The Billionaire's Silent Wife (Ryan and Eve) novel Chapter 20

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20 Westwood Dawn

Eve’s POV

The bus ride had been long, the air thick with diesel and exhaustion, but when Eve finally stepped

onto the cracked pavement of Westwood City, she felt something close to relief. The sky hung low with clouds, the streets alive with strangers who didn’t know her name, didn’t whisper about the

Ashbrooks, didn’t look at her like she was a trespasser in her own life.

It was anonymity. And for the first time in years, anonymity felt like freedom.

She checked into a small motel on the edge of the city, a place where the wallpaper peeled in

strips and the bed sagged in the middle, but it was hers. No cold marble floors. No chandeliers. No

silence that scraped against her bones. Just a door she could lock and a room that didn’t demand

anything of her.

The days stretched in quiet monotony at first. She wandered the city, scanning bulletin boards and newspapers, filling out applications with her steady patient handwriting. But work didn’t come easily. Employers wanted experience she couldn’t list, references she couldn’t give. And yet, she

pushed. Day after day.

It took two full weeks before the door cracked open.

The upscale restaurant sat on the corner of Westwood’s busiest district, all glass and polished brass, its name etched in elegant script above the doors: Rodrigo’s. Inside, the world was a blend of white tablecloths, candlelight, and murmured conversation.

Eve had applied with little hope, her résumé thin, her references nonexistent. But when she’d been called back for an interview, she met Miter Rodrigo himself, a barrel-chested man with sharp eyes softened by years of good food and honest labor.

“You’ve got the hands of a cook,” he’d said, watching the way she chopped onions in a test run.”

Steady. Exact. Not sloppy like some of the young ones.”

She said little, only nodded, letting her skill speak.

By the end of the week, she had the job. Assistant chef. Sous chef, technically. The title made her chest tighten, not with pride, exactly, but with something like relief.

The pay was decent. Enough to cover food, enough to pay for her studies and enough to keep her alive. And when Rodrigo offered her the tiny apartment above the restaurant, she almost cried.

“It’s small,” he said gruffly. “But clean. Bed, shower, stove. You’ll manage.”

She managed.

It wasn’t luxury, but it was hers.

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Days blurred into rhythm. Early mornings began with prep: washing vegetables, slicing meat, perfecting sauces. She learned the rhythm of the kitchen, the way waiters snapped orders, the way Rodrigo barked corrections that somehow carried Kindness beneath the sternness.

Her hands worked until they ached, but it was a good ache, a cleansing one. Every dish she plated, every sauce she perfected, gave her a sliver of ownership over her life.

Nights were harder.

Nights were still.

She would….b the narrow stairs to her apartment, the sounds of the city muffled beneath her,

and the loneliness would sink in.

She thought of Ryan then.

She imagined the way his face looked when he realized she was gone. Maybe his jaw had tightened. Maybe he had cursed under his breath. Or maybe he’d simply felt relief. Finally, his burden lifted. Finally, his mother’s accusations silenced. Finally, free to stand beside Luan in public, just as it had always been meant to be..

Eve would sit on the edge of her bed, staring at the cracked plaster ceiling, and let the thought

hollow her out.

She had cut ties with everyone.

She thought of her father. She knew he was furious cutting off his access to Ashbrook wealth was a wound he would never forgive. She lived with the constant, low-burning fear that he might try to find her, corner her, drag her back into his schemes

But she wouldn’t let him.

Distance was her shield. Disconnection was her only survival.

Still, there were nights when her resolve cracked. Nights when she missed things she shouldn’t

miss.

Ryan’s touch.

Not his coldness, not the cutting words, but the moments he let jealousy slip through, those rare,

fierce flashes when he had claimed her like she mattered. She hated herself for it, hated that her

body still yearned for him, that memory could still warm her skin like phantom fire.

She knew it was fantasy. Nothing more than hunger mixed with memory.

So she buried it.

Buried it in work.

Buried it in the textbooks spread across her desk at night, business communication notes glowing

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under a dim lamp as she studied, highlighting passages, writing essays long after midnight. She was working toward her degree one late class at a time, clawing for a future she could finally claim

as hers.

The restaurant paid her wages. The apartment gave her shelter. And her books gave her hope.

It was enough.

But loneliness had a way of seeping into the cracks.

Sometimes she stayed up too late, staring at the city lights outside her window, wondering if Ryan was laughingmewhere with Luan. She imagined him smiling, genuinely smiling, the way she had glimpsed at Fernandos. And every time she thought of it, her chest twisted, sharp and painful.

Maybe this was what freedom really felt like: empty nights, a bed too big, the sound of her own

breath echoing in a room no one else entered.

She cried sometimes. Quietly. No sobs, no collapse. Just silent tears she wiped quickly before

turning back to her books, to her stove, to her lists of recipes.

She was surviving. That had to be enough.

Weeks passed.

Rodrigo’s kitchen became her sanctuary. The clatter of pans, the hiss of steam, the rhythm of

knives against cutting boards, it all drowned out the ache. Her fellow chefs came to respect her

calm precision, the way she could hold her own even under Rodrigo’s sharpest bark.

“Good work, girl,” he muttered one night, tasting her sauce and nodding.

It wasn’t praise exactly. But from Rodrigo, it might as well have been a crown.

She smiled faintly. Then went back to work.

But when the kitchen lights dimmed and she climbed back upstairs, it was just her again.

Just Eve, with her books and her aching heart.

She pulled her blanket tighter, pressed her face into the pillow, and let herself remember his voice, his touch, his jealousy, his rage.

And in the silence, she whispered the truth she couldn’t say out loud:

“I still miss you.”

The words dissolved into the dark.

And then she closed her eyes, steadying her breath and reminded herself that morning would

come.

And morning meant work.

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And work meant she could keep going.

One day at a time.

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