Semua Bab Three Nights To Ruin My Husband : Bab 81 - Bab 90

"We keep chasing threads that dead-end on purpose," Adrian said, pacing the length of his kitchen. "Whoever's behind this is good enough to make sure every lead either loops back to nothing or takes weeks to trace. I think we need to stop playing their game and go back to the one thing we know is real." "The ledger." "The ledger." He stopped pacing, meeting my eyes. "Everything else … the audit, the verification chain, Mia's fragments, Ash's paranoia … it's all circumstantial until we have something that actually shows where the money went after it left Cross Holdings. It's still sitting in that safe. We've known where it is for weeks. We've just never actually gone and gotten it." I sat with that, some old apprehension resurfacing at the thought of it … the office, the safe, the sheer audacity of what he was proposing. "We talked about this before. Back when the contract was still the only reason either of us had an excuse to be near each other. We never actually went through with

Adrian drove himself."No driver tonight," he said, catching my glance when we reached the garage instead of the usual waiting car. "I trust my team with almost everything. I'm not putting any of them in the position of having driven us to a break-in if this goes sideways."It struck me, watching him settle behind the wheel, how much of the last two months had been built around performance … the hired car, the practiced ease, the careful architecture of appearances. Tonight there was none of that left. Just the two of us, and whatever we were actually about to do."You're quiet," he said, merging onto the empty late-night street."I keep thinking about the first time you asked me to help you get into that safe. Weeks ago now. I said yes without really understanding what I was agreeing to, and then it just sat there, a plan we kept circling and never actually used." I watched the city slide past, quieter at this hour than I'd ever really noticed before. "I think I understand it now. Al

We froze.Adrian's hand found mine in the dark, gripping tight, and for a long, suspended moment neither of us breathed.Footsteps. Slow, unhurried, moving across the foyer in a rhythm I didn't recognize … too light to be Ash, too deliberate to be anyone simply passing through."The closet," Adrian breathed, barely a whisper, already pulling me toward the office's small storage alcove.We pressed into the narrow space between garment bags and old filing boxes, the door left open a careful inch, and waited.The footsteps moved closer, pausing somewhere near the hallway, and then … nothing. A long, unbearable stretch of silence, followed by the soft click of the guest bathroom door down the hall."Housekeeping," Adrian breathed, so quiet I almost missed it. "Has to be. Ash wouldn't move like that in his own apartment."We waited, frozen, until we heard the shower running faintly through the walls … someone settling in for what sounded like a long, unhurried routine, nothing like a man a

The voice hit my spine before the words did.I didn't turn. Adrian did, slowly, his hand sliding from my back to my elbow, ready to move me in whichever direction I needed to go.A kid in a stained apron stood in the open back door of the restaurant two buildings down, a cigarette in one hand, a knotted trash bag in the other. Twenty, maybe. He looked at us the way people look at a late bus."Home," Adrian said. Bored, almost. "Wrong exit. We got turned around at a party upstairs.""Happens." The kid shrugged. "Left at the end. Lets you out on the avenue.""Thanks."That was all. We walked. I made myself walk like someone with nowhere to be, which took everything I had, and I didn't breathe properly until we'd turned the corner and he was only a rectangle of yellow kitchen light behind us."He saw our faces.""He saw two people in dark coats who'd had too much to drink at somebody's party. By the time he finishes that cigarette, he'll have forgotten us." Adrian's stride didn't change.

The garage barrier lifted, and we rolled out into the city as if nothing had happened.That was the first thing that bothered me. The streets were exactly as we'd left them. A cab idled at a light. A man walked a dog in a long coat. Somewhere behind us, in a building I could no longer see, my husband was pacing his living room, and I was riding home with another man's mouth still on mine.I kept my eyes on the window.Adrian drove the way he always did, both hands on the wheel, unhurried. Once, at a red light, one hand left the wheel and rested on the gearshift, palm up, near mine. An offer, not a demand. I looked at it for the length of the light and did not take it.It wasn't a regret. That was the problem. I could have handled regret.It was how easy it had been.For six years I had arranged my life around a man's plans: his schedule, his friends, his ambitions, until I couldn't tell where my wants stopped and his started. And now I was riding through the dark in a better coat, in