., yet the site records showed that Meghan had left at 4:31.“I left before four thirty-five,” she said, pointing at the time on the page. “I remember because I had to meet Imogen afterward.”I checked the account attached to the upload and asked, “Marcus Hale?”“One of the project coordinators,” the engineer replied. “His account was used to submit the revised instruction.”Meghan looked up from the papers. “So I didn’t submit it?”“No. You didn’t,” I told her, because there was finally something concrete we could point to.The original structural plan showed the colum

Meghan’s POVVictor sent the address an hour before we were supposed to meet. It was a diner on the east side, and underneath it he had added one more line.Come alone. Please.I showed Adrian the message as soon as it came in. He read it twice before handing the phone back to me.“No.”“He won’t talk if you’re there.”“Then he can talk to both of us.”“Adrian, he’s scared.” I slipped the phone into my bag. “If I bring someone he barely knows, he’ll tell me he’s fine, drink his coffee, and leave. You know he will.”Adrian looked at me for a long moment. I could see him trying to find an argument that would work, and I could see the moment he realized there wasn’t one.“You call me the second you leave,” he said.“I will.”“I mean it, Meghan.”“I know you do.”The diner sat on a corner across from a laundromat, with half the letters in its sign no longer lighting up. I sat in the car for a minute before going in. I had been on leave for two days, and in that time I had learned to check