All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Wife Does Not Exist: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

I studied his face and genuinely couldn't tell. He let me sit in that uncertainty for only a few seconds."They confirmed me."Roman was officially Chairman.But he'd come outside before celebrating with the board, before calling his mother, before letting anyone congratulate him properly. I was the first person he'd wanted to see.I threw my arms around him before remembering we were standing outside a formal board meeting. He laughed and caught me anyway, nothing ceremonious about it."What happened?" I asked.He kept it brief. He'd defended the flexible arrangement himself, made his own case, no vote from me involved. He'd convinced enough directors that being a husband with a life outside Ashbourne didn't make him less capable of leading it."You told me to earn it.""Did you?""Apparently.""Then congratulations, Mr. Chairman."I kissed him.He told me quietly, afterward, that when the final vote came through, he'd expected the enormous triumph he'd imagined for years. He'd felt

He stood in my bedroom waiting, and I realized there had once been a version of me who would have been terrified of this exact moment, certain that letting him in meant losing myself all over again. That version of me was gone. I just wanted him there because I loved living with him.I crossed the room, took his face in my hands, and kissed him before I said anything at all."Three weeks," I said finally.His expression changed instantly. "That's a yes?""That's me agreeing to a trial period.""For my own marriage?""Your performance will be reviewed."He looked genuinely offended, then delighted. "When do I move in?""Your suitcase is already here.""That's visiting. I'm talking about moving in."The distinction mattered more than I expected, and two days later I understood why. Roman arrived with considerably more than a suitcase, garment bags, boxes of books, enough shoes to require an explanation, his preferred coffee because mine was, in his words, unacceptable."You said part of

The question followed us home from the collection. Roman didn't push. That almost made it worse."I want the job," I finally said, standing in our kitchen."I know.""And I want this city. I want the work. I want the independence I've found here." I made myself keep going. "And I want you. Not visiting every few weeks. Not scheduled weekends. Not a marriage conducted through airports and video calls.""So why do you sound like you're confessing to something?"Because some old part of me still believed that wanting my husband woven that deeply into my life was dangerously close to surrendering the independence I'd fought so hard to build."Wanting me isn't the same as needing my permission to exist," he said, unpacking groceries, stealing a piece of cheese off the counter before I could stop him."So in this imaginary perfect life," he asked, "how much closet space do I get?""We've reached the limits of the fantasy.""Then it's not everything I want.""Tell me what you actually see,"

I sat beside him for a long moment, struck by how strange it was that this question felt more intimate than almost anything we'd discussed since I came back. We'd talked about betrayal, careers, distance, power, even entire homes. Somehow we'd never really talked about this."I don't think it's just us," I finally said.He went very still. Not shocked. Just listening.I told him I wasn't announcing a plan. I didn't know when, or even exactly what I wanted yet. But when I'd pictured that extra room earlier, I hadn't pictured books."Did you always want that?" he asked.Once, yes. During the early years of our marriage, I'd assumed children would happen eventually. But eventually kept moving, because Ashbourne always had another crisis, another milestone, another reason to wait. Then the marriage itself grew lonelier, and somewhere in that final year before the ballroom, I stopped picturing children with him at all."Because you stopped wanting them?" he asked quietly."Because I alread

Roman didn't raise his voice. If anything, he got quieter, more precise, the particular calm he used when something actually mattered. "You don't need to know anything about children my wife and I haven't even decided to have."His mother argued that succession planning was a legitimate concern now that he was Chairman. "Succession is your concern," he said. "My marriage isn't." When she used the phrase *your heir*, he corrected her immediately. "My child. If Tessa and I ever have one, that's what they'll be first."I felt that land somewhere deep. He'd been raised to understand children, marriage, even himself through the Ashbourne name, and this wasn't rejection of his family so much as a line drawn around what belonged only to us. His mother asked whether I agreed, and he didn't answer for me, just held the phone out. "If Roman and I ever have children," I told her calmly, "we'll decide what their lives look like together." She accepted that we'd discuss it further at dinner.After