Chapter 37
[ 1,229 words ]
Katia’s POV
I picked up the phone again, my thumb hovering over the image of our hands. Julian had called me his alibi, his distraction. But as I looked at the way his fingers had sought mine in the dark, I realized that for a man who claimed to have no heart, he was being incredibly loud about who he wanted to be near. And for a woman who had spent six years trying to be a ghost, I was suddenly, terrifyingly visible.
The lobby of the Windsor Empire Group was a temple of glass and brushed steel, a monument to the cold efficiency Julian Windsor demanded from the world. Usually, walking into a high-stakes meeting felt like stepping onto a battlefield where I held all the best weapons. But today, my grip on my briefcase felt loose. My skin felt too thin.
“Remember,” Samantha whispered as the elevator surged toward the executive floor, “eyes on the data, not the man. You’re the CEO of IG Technologies. You’re here to prove our integration is seamless, not to answer for a jazz club in Antibes p>
“I know how to do my job, Sam,” I replied, though my voice sounded hollow even to my own ears. I glanced down at my hands. They were bare, my fingers looking pale and vulnerable against the black leather of my bag. I had left the ring in my jewelry box at the loft. I couldn’t risk it, not here. That ring cost a lot, so showcasing it would be a death wish.
The elevator doors slid open.
The conference room was already half-full. Julian’s top executives were lined up like soldiers, their tablets glowing in the dim light. As I walked in, a heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room. It wasn’t the usual silence of respect; it was the silence of people who had spent their morning staring at a phone screen, comparing the knuckles of the woman in a photo to the woman walking through the door.
Nobody said a word. But their eyes trailed my movements, settling on my hands as I set my laptop on the long, polished glass table.
I took my seat, looking straight ahead. A few minutes later, the double doors at the end of the room opened, and Julian walked in.
He looked impeccable. His suit was a dark charcoal grey that made him look like a shadow cast against the bright Manhattan morning. He didn’t look tired. He didn’t look like a man who had been caught in a scandal. He walked to the head of the table, his presence commanding the oxygen in the room.
His gaze swept over the board, settling on me last. For a heartbeat, the professional mask slipped. His eyes dropped to my hands resting on the glass. The table was so clear, so reflective, that every detail was magnified. He saw the stillness of my fingers. He knew I knew.
“Let’s begin,” Julian said, his voice a low, steady vibration that seemed to settle in the small of my back.
The audit was grueling. For three hours, his team grilled Samantha and me on server latency, encryption handshakes, and the scalability of our AI models. Julian was uncharacteristically quiet, his eyes fixed on the projected data, but I could feel his attention on me like a physical weight.
Whenever I spoke, the room seemed to hold its breath. One of the senior directors, a man named Miller who had been with the Windsors for thirty years, kept glancing between me and his phone under the table. He opened his mouth as if to ask something personal, but Julian’s head snapped toward him; it was a predatory warning in his eyes that made Miller choke back his words and return to the spreadsheet.
When the meeting was finally adjourned, the room emptied with frantic haste. Samantha gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze before following the other executives out, leaving me alone with him.
Julian didn’t move from his seat. He watched me pack my laptop, his expression pretty much unreadable.
“The integration is ahead of schedule,” I said; my voice was professional and clipped. “If there are no further questions, I’ll head back to Brooklyn p>
“I have a question,” Julian said, standing up. He walked around the table, stopping just a few feet away. He didn’t close the distance entirely, but the air between us felt electric. “But it isn’t about the servers p>
I braced myself. “If it’s about the dinner in France, I thought we agreed that was a business courtesy p>
“True, the dinner was a courtesy,” Julian replied. He stepped closer, his shadow stretching over the glass table. “My family spent the morning calling me. Delia is… managing them. She’s telling everyone who will listen that she was the one in France. That it was her hand in that photo p>
A cold twist of discomfort hit my stomach. My sister was lying for him. She was playing the role of the doted-on wife to cover for the fact that her husband had spent his time in France with me instead of her. It felt messy and dishonest, a sharp contrast to the life I had built.
“How convenient for you,” I said, my voice tight. “You’re letting her lie to protect your reputation while you stand here acting as though nothing happened. She’s your wife, Julian. You shouldn’t be making her cover for your ’business courtesies’ like they’re something shameful p>
Julian’s eyes darkened, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m not trying to be shameful, Katia. I’m simply managing the variables p>
“I’m not a variable. I’m a human being. And I’m your business partner,” I snapped, gathering my things.
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. “Then tell me, business partner… why aren’t you wearing your wedding ring? You told the world you were happily married. You told the world you had a life you wouldn’t trade for anything. Yet, every time I see you, your hand is bare. For a woman who respects her husband as much as you claim to, you seem very keen on hiding the evidence of him p>
I felt my heart stop. I pulled my hand back, clenching it into a fist against my side. “My marriage is private. I don’t need a piece of jewelry to prove my commitment to my husband. Not everyone needs to broadcast their life to the world p>
Julian stepped even closer; his scent was of sandalwood and expensive rain. The scent was filling my senses and making it hard to think. “Or perhaps,” he whispered, “your husband is just as much of a ghost. Perhaps you’re just alone in that house with your son p>
“You don’t know anything about my life,” I snapped, turning to walk toward the door before the walls could close in on me.
“I know enough to know you’re lying to yourself,” he called out after me, his voice echoing in the empty boardroom.
I didn’t look back. I walked out of the WEG building and into the bright, chaotic light of New York, my hand shaking so hard I had to shove it into my pocket. He was digging too deep. He was looking for a husband that didn’t exist, and if he kept digging, he was going to find the truth that I didn’t know who my husband was.
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