All Chapters of Rented Husband : Chapter 61 - Chapter 63

Sylvia's POVWe got back from the cemetery just after nine.The apartment smelled like coffee. Bella had made a pot — a big one — and Romano had cleared the living room table, spread out the papers we'd collected over the last few weeks, and set up what looked, for all intents and purposes, like a war room.Nobody said anything when we walked in.Nobody asked how the cemetery was.They just looked at us, and we looked at them, and then Bella stood up and poured me a cup of coffee and set it down in front of me like an invitation."Sit," she said.I sat.Adrian sat down beside me.Romano sat across from us. Bella pulled up a chair next to him.For a while, nobody said anything.Then Romano spoke."So," he said. "What do we actually have?"I looked at the table. At the papers. At the documents we'd collected from Vermont, from William's safe, from Elizabeth's confession, from Francesca's dropped hints. Everything we had. Everything we'd gathered. Every piece of a puzzle we'd been assemb

Adrian's POVI drove back in the dark.The files were in the trunk — three boxes, taped shut, the kind of paper weight that made the car sit a little lower on the road. Every mile I put between that house and the city felt like something. Not relief. Not yet. Something quieter than that. Something that felt almost like the moment before a storm.Sylvia called twice on the drive. The first time, just to hear my voice. The second time, to ask if I was okay. I told her yes. I wasn't. I was thinking about Charles Ashford's hands — the way they'd shaken when he handed me the first folder, the way he'd kept looking toward the window the entire time I was reading.He'd been afraid for fifteen years. And tonight, for the first time, he'd let someone else carry a piece of it.I pulled up to Romano's building just after eleven.Sylvia was waiting on the front step.She didn't run to me. She just stood up slowly and waited, the way she always did — like she'd learned a long time ago that running