Married To The Arrogant Billionaire Heir のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 51 - チャプター 60

Sebastian’s POV.The file on my desk—the AvariTech merger agreement—was a blur of legalese and numbers. Usually, I could dissect a document like this in twenty minutes. Today, I had been staring at the same paragraph for an hour.My focus was fractured.Through the glass wall of the annex, I could see Isabella. She was typing furiously, her brow furrowed in concentration, a stray lock of hair falling into her eyes. She tucked it behind her ear with an absentminded gesture that I found irritatingly distracting.Since the gala, the atmosphere in the office had shifted. We were professional. We were efficient. We were cold.I had built the wall back up. I had to. The moment on the red carpet—the way I had kissed her forehead, the way I had wanted to shield her—had been a lapse in judgment. I couldn't afford lapses. Emotions were variables I couldn't control, and in business, uncontrolled variables led to bankruptcy.I checked my watch. 7:00 PM."Phase Two," I muttered to myself.I hit th

Grace’s POV.The line between a lie and the truth is thinner than I thought.It had been a week since the gala. A week of "Phase Two." A week of holding hands in elevators, sharing lunches behind glass walls, and enduring the flashbulbs of paparazzi every time we stepped out for dinner.We were selling a fairytale to New York City, and New York was buying it wholesale.But the exhausting part wasn't the performing. It was the downtime. It was the moments when the doors closed, the staff went home, and we were left alone in the vast, silent territory of the master suite.That was when the confusion set in.Because Sebastian didn't stop.He didn't drop my hand the second we were out of sight. He didn't revert to the cold, distant CEO. He lingered. He asked me about my day. He watched me with a quiet, intense gravity that made me feel seen in a way I had never experienced before.It was 2:00 AM.I woke up because the bed was cold.I rolled over, blinking into the darkness. Sebastian’s si

Grace’s POV.The air in the Executive Suite was brittle, like glass about to shatter.Since the incident with the missing AvariTech page yesterday, Sebastian had retreated behind a wall of icy professionalism. We spoke only when necessary. He barked orders about files and schedules, refusing to make eye contact. The man who had held me on the balcony seemed to have vanished, replaced by the ruthless CEO the world feared.I sat at my desk, trying to focus on the quarterly projections, but my stomach was in knots. The news from a few days ago—that Chloe was returning—hung over the office like a dark cloud.The intercom buzzed. It made me jump."Come in," Sebastian’s voice crackled through the speaker. "Now."I grabbed my notebook and walked to the connecting door. I took a deep breath, steeling myself.When I entered, Sebastian wasn't sitting behind his desk. He was standing in the center of the room, reviewing a security report on his tablet. He looked furious."Sit down," he said.I s

Sebastian’s POV.The silence inside the SUV was heavy enough to crush bone.I stared out the tinted window at the blurring gray streets of Manhattan, but I didn't see the city. I saw red. My hands were resting on my knees, clenched so tight the knuckles were white. I could still feel the fabric of Ryan’s cheap jacket under my fingers. I could still feel the satisfying impact of his spine against the marble pillar.I had lost control. For the first time in ten years, I had let emotion override strategy.“Does she still hum old jazz songs under her breath? Stormy Weather, wasn't it?”The question echoed in my skull, a poisonous loop. Ryan was a liar, a parasite who would say anything to claw his way back into a position of power, but his confidence was terrifying.I turned my head slightly to look at her.Isabella sat on the other side of the leather bench seat. She was staring at her hands, her face pale. She was rubbing her thumb over her knuckles, a nervous tic I had seen a dozen tim

Grace’s POV.The penthouse was quiet, but it wasn't peaceful. It was the kind of silence that felt heavy, like the air before a lightning strike. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room offered a panoramic view of a shimmering Manhattan, but tonight, the city lights felt like cold, distant observers.It was 7:00 PM. Sebastian and I had just returned from the office, and the journey home had been an exercise in endurance. The car ride was thick with the residue of his explosion in the lobby—that raw, terrifying moment where he’d pinned Ryan against the marble—and the frantic, desperate intimacy that had followed in his office. We were two people vibrating at different frequencies, caught in a cycle of suspicion and desire that neither of us knew how to break.Sebastian was trying to move past it. I could see it in the way he moved—methodical, controlled, rebuilding his walls brick by brick. He was standing by the mahogany bar, his back to me, his shoulders a rigid line of tensi