The Billionaire’s Runaway Wife のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 10

Three years. That's how long Helen Carter had been pretending she didn't exist, and she was good at it now. The name came naturally, the small apartment on Birch Street felt like home, and the café job was quiet — which was exactly what she needed after spending two years living inside a life that never felt like hers.Boston had been kind to her the way cities are kind to people who don't ask for too much. Nobody knew her here. Nobody looked at her with that particular expression. She had spent two years learning to ignore half pity, half curiosity — the one that said we know who your husband is and we're wondering what's wrong with you.Here she was just Helen. The girl who made good coffee and always remembered your order. She liked that more than she could explain.It was a Tuesday morning when everything started unraveling.Evelyn had called in sick at seven-fifteen, which Helen had found out via a voice note that was mostly coughing and the words "I'm so sorry, I owe you, the

ALEXANDERThe file was thin.That was the first thing that had bothered him when Julian placed it on his desk two days ago. Three years of looking and the sum total of Helen Sinclair — Helen Carter now, apparently — fit into a folder that was less than half an inch thick.She had been careful.He hadn't decided yet whether that made him angrier or something else he didn't have a clear word for.The jet cut through cloud cover somewhere over Connecticut. Forty minutes out from Boston. Outside the window there was nothing but dark sky and the occasional scatter of lights from whatever town was passing below. He wasn't looking at it. He was looking at the photograph clipped to the inside of the folder.It was a surveillance photo. Grainy, taken from a distance. Helen coming out of a café — Birchwood Café, the report said, Maple Street, Boston — with her coat pulled close and her hair down and her face turned slightly away from the camera like she already knew, on some instinct level,

She opened it.And there he was.Three years. A thousand quiet mornings of telling herself she was over it. Fourteen weeks of carrying his child without his knowledge. All of that — and Alexander Sinclair still managed to look like something the world had been specifically designed around.He wasn't in a suit. That was the first thing she registered. Dark trousers, white shirt, collar open, no tie. For Alexander that was practically undressed. She had seen him in a full suit at seven in the morning more times than she could count — even on Sundays, even when it was just the two of them, like the armour was load-bearing.He looked like he had come straight from a plane.He looked like he hadn't slept.He looked at her the way she had spent three years trying to forget he looked at her — with that complete focused stillness, like the rest of the world had been put on mute and she was the only frequency he was receiving.She hated how much she had missed being looked at like that.She

The next morning came far too quickly, pulling Helen from a restless night filled with fragmented dreams of penthouse corridors, echoing footsteps, and dark eyes that saw through every defense she had built.She had barely managed more than a couple of hours of real sleep.Every time she drifted off, Alexander’s face in the hallway resurfaced — the flash of raw understanding, the hunger mixed with something softer and far more dangerous than anger.By six-thirty she gave up completely, dragged herself out of bed, and made a cup of herbal tea in the small kitchen.She stood at the counter, staring at Gerald on the windowsill.The resilient little plant seemed to watch her with quiet judgment, its leaves drooping slightly as if it could sense that the fragile peace of their shared little life was now under serious threat.The tea warmed her hands but did nothing to settle the knot in her stomach.She sipped it slowly, the steam rising in gentle curls, while her mind replayed every word

Work felt impossible the next day.Helen called in sick, the lie sitting bitter on her tongue as she spoke to Marcus over the phone, her voice carefully steady.The apartment closed in around her after the call, so she pulled on her oversized coat—the fabric heavy and concealing against the mild but damp Boston air—and walked the streets near Birch Street.The pavement was still slick from overnight rain, carrying the crisp scent of wet leaves and distant coffee shops.Her sneakers scraped rhythmically against the sidewalk, the cool breeze tugging at her hair as she tried to outpace her racing thoughts.Alexander texted once, simple and unassuming: Let me know if you need anything today. No pressure.The screen glowed in her hand, his name a constant reminder.She didn’t reply.Around noon, a firm but friendly knock broke the quiet.Ethan stood there with a paper bag and two coffees, his easy, warm smile immediately cutting through some of the tension like sunlight breaking clouds.Th