The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband – Episode 10
Dinner should have ended after the toast, but neither of them moved to clear the table. Natalie had spent years calculating medical bills alone, and talking about money with someone who listened felt unexpectedly comforting. The last of the rain blurred the window, and the dishes cooled between them while their conversation wandered beyond the practical terms of the deal. Sebastian, meanwhile, found himself fascinated by the modest future she constructed for a man she believed had nothing.
“You really mean that,” he said. “You’d pay the bills while I wait for the trust fund?” Natalie frowned at the hint of disbelief in his voice. “Why wouldn’t I? Marriage is supposed to be a partnership, even if ours is temporary.”
The word temporary settled between them with less certainty than before. Sebastian rolled the stem of his glass beneath his fingers. He had designed the arrangement to end cleanly, with signatures exchanged and no emotional accounts left unpaid, yet Natalie was treating each day inside it as worthy of loyalty. Her seriousness made the exit he had planned seem less like freedom and more like a promise he might eventually regret keeping.
“Most people would say I should support you,” he observed. “Maybe,” she replied, “but most people didn’t make our agreement. I won’t sit around expecting someone else to rescue me.” Her entire life had taught her what happened when survival depended on another person’s conscience.
Sebastian heard the history beneath her answer. “There’s a difference between accepting help and needing rescue.” Natalie glanced toward the expensive shoe box. “And there’s a difference between help and buying seven-thousand-dollar shoes because a clerk annoyed you.”
He laughed, a warm sound that changed his guarded face. “She did more than annoy me.” His expression turned serious again. “She decided she could disrespect you because she thought you were poor.”
“People have done worse.” Natalie intended the remark as reassurance, but it had the opposite effect. Sebastian’s jaw tightened. The fact that she could dismiss cruelty so easily meant she had survived too much of it. He imagined every insult George had ignored and every sacrifice Lauren had treated as Natalie’s duty, and anger settled beneath his ribs with startling permanence.
“That doesn’t make it acceptable,” he said. Natalie studied him across the table. Everything she had heard described a reckless, selfish man, yet he seemed angrier about an insult to her than about the entire room mocking him at their wedding.
“You confuse me,” she admitted. Sebastian’s eyebrows lifted. “Already? We’ve been married one day.” The teasing helped, but it could not erase the question in her eyes.
“You aren’t anything like the person everyone described.” Natalie counted the contradictions silently: the tidy house, the carefully cooked meal, the restraint he had shown about sleeping arrangements, and the effortless way he had paid for the shoes. “Which version is real?”
Sebastian held her gaze. He could tell her that Sebastian Klein was a role shaped by necessity and that another name commanded companies, fortunes, and loyalties. He could explain the jail sentence, the hidden acquisitions, and the patient campaign that had consumed years of his life. For one reckless second, honesty seemed easier than inventing another answer, because deception looked uglier when reflected in eyes that had promised to judge him fairly.
Then he remembered his father, the remaining shares, and the people waiting for one mistake. “Maybe the rumors were told by people who never bothered to know me,” he said. It was true enough to carry conviction.
Natalie accepted the answer because she understood it. Her own family had spent years describing her as difficult, ungrateful, and unsuccessful. A reputation often revealed more about the storyteller than the person being judged.
“Then I’ll judge you for myself,” she said. The promise struck deeper than she knew. Sebastian had wanted a wife who would ask no questions; instead, he had been given a woman determined to see him clearly.
He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “And what’s the verdict so far?” Natalie’s pulse quickened. The table suddenly felt too narrow, his attention too direct. “You’re less terrible than expected.”
“High praise.” His smile widened. “You might even like me.” She took another sip of wine to avoid answering, and Sebastian noticed the color rising in her face.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she warned. “We agreed to stay out of each other’s affairs.” “Finances are apparently our affair now,” he countered. “So are meals. And shoes.”
The list sounded suspiciously like the beginning of shared life. Natalie stood to collect the plates, but Sebastian caught one before she could take it. Their fingers brushed, and the brief contact tightened the air between them. Neither moved for a beat; the familiar kitchen seemed to shrink around the warmth of his hand and the question neither was willing to voice.
“I’ll clean,” he said. “You have interviews to prepare for.” Natalie reluctantly surrendered the plate. His support made her want to trust him, though every unexplained detail warned her not to move too quickly.
As she walked toward the bedroom, Sebastian’s phone vibrated with a message from Daniel: another Klein shareholder was ready to negotiate. Natalie glanced back and saw the cold focus that replaced his smile as he read it. For an instant, her unemployed husband looked like a man accustomed to commanding empires—and she wondered exactly whose affairs she had promised not to enter.
