The Billionaire's Silent Wife (Ryan and Eve) novel Chapter 175

175 The Split and the Safety Net

The next morning, Ryan woke with the kind of clarity that only came after a night of refusing to sleep properly.

Not because he couldn’t sleep.

Because he didn’t trust sleep anymore.

Sleep was when your guard dropped. Sleep was when you missed calls. Sleep was when things happened

to people and you found out too late.

Eve was still in bed when he got up, turned toward the other side, one hand resting over the curve of her

stomach like her body had decided protection could become habit. Even in sleep, there was a faint

tension in her brow, like peace was something she still had to negotiate for.

Ryan stood at the foot of the bed for a moment, looking at her.

He didn’t touch her.

He didn’t wake her.

He just watched her breathe until his chest eased by a fraction.

Then he left the room.

Downstairs, the house was quiet in the clean way it always was, glass, marble, controlled air. The kind of quiet that used to be Ryan’s comfort.

Now it felt like a waiting room.

He made coffee and drank it without tasting it.

He checked his phone.

No new messages from Steven.

No calls from the police.

No updates about Alissa.

That absence of information didn’t reassure him.

It sharpened him.

Because missing people didn’t stay missing withoutentities by accident in Ryan’s world. They stayed

missing because someone with reach wanted them missing, and reach always bought time.

By the time he arrived at his office, he already had a list in his head of what had to be secured, separated,

shielded, and moved.

Not in the emotional sense.

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175 The Split and the Safety Net

In the financial sense.

Ryan Ashbrook had been raised around wealth the way some people were raised around religion, absolute, unquestioned, treated as inheritance and identity in one breath. But Ryan had never been sentimental about it. He respected money the way he respected power: because it could build and destroy with the

same efficiency.

And right now, destruction was on the horizon.

His parents were not a distant problem anymore. They were an active threat, whether through direct

action, collateral damage, or the simple fact that their secrets were beginning to surface.

Alissa’s words, through Eve’s retelling, still ran cold through him.

He didn’t retire. He was dismissed. Paid nothing. Refused to cover up a heinous crime.

That wasn’t just family ugliness.

That was structural rot.

And structural rot always spread until the whole building collapsed.

Ryan stepped out of the lift on his executive floor and walked through the corridor like a man already in motion, already mid-decision. Staff looked up, sensed the temperature, and made themselves invisible.

His assistant rose quickly from her desk. “Good morning, sir.”

“Morning,” Ryan replied without slowing.

“You have Carter here at nine,” she said, checking the schedule. “He arrived early. He’s waiting.”

Ryan’s stride didn’t change. “Good.”

She hesitated. “And… Mr. Carter asked that your accountant be available by phone.”

Ryan’s eyes flicked to her. “They will be.”

She nodded, then added carefully, “There were calls from Detective Haines’ office last night. No message

left, but,”

Ryan’s jaw tightened. “If they call again, put it through.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ryan passed her and went into his office, shutting the door behind him with controlled precision, not a

slam, not a soft close.

A statement.

His office was exactly the kind of space his father approved of: cold art, expensive restraint, furniture that looked like it belonged in a museum. Ryan had chosen it that way intentionally when he was younger.

Now he wondered if it had been a mistake.

175 The Split and the Safety Net

It didn’t feel like protection.

It felt like a stage.

He set his phone on the desk, loosened his cufflinks, and pulled the tie knot down slightly, enough to breathe, not enough to look tired.

A knock came almost immediately.

“Come in,” Ryan said.

Carter stepped in with a leather portfolio under one arm and a laptop bag in the other, dressed the way lawyers dressed when they wanted to signal competence without vanity. He was mid-forties, neat, calm, with eyes that missed nothing and a voice that didn’t waste words.

He smiled faintly as he shut the door behind him. “Morning.”

Ryan gestured toward the chair across from his desk. “Sit.”

Carter sat smoothly, placing the portfolio down like it contained something heavier than paper.

Ryan didn’t ask how he was. Ryan didn’t offer coffee.

They both understood time.

Carter opened the portfolio and slid a stack of documents forward, then placed his phone on the desk between them, screen up, indicating speaker mode.

“My accountant is on?” Ryan asked.

Carter tapped the phone once. “Already connected.”

A voice came through, polished, careful, neutral. “Good morning, Mr. Ashbrook.”

Ryan didn’t greet him warmly. “Are we done.”

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