📖 The Story Continues
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The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband – Episode 06
The smell of warm toast drew Sebastian from an uncomfortable night on the couch. For a moment, he remained still beneath the thin blanket, orienting himself within the modest house and the life he had constructed. Then he heard Natalie moving in the kitchen, and memory returned: he was married, his wife knew almost nothing about him, and somehow she had made breakfast.
He entered the kitchen to find a simple meal waiting at the table. Natalie had already changed out of her bridal clothes and tied back her hair, looking more at ease preparing coffee than she ever had beneath the wedding arch. “You made me breakfast?” he asked.
She picked up the garment bag containing her wedding dress. “I have to return this, so I won’t be able to join you.” There was no complaint in her voice, only the practical urgency of someone accustomed to managing every responsibility alone. The dress she had worn to marry him was already on its way back to its owner.
Sebastian looked at the bag, then at her plain clothes. “Your dad didn’t even buy you a wedding dress?” He had known from the ceremony that the Quinns treated Natalie differently, but the evidence kept accumulating. A wealthy father had sent his daughter into marriage without so much as a dress she could keep.
Natalie stiffened, embarrassed by the question rather than angry at the father who deserved the blame. “I thought your family was rich,” Sebastian added, watching her carefully. The Quinns’ money was no secret. Their refusal to spend any of it on Natalie revealed a cruelty that financial records alone could never show.
“It’s wasteful to buy an expensive dress just to wear it once,” she said. The explanation came too quickly, polished by years of defending people who had never defended her. Natalie would rather appear frugal than admit she had not been considered worth the expense.
Sebastian gave a thoughtful hum. He could challenge the lie, but doing so would force her to expose a wound she was determined to cover. Instead, he sat at the table and looked at the breakfast she had prepared for a husband she barely knew. The meal said more about her character than the Quinn family portrait ever had.
“I’ll see you later,” Natalie said. She paused at the door as though the words felt unfamiliar. They sounded almost domestic, a small promise of return in a marriage neither of them intended to keep. “Yeah,” Sebastian answered, and watched until the door closed behind her.
The quiet changed as soon as she left. Sebastian reached for his phone and called Daniel, his relaxed posture disappearing. “Give me all the information you have on Natalie Quinn,” he ordered. The request went beyond the limited family file he had reviewed before the wedding. He wanted school records, employment, finances, and anything that explained why a Quinn daughter lived as though she had no family at all.
Daniel arrived soon afterward with a secure tablet and his usual look of restrained concern. His gaze traveled around the cramped living room before settling on the couch where Sebastian had slept. “Boss, are you really going to live in this shack with Miss Quinn?”
Sebastian continued reading without looking up. Daniel’s question was reasonable. A short drive away, a penthouse waited with floor-to-ceiling windows, private security, and every comfort money could buy. This house existed only to support the identity Sebastian allowed the world to see.
“Why don’t you take her to the penthouse?” Daniel asked. He had expected the marriage to be strategic, not his employer to commit to discomfort so thoroughly. Sebastian finally lifted his eyes. “And what? Tell her my real identity?”
The answer ended the suggestion. Revealing the penthouse would unravel years of careful deception in a single elevator ride. Natalie might be innocent, but Sebastian had known her for less than a day. Trusting her before he understood her connection to the Quinns would be reckless.
Daniel passed him the complete report. Sebastian scrolled through a childhood divided by divorce, years spent outside her father’s privileged household, and a life shaped by her mother’s declining health. Bills had accumulated while George Quinn’s fortune grew. The contrast made his jaw tighten.
“Natalie Quinn,” Sebastian murmured. The name no longer belonged only to the substitute bride who had appeared beneath the wedding arch. “Looks like she grew up with a rough life.” He recognized the pattern too easily: a child acknowledged by blood but denied belonging, useful only when the favored family needed something.
That recognition was dangerous. Sebastian’s plan required him to treat the marriage as temporary structure, not a promise to protect another outcast. Yet the image of Natalie kneeling to defend her father’s neglect made indifference difficult. She had cooked for him after being traded into marriage; she had even protected George’s reputation when Sebastian questioned the borrowed dress.
He closed the file and stood. Daniel watched him reach for his jacket. “Where are you going, boss?” The question carried mild surprise. Sebastian had meetings waiting and decisions only he could authorize, all of them more urgent on paper than following a woman across the city.
“I’m going to check on my wife.” The word wife came naturally, which unsettled him more than he allowed Daniel to see. He told himself that Natalie was now connected to the operation and that knowing where she went was simple caution. The concern beneath that logic remained unspoken.
Outside, Sebastian chose an ordinary vehicle rather than anything that might expose him. Natalie believed she had married a penniless Klein outcast waiting for a trust fund, and that belief still protected both his strategy and his freedom to act. He could not let sympathy make him careless.
As he pulled away from the little house, he pictured Natalie carrying the borrowed dress back alone, unaware of the resources at his command. Sebastian had entered the marriage intending to use a stranger as the final piece of his plan. Now he was following her—not because the plan demanded it, but because something in her history had awakened an instinct he could no longer dismiss.
