chapter 1

Ellie’s POV“They can’t do this,” Sophie said, slapping the letter down on the bakery counter. “Can they actually do this?”I picked up the paper with flour still on my fingers. Notice of Property Sale. Tenants must vacate within sixty days. I read it twice, hoping the words would change if I looked hard enough. They did not.“Cross Realty Holdings,” I read out loud. “Who even are these people?”“Not people,” Sophie said. “One person. Nathan Cross. He owns half of downtown Manhattan and apparently now he owns our block too.”The bell over the door jingled and my grandmother came out from the back room, wiping her hands on her apron. She had been baking since five that morning and there was flour on her cheek like always.“What is all this shouting about?” she asked.I did not want to show her the letter. She had put thirty years into this bakery. But she took it from my hands before I could hide it, and I watched her face go still while she read it.“We will figure something out,” she

最終更新日 : 2026-07-22

chapter 2

Nathan’s POVI had been staring at that letter for three days before she walked into my office and ruined my shirt.My father’s lawyer found it while going through the old family files, tucked behind a box of photographs nobody had touched since my parents died. It was written in my grandfather’s handwriting, dated forty years ago, addressed to a man named Walter Hartman.I read it so many times I had it memorized.Should a Cross ever need a Hartman, a Hartman will answer, and should a Hartman ever need a Cross, a Cross will answer. This I swear on my name and my company.Underneath it, in a different pen, someone had written one more line. If the debt is ever called, let it be paid in full, whatever the cost.I did not believe in old family promises. I believed in numbers, in contracts, in things that could be proven. But three days ago my father’s will had been read aloud in a boardroom full of people who wanted to see me fail, and it had said something I still could not fully accep

最終更新日 : 2026-07-22

chapter 3

Ellie’s POV “Absolutely not,” my grandmother said, and slammed her rolling pin down so hard flour jumped off the counter. “Grandma, listen to me.” “I heard you the first time, Eleanor. You will not marry a stranger to save my bakery.” Sophie sat between us at the kitchen table, looking back and forth like she was watching a tennis match she desperately wanted to stop. “It’s not just the bakery,” I said. “He said he’d pay off everything. The loan on the building, the equipment debt, all of it.” “And in exchange he owns you for a year,” my grandmother said. “No. I would rather lose this bakery than sell my granddaughter.” “You’re not selling me, I’m choosing this.” “Are you?” She looked at me hard, the same look she used to give me as a child when I tried to sneak dessert before dinner. “Or are you choosing it because you think it’s the only way to fix something that isn’t actually your job to fix?” That one landed harder than I wanted it to. I thought about all the nights I

最終更新日 : 2026-07-22

chapter 4

Nathan’s POV“You are actually going through with this,” Gerald said, leaning back in his chair with the smug look he had worn since the will was read. “A baker’s granddaughter. How romantic.”“It is a legal arrangement, Uncle Gerald. Nothing more.”“Does it matter what it is, so long as the board believes it satisfies the terms?” He steepled his fingers. “Though I admit, I am curious to meet the girl who thinks she can simply walk into a contract like this and walk back out again in one year, unscathed.”I did not answer him. I had learned a long time ago that giving Gerald a reaction was the same as giving him ammunition. He had spent thirty years perfecting the art of the small cruel comment, the kind designed to look harmless if anyone repeated it back to him later. My father had warned me about him once, years before he died. Your uncle does not want to destroy you quickly, Nathan. He wants to watch you struggle first. I had not understood what he meant until I was the one sittin

最終更新日 : 2026-07-22

chapter 5

Ellie’s POV“You’re on the front page,” Sophie said, holding up her phone like it might bite her. “Front page, Ellie. Of the actual New York business section.”I grabbed the phone out of her hand. There was a photo of me from the day I signed the contract, walking out of Cross Tower looking furious and windswept, next to a headline that made my stomach flip.Cross Hospitality CEO to Wed Brooklyn Baker’s Granddaughter in Surprise Announcement.“They make it sound like a fairy tale,” I said.“It kind of is a fairy tale,” Sophie said. “The billionaire and the baker. People are going to eat this up.”“People are going to eat me alive.”I scrolled further down the article, my stomach twisting tighter with every paragraph. There were quotes from unnamed sources inside Cross Hospitality speculating about the marriage, a photograph of the bakery’s front window that someone had clearly taken without permission, and a small, cruel line near the bottom suggesting the arrangement was, in the repo

最終更新日 : 2026-07-22

THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 5

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5