Chapter 36

[ 1,274 words ]

Katia’s POV

Brooklyn felt smaller after the salt air of the Riviera. Returning to my office usually offered a sense of grounding, a sanctuary where the high-gloss finishes and the quiet hum of world-class technology reflected the empire I had built from nothing. But today, the luxury felt stifling. I sat behind my desk, the sprawling city skyline looming through the glass, and did something I hadn’t done in nearly a decade.

I opened Instagram. I didn’t even have his handle saved; I had to type his name into the search bar, feeling a strange, tight knot of anxiety in my chest. I had never cared to look before. Julian Windsor was a man I dealt with in boardrooms and through legal contracts, not through a social media lens.

When his profile loaded, I was surprised. It was exactly as I should have expected, intimidatingly corporate. It was a digital mausoleum of black-and-white architecture, sharp angles of the Windsor headquarters, and the occasional press photo of Julian looking like an untouchable, glass-eyed god at a podium. There was no warmth there. No humanity. Certainly no wedding photos. There wasn’t a single announcement of his marriage to Delia, no “just married” tags, and no soft-focus shots of them cutting a cake. In fact, his timeline showed he hadn’t posted a single thing in over a decade.

And then, I saw the new posts. My heart did a slow, painful roll in my chest.

The first was the table at the restaurant in France. It was a masterpiece of suggestion; the lighting was low, the wine deep red, and there was just a hint of a presence in the corner of the frame. A sliver of a woman’s hand, relaxed against the white linen. But the second post, the one from the jazz club, made the air leave my lungs.

It was a close-up, high-contrast shot of our hands joined on the dark, scarred wood of the table. The candlelight caught the curve of my knuckles, the shadows dancing in the narrow spaces where our skin met. It was an image that practically screamed intimacy, a silent shout into a world that thought he was a cold, solitary king.

I gasped, my thumb hovering over the screen as if it were a live wire. I quickly locked the phone, the screen turning black, but the image remained burned into my retinas. I tried to steady my breathing, leaning back into the expensive leather of my chair. “It’s fine,” I reasoned, my mind racing through damage control scenarios. No one would know it was my hand. It was a generic shot of two people in a dark room. I wasn’t wearing my ring; my skin was just skin. It could be anyone. It could be a model. It could be a ghost.

“Katia? Are you even in the room right now, or did you leave your brain in the Mediterranean p>

I jumped, nearly knocking my double espresso over as Sam walked in. She was holding a stack of files, her face etched with the kind of professional stress that usually meant our code was being difficult. She was already deep into the logistics for tomorrow’s high-stakes meeting with the WEG executives, her voice a rapid-fire staccato of data points.

“The server migration is set for 0800, but we need to verify the encryption protocols before Julian’s team does their audit. If we miss the window, the latency will kill the presentation. Katia? Earth to Kensington p>

I wasn’t listening. Not really. My mind was still trapped in that smoky, blue-lit club in France, feeling the weight of Julian’s gaze and the strange, electric pull of his silence. I was staring at the blank screen of my phone, my pulse racing in my throat.

Sam stopped mid-sentence. The silence became heavy. She didn’t say another word as she walked over to my desk, her eyes narrowing like a woman who dealt in patterns for a living. Before I could think to hide it, she reached down and snatched the phone right out of my hand.

“Hey! Sam, give that back. That’s private,” I protested, reaching for it, but she was already swiping up, the screen flickering back to life on the Instagram post.

Her eyes went wide, and her jaw literally dropped, mouth hanging open in a comedy of shock. She looked at the screen, then at my bare hand resting on the mahogany desk, then back at the screen again. She did this three times, her face turning a shade of pale that matched the office walls.

“Oh my God,” Sam whispered, her voice rising into a pitch. I only heard when our mainframes crashed. “Why the fuck is your sister’s husband posting you? Wait… is this France? Is this the ’quiet dinner’ you said you were going to grab while you cleared your head p>

I leaned back, trying to summon the “Savage” mask that usually kept people at arm’s length. I tried to look unbothered, though I could feel the heat rising up my neck. “It’s not what you think, Sam. We just happened to be in the same city. It’s a small world for people in our tax bracket. I ran into him, we had a drink, and we… chilled. It was just a conversation between business partners about the merger p>

“Chilled?” Sam barked a laugh that was more of a scoff, holding the phone up like a piece of evidence in a high-profile murder trial. “Katia, I’ve worked with you for years. I’ve watched you type millions of lines of code. I know your hands. I know the way your pointer finger curves and the way you hold a glass. I can tell that’s you. If I can tell, anyone who actually pays attention, like, say, your family or his grandmother, will know. They’ll start speculating. And when the press realizes Julian Windsor ditched his secret wedding for a ’chill’ night with the disgraced sister-in-law, they’re going to burn this city down p>

I sighed, rubbing my temples where a dull ache was beginning to throb. The sheer gravity of Julian’s recklessness was finally starting to sink in. He was a man who calculated every move, a man who didn’t breathe without a secondary backup plan. Yet, he had thrown a digital grenade into his own carefully guarded reputation.

“I don’t understand it either,” I muttered, turning my chair to look out at the Brooklyn rooftops, the water towers, and the clotheslines, a stark contrast to the luxury of Antibes. “I don’t understand why he didn’t go on a honeymoon. He was in France alone, Sam. Wandering around like he was looking for something he lost. Why would a man get married to a woman like Delia and then fly across the ocean forty-eight hours later to sit in a dark jazz club with someone else p>

Sam tossed the phone back onto the desk. It landed with a dull thud. Her expression softened, the shock being replaced by something uncomfortably knowing, something that looked far too much like pity. She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Maybe he doesn’t fancy his wife,” Sam said quietly, her voice echoing in the quiet office. “Or maybe he realized, a little too late, that he married the wrong Kensington p>

The words hung in the air, thick and suffocating. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. There was no logic that could explain away the look in Julian’s eyes when he’d snapped that photo. Sam gave me one last lingering, worried look before turning to leave the office, shutting the heavy door behind her with a soft click.

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