Chapter 26

[ 957 words ]

Julian’s POV

I thought of my grandmother’s story—the girl in the yellow dress who saved her. I thought of the Kensington name and the strategic, cold-blooded necessity of this union to keep the family bloodline “pure” and the business interests aligned.

But beneath the layer of duty lay the jagged truth that I was already a husband in every way that mattered to my soul.

I gestured for the valet to leave. He bowed, a shadow retreating into the hallway, and the heavy oak door clicked shut with a sound that echoed like a gunshot. Alone in the oppressive opulence, I walked toward the corner of the room where a small, biometric safe was hidden behind a hand-carved panel of mahogany. My thumbprint scanned with a red glow, the door whirred, and it swung open with a soft, expensive hiss of pressurized air.

I didn’t reach for the Patek Philippe watches or the keys to the Bentley. I reached for the worn, cream-colored envelope at the back.

The paper was slightly yellowed at the edges now, the texture unique and familiar beneath my fingertips. I pulled out the Vegas marriage certificate. The ink from the chapel’s cheap, dusty printer was still bold, an eternal mockery of my current situation. Jules. Kat. I traced the name “Kat” with the pad of my thumb. That messy, defiant signature. It was the only evidence left on this earth that I wasn’t just a corporate machine. For six years, I had guarded this paper like a holy relic. It represented the only night in my entire life where I hadn’t been an heir, hadn’t been a target, and hadn’t been a brand. I had just been a man, lost in the heat of a woman who smelled like jasmine and felt like home.

“Where are you?” I whispered, the words disappearing into the heavy drapes.

The irony was a poison in my veins. I was about to stand before God, my family, and the entirety of New York’s high society to pledge my life to Delia—a woman who remained a stranger even when she was sitting across from me at dinner. I had been brutally honest with her. I had told her the truth at The Velvet Ember: that there would be no intimacy, no shared bed, and no warmth. I had watched her confidence shift to disbelief and then to humiliation as she realized the “structural agreement” I was handing her. I had expected her to recoil. I had hoped she would see the void I was offering and run for her life.

But the Kensingtons didn’t run from the shadow of an empire. They leaned into it, greedy for the sunlight of the Windsor name, even if it meant living in a frozen marriage. Delia had looked at me at that table, her fingers trembling as she read the clauses that stripped her of her voice and her bed, yet she had chosen the submission of opportunity over the dignity of a real life.

I felt a surge of cold contempt for her and an even colder contempt for myself. I was marrying a woman I had studied like a contract, a woman I viewed as a “liability” to be managed rather than a partner to be loved. I was doing this for a debt I couldn’t remember to a girl I could only see in my grandmother’s wistful smiles.

I looked at the certificate one last time. In the theater of my mind, I saw the ocean-blue eyes of Katia Kensington. Every time I closed my eyes, she was there, haunting the corners of my vision. Why did the “Ghost CEO” carry the same scent of rebellion as the woman who signed her name with a ’K’? Why did her laughter on the terrace feel more like a memory than anything Delia had ever said to me?

I felt like a man divided. One half of me was the Windsor King, doing what was necessary, moving the pieces on the board to settle old scores and secure the future. The other half was the racer, the man who wanted to burn the morning suit, jump into the Continental, and drive until the city lights were nothing but a blur in the rearview mirror. I wanted to find the woman who made me feel alive, but instead, I was putting on a mask for a woman who made me feel like stone.

A sharp knock at the door startled me. I folded the certificate with trembling fingers, sliding it back into the darkness of the safe. The “Kat” from Vegas was a ghost I was officially burying today. I had to. I couldn’t live in a fantasy when the real world required my presence at an altar.

I grabbed my jacket, the heavy silk-lined wool settling on my shoulders like the weight of a century. I checked my reflection one last time. The mask was perfect. The CEO was ready. The groom was a lie.

But as I reached for the door handle, the scent of the lilies and roses being arranged downstairs drifted up to me—cloying, funeral-sweet. It felt like a warning. It felt like I was stepping off a cliff, and the only person who could have caught me was the one woman I was currently erasing from my future.

I stepped out into the hallway, my shoes clicking against the polished wood with a finality that made my stomach churn. The wedding was an hour away. The cathedral was waiting. And as I moved toward the stairs, I realized with a terrifying clarity that I wasn’t walking toward a beginning. I was walking toward the end of the only part of me that was still human.

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