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Chapter 2
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2026-07-07 01:07:25Nathaniel's POV
"You could at least try to look like you're not attending your own execution," my assistant Dana muttered, straightening my tie in the back of the town car.
"I look exactly the way I feel," I said. "Efficient."
"You're marrying a stranger in forty minutes, Nathaniel."
"I'm signing a contract in forty minutes. The stranger part is incidental."
Dana gave me a look I had seen from her a hundred times over six years and ignored every single one of them. "Say that to her face and see how well it lands."
I did not answer, because the truth was I had already said something close to it, on the phone, three nights ago, and the woman on the other end of that call had not flinched once. Most women who wanted something from me flattered first and negotiated second. Emily Hart had done the opposite, and I had thought about that phone call more times in three days than I liked to admit.
The courthouse steps came into view. My grandmother was already there, camel coat, small private smile, looking entirely too pleased with herself for a woman who had engineered this entire situation from behind a plate of croissants.
"You look terrified," Eleanor said, kissing my cheek.
"I look efficient."
"You keep saying that word like it will make it true."
"It's a perfectly good word."
"It's a word men use when they don't want to admit they're nervous." Eleanor smoothed an invisible wrinkle from my lapel, the same gesture she'd used since I was six years old and terrified of my first piano recital. "You don't have to be nervous with this one, Nathaniel. I chose carefully."
"You chose conveniently. There's a difference."
"Is there," she said, and there was something knowing in the way she said it that I chose not to examine too closely, not with the ceremony minutes away and my collar already too tight.
Emily arrived twelve minutes late in a blue dress that was clearly not the one she had planned to wear, hair still slightly damp, an expression that made it obvious she had run at least part of the way here.
"Sorry," she said, to no one in particular, to everyone at once. "The G train hates me on principle."
"You're marrying into a family with four cars and a driver," Dana said helpfully. "That problem is about to solve itself."
Emily's eyes found mine for the first time, and I had expected, I realized, someone smaller than she was. Not in height. In presence. She looked at me the way people look at a math problem they intend to solve, not the way people usually looked at me, which was either hungry or afraid.
"Mr. Whitfield," she said.
"Miss Hart. Ready to make this official?"
"As ready as I'll ever be to marry a man I've spoken to exactly twice."
"Three times now," I said. "The third one is happening currently."
Something flickered at the corner of her mouth, not quite a smile, more like the memory of one. "Careful, Mr. Whitfield. Keep making jokes and I might start thinking you're human."
The judge called us forward before I could decide how to respond to that. The ceremony took eleven minutes. I know because I counted, the way I counted everything, board meetings and quarterly earnings and now, apparently, the exact length of time it took to become a married man for the second time in my life, this time to a woman whose last name I had not known a week ago.
Afterward, in the car, Emily sat as far from me as the seat allowed, staring out the window at a city she had lived in her whole life and I had apparently just made unrecognizable to her.
"You're quiet," I said.
"I'm processing. I went to work this morning as Emily Hart. I'm going home tonight as your wife. Forgive me if that takes a minute to sit with."
I understood the sensation better than I let on. Three years ago I had stood at an altar expecting to feel something permanent and had instead felt the floor drop out from under me two weeks later when the woman I loved chose a folder of documents over the life we had planned. I had built the last three years of myself around never feeling that unsteady again. And now here I was, married again, this time to someone I had chosen with the same emotional investment I applied to a merger.
"It won't be complicated," I said, more to convince myself than her. "We live in the same space. We attend the same events. In a year, we file the paperwork to end it, and you walk away with your family's debt gone and your name intact."
"And what do you walk away with?"
"A company that stays mine."
She turned from the window to look at me directly, and there was something unnervingly steady in her gaze, the same directness that had caught me on the phone three nights ago. "That's it? That's the whole plan? A year of pretending, and then we both just go back to our real lives like none of it happened?"
"That's the plan," I said.
"You say that like it's simple."
"It is simple. I've negotiated far more complicated agreements before breakfast."
"This isn't a merger, Nathaniel."
"No," I admitted, "it's considerably better documented than most of my mergers. At least here, both parties know exactly what they're agreeing to."
She studied me for a moment, like she was deciding whether that was a joke or a warning. "Do they, though. Because I'm not sure either of us knows exactly what we just agreed to. Not really."
"Okay," she said quietly. "Then let's be very clear about the rules before we get to your apartment, Mr. Whitfield. Because I did not agree to disappear into your life. I agreed to share a year of it."
The car pulled up to the building, and the doorman opened her door before I could. She stepped out and looked up, and up, at the tower she now technically lived in, and for one unguarded second something crossed her face that looked less like awe and more like grief, like she was thinking of a much smaller building across the river with her mother's name still on the awning.
"First rule," she said, turning back to me before we reached the elevator. "You don't get to decide what I feel about any of this. Not tonight. Not for the next year."
"Understood."
"Second rule. If we're doing this in front of people, I need to know the story we're telling, because I refuse to be caught flat footed in front of your grandmother's friends."
"Also understood."
"Third rule." She stepped into the elevator, and the doors began to close between us before she said the last part, so that I had to catch it just before the gap sealed shut. "Don't fall in love with me by accident, Mr. Whitfield. I don't think either of us can afford that."
