Chapter 51

[ 1,076 words ]

Katia’s POV

Gail put her glass down with a trembling hand. “My brother skipped his wedding night to talk to you in a foreign country? Julian? The man who follows rules like they’re holy scripture p>

“And then came Vegas,” I continue, my voice shaking. “We ran into each other at a club. Things got out of hand. We were in a hallway, away from the noise, and Gail… we kissed. And I don’t mean a polite, ’nice to see you’ kiss. I mean a tongue-thrusting, wall-pinning, world-ending kiss p>

“Ewww!” Gail groaned, covering her ears like a teenager. “I don’t want to hear about my brother’s tongue! That is a mental image I will never be able to unsee. That is a crime against humanity p>

“We almost fucked, Gail,” I said, my voice dropping to a raw, jagged edge. “If he hadn’t left, or if I hadn’t found a shred of sanity… it would have happened. Right there in the hotel p>

Gail went completely still. The humor vanished from her face. She looked at me, then she looked at Aiden, who was happily coloring a sun in his book, oblivious to the fact that his mother was confessing to a potential affair with the most powerful man in the city.

“You like him?” Gail asked, her voice soft now, devoid of judgment.

“I don’t know!” I cried, running my hands through my hair. “I hate him. I hate that he’s married to my sister. But whenever I am with him, Gail, all hell breaks loose. My brain turns off, and my body just… recognizes him. It’s like we’re two magnets that were never supposed to be in the same hemisphere, and now that we are, the pull is going to break us both p>

Gail sighed, leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling. “This is a disaster. A total, beautiful, Windsor-sized disaster. You realize Julian is obsessed, right? He doesn’t do ’spontaneous.’ He doesn’t do ’accidental.’ If he was in France, he was there for a reason. If he was in Vegas, he was there for a reason. He’s hunting you, Katia p>

“I can’t let him catch me,” I whispered, my voice trembling as I glanced at Aiden. “I have my own life to protect, Gail. If Julian keeps pushing into my space, if he starts digging into my business or my personal affairs, it’s going to get messy. I can’t have a man like him looking too closely at me p>

Gail reached across the table, squeezing my hand. “Katia, listen to me. My brother is a man who gets what he wants. Always. He’s cold, he’s relentless, and he’s never satisfied with what he has. But now, he’s looking at you. If he decides to fixate on his wife’s sister, it means he doesn’t like Delia, and he will never touch her; he will burn Delia and the entire Kensington alliance to the ground just to satisfy that impulse. He doesn’t care about the collateral damage, Katia. He never has p>

I looked down at our joined hands, the weight of the future feeling heavier than ever. “I don’t want to be a survivor, Gail. I just want to live my life and run my company without my sister’s husband breathing down my neck p>

“Then stay away from him,” Gail said firmly. “Because Julian Windsor doesn’t just want people; he consumes them. He breaks them down and builds them back in his own image. He’s already trapped in a miserable marriage with Delia—don’t let him drag you into his darkness too p>

I nodded, knowing she was right, but even as I promised myself I would stay away, I could still feel the phantom pressure of his hands on my waist from that hallway in Vegas. I could still taste the whiskey and the desperation of a man who looked like he was starving for something he couldn’t name.

And I knew, deep in my soul, that the next time we were in a room together for a board meeting, a promise wouldn’t be enough to stop the world from burning.

Confessing everything to Gail had felt like finally lancing a festering wound. The pressure in my chest had eased slightly, but in its place, a new, cold anxiety had settled into my bones. Gail’s words haunted me; they played on a loop in the back of my mind like a broken record. “If he decides to fixate on his wife’s sister, it means he doesn’t like Delia, and he will never touch her p>

The thought was a jagged pill to swallow, dry and bitter. Was it even possible? Had Julian never touched my sister? Delia was the golden child, the undisputed beauty of the Kensington line. She was the woman who had walked down the aisle to claim the man who was supposed to be mine, stepping into a life of prestige while I was cast into the shadows. Why wouldn’t he touch her? It didn’t make sense. But if it were true, it meant Julian was living in a self-imposed exile within the walls of his own home, and it made the way he looked at me in that hallway ten times more dangerous. It meant he wasn’t just a man seeking a thrill; he was a man starving, and he had decided I was the only thing that could sate him.

I needed to drown out the noise. I needed the one thing that had always made sense when the world stopped making sense: speed. I needed the roar of an engine to silence the questions about my sister’s marriage and the phantom sensation of Julian’s hands on my skin.

The Manhattan motorbike race was a different beast than the wide-open desert tracks of Vegas. Here, the air was thick with humidity and the metallic scent of exhaust, the city skyline looming over the makeshift track like a silent, towering jury. The atmosphere was grittier, the stakes felt more personal, and the crowd was a sea of anonymous faces seeking the same adrenaline hit I was.

I arrived late, slipping into the shadows of the staging area. I pulled on my leathers, the material a second skin that armored me against the world. My identity was sealed behind a blacked-out visor that reflected nothing but the flickering neon lights and the distant, cold stars. To the world, I wasn’t Katia Kensington, the CEO of IG Technologies, or the disgraced sister. I was Catwoman.

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