The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband – Episode 21
Natalie did not answer Sebastian immediately. Reliance had always come with conditions in the Quinn household, and his promise sounded too generous to trust without examining every hidden edge. Yet his hands remained steady around hers, neither demanding gratitude nor treating her fear as an inconvenience. He had every reason to resent the bargain that brought her to the altar, but he seemed angrier at the people who had forced it upon her. For one dangerous moment, she wanted to believe him completely.
“I don’t need you to solve everything,” she said. “I just need enough time to find work and repay Daniel.” Independence was the last possession no one had managed to take from her.
Sebastian rose, releasing her before reassurance could become pressure. “Then let me give you time.” He glanced around the cramped house—the leaking window, the faulty heater, the neighborhood where a pawn broker had nearly robbed her—and made a decision that had been forming since he first saw how she lived. “We should move into the city tomorrow.”
Natalie stared at him. “Move where? We can barely afford this place.” The word *we* escaped naturally, and Sebastian heard it even if she did not.
“A friend of mine is leaving town. He needs someone to look after his apartment.” Sebastian kept his tone casual, though the apartment occupied the upper floors of a building owned through one of his companies. “No rent while he’s away. You’ll be closer to hospitals and job interviews, and I won’t have to worry every time you walk home after dark.”
Suspicion returned to her face. His solutions appeared too quickly, always arriving through an unnamed friend with improbable resources. “Is this Daniel’s place?”
“No.” The answer was technically true. “Someone else owes me a favor.” He disliked how easily he could arrange facts into shapes that concealed their meaning. Natalie had just entrusted him with the ugliest truth of her life, while he continued offering carefully polished fragments of his own.
She looked toward the bedroom, mentally inventorying the few belongings she and her mother had collected over years of temporary security. Leaving this house should have felt like relief. Instead, it felt like stepping deeper into Sebastian’s world without knowing where the floor ended. “What happens when your friend comes back?”
“By then, you’ll have a job.” His confidence wrapped around her more warmly than certainty had any right to. “And if you don’t, we’ll make another plan together.”
Together. Natalie had heard promises from George delivered with impatience and from Cassie delivered with mockery. Sebastian said the word as if her problems had become shared facts, not debts to be held over her. Her resistance weakened, though pride made her set one condition. “I contribute somehow. Cleaning, groceries, whatever the apartment needs.”
“Agreed.” Sebastian smiled faintly. “But no selling anything I give you without telling me.”
Embarrassment warmed her cheeks. “And no spending seven thousand dollars on shoes without warning me.” His smile deepened, brief but real, loosening the tension that had filled the room since she returned from the pawnshop.
They packed late into the evening. Natalie folded each garment with the careful efficiency of someone accustomed to moving before a place became home. Sebastian contributed little beyond sealing boxes and carrying them, but he noticed what she owned: three work dresses, worn textbooks, medical receipts, and a chipped frame containing a photograph of Natalie beside her mother. She wrapped the frame more carefully than her clothes and kept it in the bag she would carry herself. There was no evidence that George Quinn had ever treated either woman as family.
When Natalie went to shower, Sebastian stepped outside and called Daniel. The softness disappeared from his voice. “Prepare the penthouse. Remove anything with my name, the B.M. files, and the family photographs. The staff should be gone before we arrive.”
Daniel hesitated. “You’re moving her into your home while telling her it belongs to someone else?”
“Temporarily.” Sebastian looked through the window at Natalie crossing the hall in borrowed slippers. “And clear her mother’s hospital balance tonight.”
“Under your name?” Daniel asked. Sebastian considered what Natalie would do if she learned a man she barely trusted had paid the debt that forced her into marriage. Gratitude would become obligation, exactly what he had promised not to create. “Use George Quinn’s name. He owes her that much, even if I have to make the payment for him.”
Daniel understood the strategy but not the emotion beneath it. “The Quinn acquisition is almost ready. Hiding this from her will become harder once you take control.”
Sebastian watched Natalie return and lift the shoe box onto the table, no longer preparing to sacrifice it. “Then finish the acquisition quickly. When the company is mine, I’ll tell her everything.” He ended the call before Daniel could ask whether that deadline served business or cowardice.
Inside, Natalie had placed two mugs of tea beside the packed boxes. She handed one to him and said she would try his plan, only until she could stand on her own again. Sebastian accepted the condition while knowing tomorrow she would enter the center of the life he had hidden. She believed the move was her first chance to rely on her husband; in truth, it would place her inside his most dangerous lie.