The doors shut. I stood in the lobby a full ten seconds before I followed her up, wondering why the one rule I hadn't agreed to out loud was the only one I couldn't stop thinking about.
최신 챕터
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 10
Nathaniel's POV"You look like a man who didn't sleep," my grandmother said, pouring tea into two cups in her study the next morning, entirely unbothered by the photo already spreading across three gossip sites."I didn't.""Good. It means you're finally taking this seriously." Eleanor set the teapot down and studied me the way she used to when I was a boy who'd broken something and hadn't yet admitted it. "Vanessa called me last night as well. Did you know that.""No.""She wanted me to confirm, on the record, that I forced this marriage without either of your consent. She seems to believe that story will end things cleanly for you and Emily." Eleanor's mouth thinned. "I told her the truth instead, which is that I offered an opportunity, not a command, and that both of you said yes with your eyes open. She did not appreciate the correction.""You could have simply not answered at all.""I could have. I've found, over eighty one years, that silence in the face of an accusation is usua
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 9
Nathaniel's POV"Delete it," I said, low enough that only Vanessa could hear me, though every instinct in me wanted to shout it across the entire terrace."Delete what, exactly. A photo of a couple having a conversation at a party. There's nothing scandalous about that, Nathaniel." Vanessa's smile was pure satisfaction. "Unless, of course, someone happens to leak the timeline alongside it. Married three weeks. First real fight already caught on camera. People will draw their own conclusions.""You want to hurt me. Fine. You've wanted that for three years and I understand why. But she has nothing to do with what happened between us.""She married into it the moment she signed that certificate," Vanessa said, and for the first time her voice lost its careful lightness, something rawer underneath. "You think I don't know what your grandmother's will really is. A cage dressed up as an inheritance. I loved you before that ca
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 8
Emily's POV"You look like a woman who just heard something she can't unhear," Vanessa said, appearing at my elbow at the charity gala like she'd been waiting for the exact moment Nathaniel stepped away to take a call."I look like a woman who's tired of you assuming she owes you a conversation.""Fair enough." Vanessa took a slow sip of champagne, studying me over the rim of the glass. "I'll make this quick then. Did he tell you why the loan to your father was so much larger than a simple bakery renovation should have cost."My stomach tightened, but I kept my face still. "He's telling me everything, in his own time.""Is he. Or is he managing what you learn, the same way he manages everything else." Vanessa smiled, small and sharp. "Ask him about the fire, Emily. The one at the original bakery location, before your mother rebuilt on Fifth. Ask him who really owned that building.""You say that like you expect
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 7
Emily's POV"Say it again," I told Chloe, "because I want to make sure I heard that correctly.""I said you're in love with him." Chloe didn't even look up from the dough she was kneading, like she was commenting on the weather instead of detonating a small bomb in the middle of my Tuesday shift. "The billionaire. Your husband. Nathaniel.""I am contractually married to him. That is a completely different thing.""Is it, though. Because you've mentioned him four times in the last hour, and not once did you complain. You complained about the chef, the marble kitchen, the doorman who won't remember your name. You have never once complained about Nathaniel.""That doesn't mean anything.""Emily." Chloe finally looked up, flour on her cheek, eyebrows raised in the exact expression she'd been giving me since we were fourteen and I insisted I did not have a crush on the boy who kept "accidentally" sitting next to me at lunc
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT Chapter 6
Emily's POV"You're looking for the good scissors," Nathaniel said, appearing in the doorway of what I'd assumed was an unused hall closet, "in the one room I asked you not to go into.""You didn't ask. There was no note, no sign, nothing. I was looking for wrapping paper for Chloe's birthday and found a box marked keep instead.""Emily.""I didn't open it," I said, which was almost entirely true. "I saw the top layer. That's all."His jaw tightened in the way I was learning meant he was choosing his next words carefully. "The top layer would be the invitations.""Wedding invitations," I said quietly. "With your name on them. And hers.""I should have moved that box before you ever set foot in this apartment.""Or you could have just told me it existed. I'm not going to break, Nathaniel. I've read the same tabloid articles everyone else has.""There's a difference between reading about it and standing three feet from the actual proof.""Try me," I said. "I'd rather know the real versi
I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT chapter 5
Emily's POV"You rearranged my kitchen," Nathaniel said, standing in the doorway of the marble showroom I had officially claimed as mine three days into this marriage."I organized your kitchen. There's a difference.""I could not find the coffee this morning.""It's in the jar labeled coffee, Nathaniel. Right where I put it.""It used to be in the cabinet on the left.""It used to be in a cabinet you never opened, next to a chef who only shows up twice a week. Forgive me for putting things where a person who actually cooks might find them."He stared at the jar like it had personally wronged him, and something about his genuine confusion, a man who apparently commanded boardrooms but could not locate his own coffee, cracked something loose in me that had been tightly wound since the dinner with Vanessa."Sit down," I said, pulling out a stool. "I'll make you a cup. Since apparently that's a skill gap in this household."He sat, cautiously, the way a man sits in a room he technically
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