Chapter 78

[ 1,290 words ]

Julian’s POV

My grandmother’s summons arrived the way they always arrived, through her personal assistant, two days in advance, with a single line: Tea on Thursday. Four o’clock. Don’t be late.

She had been sending variations of that message my entire life. When I was eight, it meant I had done something wrong and needed to account for it. When I was twenty-two and just taken over WEG, it meant she had things to tell me that couldn’t be said in a board meeting. Now, at thirty-four, it still meant both of those things simultaneously, and I had stopped trying to figure out which one was dominant until I was already in the room.

The Windsor estate in the late afternoon had a particular quality of light—the way it came through the tall windows of the east sitting room and caught the dust in the air and made everything look like it existed slightly outside of time. My grandmother sat in her usual chair by the window with her tea already poured and her hands folded in her lap and the expression she wore when she had been thinking about something for several days and had finally decided to say it.

I sat across from her. I accepted the tea. I waited.

She let the silence run for a full minute, which, with her, was never emptiness. It was assessment. She was reading me the way she had always read me—not my words, which she had long since decided were unreliable, but the way I held the cup and where my eyes went when I thought she wasn’t watching and whether my jaw was doing the thing it did when I was carrying something I hadn’t said out loud yet.

“The IG Technologies partnership,” she said finally.

“Yes p>

“It’s going well p>

“Very p>

“I’ve been reading about it.” She lifted her cup. “The Invisible Shield launch received excellent coverage. The integration timeline appears to be ahead of schedule.” She paused for a moment and then went on. “The CEO is impressive p>

“She is p>

“Katia Kensington.” My grandmother said the name with the careful precision she applied to things that mattered. Not emphasizing it. Just placing it exactly where it needed to be. “I’ve been reading about her as well p>

“She’s built an extraordinary company,” I said.

“From nothing.” Grandma set her cup down. “Thrown out of her family home at twenty. Pregnant. Built IG Technologies from a single acquisition funded by—well, the press has various theories about that.” She looked at me. “Do you know how she funded it p>

“Private investment,” I said. “A series of early acquisitions the press hasn’t fully traced. She was deliberate about keeping it quiet p>

“And yet you know p>

“I’m thorough p>

“Mm.” She picked up her cup again. The afternoon light shifted slightly as a cloud moved somewhere outside. “She was supposed to marry you p>

“I’m aware p>

“I arranged that match myself.” She said it without apology, because my grandmother had never apologized for a decision she’d made deliberately. “I had reasons p>

“I know your reasons p>

“Do you.” It wasn’t a question. She studied me over the rim of her cup. “She was sixteen when I first noticed her. Remarkable child. The kind of person who walks into a room and the room changes without anyone deciding it should.” A pause. “She reminded me of someone p>

I said nothing.

“And then the Kensington family made their choices,” she continued, “and the arrangement changed, and we ended up with Delia.” She set the cup down with the delicate precision of someone placing a full stop. “Which is what it is p>

“It’s a functional arrangement p>

“Is it?” Not a question either. “You’ve been married for eight months, Julian. I have not once seen you look at your wife the way a man looks at a woman he has chosen p>

“The arrangement wasn’t about choice, Nana p>

“No. But arrangements can become something else if both people are willing.” She looked at me steadily. “Are you willing p>

I thought about Delia’s flowers on my desk. The photograph she rehung while I was working. The careful, patient way she was learning my rhythms, adjusting herself to the shape of a life I had made no space for her in. I thought about what I felt when I watched her do all of that.

Nothing. I felt nothing. Which was, I understood, its own kind of answer.

“She’s a vendor partner,” I said. “Katia. That’s what she is p>

My grandmother looked at me for a long moment. The afternoon light was doing its particular thing to the room—making everything slightly golden, slightly outside of time—and she sat in the middle of it with the patience of someone who had lived long enough to know that waiting was usually more effective than pressing.

“You always were a terrible liar, Julian,” she said. “Even when you were eight p>

I didn’t respond to that.

“I’d like to meet her,” she said. “Katia. Properly. Not at an event, not in passing. Here, for tea.” She picked up her cup again. “Arrange it p>

“That’s not p>

“Arrange it.” Her voice hadn’t changed in volume or tone. It never did. It didn’t need to. “The WEG-IG partnership gives you more than enough reason. A courtesy visit from the CEO of your primary vendor partner to the Windsor family matriarch is entirely normal and entirely expected.” She sipped her tea. “And if it happens to give me the opportunity to form my own opinion of the woman, so much the better p>

“Nana p>

“Thursday next week. Same time.” She smiled, that small, precise smile she had that contained everything and revealed nothing. “You may go, Julian. You look like you need air p>

I stood. I set my cup down. I looked at her for a moment, this woman who had built the Windsor family with the same patience and precision she applied to everything, who had made a match fifteen years ago based on something she had seen in a sixteen-year-old girl, who had watched me walk into a boardroom partnership with that same girl and said nothing until she had decided what to say.

“She doesn’t know,” I said. “About the original arrangement. That you were the one who—she doesn’t know any of that history p>

“I’m aware,” Grandma said. “It will be an interesting conversation p>

“That’s one word for it p>

“Go, Julian.” She had already turned slightly toward the window, the way she did when a conversation was finished. “Drive carefully p>

I drove too fast on the way home.

Not recklessly—I was never reckless, not in cars, not in anything—but faster than the road required, with both hands on the wheel and my jaw doing exactly the thing she had been reading across the table. The countryside moved past the windows in the late afternoon gold and I thought about a woman I had been told was a vendor partner and about my grandmother’s small precise smile and about the fact that the first time in eight months of marriage I had felt anything resembling the pull of wanting to be somewhere was every single time I walked into a room that Katia Kensington was in.

I thought about Zane’s file. Three cities. Thirty-one races. Calendar dates that moved around IG Technologies like they were orbiting it.

I thought about warm air and heat signatures and a sentence I hadn’t been meant to hear on the way out of a boardroom.

We get better.

My knuckles were white on the wheel by the time I reached the estate gates.

I loosened them deliberately, one finger at a time, the way you released a grip on something you’d been holding too tightly for too long.

The gates opened.

I drove through.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.