The Billionaire's Silent Wife (Ryan and Eve) novel Chapter 19

< 19 Ashes in the Silence

19 Ashes in the Silence

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The drive to Eve’s father’s house stretched like a punishment. Ryan sat in the passenger seat, his

body taut with a tension Tevin could feel radiating off him. The car was quiet except for the steady hum of the engine, the world passing by in muted blurs of gray.

Ryan didn’t speak. His jaw was locked, eyes fixed on the road ahead as though sheer force of will could prepare him for what was coming. He hated the idea of standing in that man’s house, of

lowering himself to ask anything from the source of everything that had poisoned his life. But if

Eve had gone this, if there was even a chance, then he would endure it.

When they pulled into the narrow street, Tevin cut the engine. Ryan stared at the modest house, its

chipped paint and sagging porch railings. This was where Eve had come from. This was the other

half of the chain that had bound her to him.

“Ready?” Tevin asked.

Ryan didn’t answer. He pushed the door open and stepped out, his shoes crunching against gravel.

The front door opened before they could knock. Ethan stood there, Eve’s younger brother, his

expression caught somewhere between surprise and caution. He was tall like her father but

without the hardness, his face marked by the kind of gentleness Eve had once carried before life

crushed it out of her.

“Ryan,” Ethan said, blinking as if the name itself felt foreign on his tongue. “What are you doing

here?”

Ryan straightened, his voice clipped. “I need to speak with your father.”

Ethan shook his head. “He’s not here. He left town two days ago. Business trip.” His gaze flicked between the two men, wary. “Why?”

Ryan’s lips pressed into a thin line. Pride stiffened his spine. He refused to look like a man

unraveling in front of Eve’s brother. “It’s about your sister. I can’t reach her. She was supposed to

handle something for me.”

Tevin’s eyes darted to him sharply, but Ryan ignored it. He wasn’t about to let Ethan see how desperate he really was.

Ethan frowned. “Something for you?” He leaned against the doorframe, confusion deepening.” Ryan, I haven’t spoken to Eve in over a week. Not since she left after the funeral.”

Ryan’s head snapped toward him. “Funeral?”

The word lodged in his throat like glass.

Ethan’s face shifted instantly, realization dawning with a heaviness that made the air feel thicker. “

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19 Ashes in the Silence

She didn’t tell you.”

Ryan’s pulse hammered. “Tell me what?”

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Ethan looked at him like he was staring at a ghost. His voice was softer now, steady but heavy.”

Our grandmother died. A little over a week ago. The funeral was last Sunday.”

The silence that followed wasn’t silence at all. It was a roar in Ryan’s ears, a pounding in his chest,

a hollow collapse in his gut.

“She’s gone?” he whispered, almost to himself. Only then did he understand why the weekly hospice bills had upped arriving. He had always known the woman’s time was limited, after all, he had covered her medical expenses for two and a half years, until the doctors declared her beyond saving and transferred her to a hospice to wait for the end. Still, he hadn’t thought death. would come this soon.

Ryan staggered back a step, his breath catching. Images flooded his mind, Eve sometimes seeming lost in thoughts when she thought no one was watching, her soft voice trying to spark conversation while he sat in cold silence. And all that time, she had been grieving. Bearing the death of the woman who meant everything to her. And he hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t asked.

His chest burned with shame so sharp it felt like knives.

Tevin spoke quietly, trying to bridge the silence. “She never said anything to you?”

Ryan shook his head, his throat too tight for words.

Ethan’s eyes darkened. “She worshipped that woman. Nana was her safe place. And she buried her without you.”

The truth cut deeper than any accusation. Ryan’s hands curled into fists at his sides, not from anger at Ethan, but at himself. He had been so consumed with his bitterness, his resentment, that he hadn’t seen Eve’s quiet devastation. He had come home every night cold, untouched, using her body but never offering comfort, never once thinking to ask what was breaking her heart.

He felt sick.

Ethan studied him, searching his face. For a moment, it looked like he might say more, but then he shook his head. “If you really want to find her… don’t start here. She’s not with us. Not anymore. She and father had a fight the last time she was here. I doubt she will ever come around again.”

Ryan forced himself to meet his eyes, his pride hanging by a thread. “Do you know where she might be?”

“No,” Ethan admitted.

Ryan’s throat ached. He wanted to demand answers, to demand that Ethan give him something, anything, but the younger man’s steady, honest gaze left no room for lies.

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19 Ashes in the Silence

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“Thank you,” Tevin said, stepping in before Ryan’s silence grew unbearable. “We appreciate it.”

Ethan nodded, though his expression was still heavy with unspoken words. He stepped back inside, closing the door softly behind him.

The drive back was brutal. Ryan sat rigid in the seat, staring out the window, his reflection fractured in the glass. He said nothing. He didn’t have the words.

Tevin glanced at him more than once, his mouth tightening as if he wanted to say something but

knew better. There was nothing to say.

When they reach.. the Ashbrook estate, they drove to Ryan’s wing, Ryan stepped out like a man condemned. His chest was hollow, his body moving on instinct alone. The house loomed, silent

and cold, but this time there was no faint comfort waiting inside. No quiet presence setting the

table. No soft voice asking about his day.

The door shut behind him with a weight that echoed through the empty halls.

He dropped his keys onto the counter. The sound was too loud, clattering harshly against the

silence that pressed in around him. Out of habit, his gaze drifted toward the dining room,

half-expecting, absurdly, to find her there, waiting with a plate set out, her eyes holding that fragile

hope he had crushed a thousand times.

He had refused her meals, brushing them aside with cold indifference, yet in the dead of night he

would rise, drawn by the memory of her cooking. He tasted them in secret, dishes that were

always delicious, though he never once told her so. Not a single compliment had passed his lips. His responses had been distant, aloof, a wall she could never scale.

And now she was gone. Gone from his life, taking with her the quiet devotion he had mistaken for obligation. What he had dismissed as a burden had revealed itself, too late, to be a gift, and losing it was the most painful reckoning he had ever known.

Now the dinning room was bare.

The table was set for no one. The air was still.

For the first time in three years, he came home and she wasn’t there at all.

His chest cracked. The weight of it drove him to the floor. He sank to his knees in the middle of the room, pressing his fists to his face as the reality carved him open.

He hadn’t comforted her when she needed him most. She had buried her grandmother alone. She had walked through grief carrying silence like a coffin, and he hadn’t even seen it.

Now she was gone.

And he didn’t know where to look.

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19 Ashes in the Silence

Didn’t know how to find her.

Didn’t know if he ever could.

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Regret bled through him, raw and relentless. All the words he had never said, the small mercies he had withheld, the nights he had turned his back when he could’ve turned toward her and held her,

they closed in like ghosts.

The house was too big, too empty. A mausoleum of everything he had broken.

Ryan buried his face in his hands and let it happen.

For the first time in years, he broke down completely.

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