All Chapters of Married to the Wrong Billionaire : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The morning Lena Cole accidentally got married, she woke up late, burned her toast, and missed the first bus by four seconds. It was that kind of day from the start. She stood at the bus stop with her bag on one shoulder and her hair still damp from a shower she'd rushed through, eating the unburned half of the toast over a napkin so she wouldn't get crumbs on her work blouse, and she thought about what her sister had said at breakfast. "You need to be there by noon, Lena. Don't be late. Don't say anything weird. And for the love of everything, please just be normal for one hour." As if Lena had ever been the one making things difficult in that apartment.The blind date had been her aunt's idea, arranged through some matchmaking service her aunt swore by, the kind that charged more money than Lena made in a month and promised compatible matches based on personality assessments and financial profiles. The man's name was Peter. He was an accountant. Her aunt had described him as stable,

Lena woke at six, which was an hour earlier than she needed to be up for her first shift, and lay in the unfamiliar bed for a moment trying to remember why the ceiling looked wrong. Then she remembered. The wedding. The wrong door. The man down the hall who apparently could hear her through walls she'd assumed were thicker than they were.She got up before she could think about it too long.The kitchen was empty when she reached it, which surprised her until she checked the time again and remembered Caiden took breakfast at seven, not six, which meant she had a window. She made coffee using a machine that cost more than her monthly rent had, found bread in a pantry stocked with things she hadn't asked for and didn't recognize half the brands of, and ate standing at the counter looking out at the city through windows that made her feel like she was floating rather than standing in a kitchen.She was rinsing her mug when she heard his door open down the hall.She checked the clock. Six

The photograph appeared on a Tuesday, which was the kind of day that had no business containing anything significant.Lena found it on the kitchen counter when she got home from the restaurant, propped against the fruit bowl like someone had left it casually, which meant it had been left deliberately — Caiden did nothing casually. It was a printed photograph, not digital, slightly smaller than a standard size, the edges crisp. Two people at a restaurant table, caught mid-laugh, close enough that their shoulders touched. Caiden on the left, younger by a few years, the controlled expression entirely absent. And a woman on the right, dark-haired, beautiful in the specific way of someone who has always known it and made peace with the knowledge.Lena stood at the counter in her restaurant uniform that smelled of garlic and the particular kind of tired that seeped into your shoulders, and she looked at the photograph for a long time without touching it.Caiden came out of his office at hal

The call came at seven forty-three on a Wednesday, while Lena was on her break at the pharmacy, eating a sandwich she'd made at six in the morning that had gone slightly wrong by the time she got to it — the bread gone soft on one side, the mustard having migrated in a way she hadn't intended.She answered because the number wasn't one she knew, and unknown numbers sometimes meant the restaurant, and the restaurant sometimes meant a shift she needed."Lena." The voice was warm and immediate and precisely calibrated. "It's Serena. I hope this isn't a bad time."Lena took a bite of the sandwich and chewed it before answering, which gave her four seconds and tasted of too much mustard. "How did you get this number.""Ji-yeon, indirectly." A small pause, pleasant and meaningless. "I have a lot of mutual contacts with the Black family. You'll find that's unavoidable, in time." Another pause. "I'd love to have coffee. Just us. I think there are things you'd want to know."The fluorescent li

Eleanor Black called on a Saturday morning while Lena was between shifts, sitting on the floor of her room with her back against the bed, eating instant noodles because the chef didn't work weekends and she hadn't wanted to touch anything in the kitchen that required effort."I'm calling you directly," Eleanor said, without greeting, "because Caiden won't tell me anything useful and Ji-yeon is loyal to a fault."Lena set the noodles down. "Good morning, Mrs. Black.""Eleanor. We've been through this." A brief pause filled with the sound of someone in a large quiet house moving between rooms. "Are you happy."The question landed the same way it had at the lunch table — direct, underneath itself, asking something other than what the words said. Lena thought about the conversation in the kitchen three days ago, Caiden's voice saying *because it's real,* the involuntary sound he'd made at the door. "I'm adjusting," she said."That's not what I asked.""I know." Lena picked the noodles bac