Chapter 192

[ 1,066 words ]

Delia’s POV

I was in my car by two fifteen.

I did not think about it. I did not change out of my clothes or fix my face or consider for one second whether driving from Manhattan to Brooklyn at two in the morning was a reasonable thing to do. I just picked up my keys and walked out of the Windsor estate and got in the car and pressed the gas like the road owed me something.

Julian was mine.

Not in the way he thought — not in the arrangement way, not in the paper way. Mine in the way that mattered. I had given one year of my life to that house and that man and that arrangement, and I had done it without complaint and without asking for more than I was given, and I had watched him ignore me every single day and told myself it was temporary.

And now he had slept with my sister.

My fucking sister, who had been gone for six years and came back last year and walked straight into my life and my family and my husband’s attention like she had never left. Like she had not been thrown out. Like she was owed something.

I pressed harder on the gas.

If Katia Kensington thought she could take what was mine without consequences, she had not met the right version of me yet.

The building was one of those glass and steel towers that existed to remind everyone below it that some people had made different choices. A doorman, a lobby, and a penthouse that cost more per month than most people made in a year. Katia had built all of this from nothing and was very calm about it, and I had always found that the most irritating thing about her.

I rang the bell at three AM.

Sam answered the door.

Of course it was Sam. Sam was always there, the shadow that followed Katia everywhere, the woman who knew everything and said almost nothing and looked at you like she had already assessed you and found you manageable. She opened the door and looked at me and said nothing.

I walked in.

There were papers on the table. Laptops open. Two coffee cups. They had been working—at three in the morning they had been sitting here working, and the normalcy of it made me angrier than anything else had tonight.

“Where the fuck is she?” I said.

Sam raised an eyebrow.

I stared at her.

This was the worst day of my life. I had been eyebrow-raised at by Julian in my own entrance hall, and now I was being eyebrow-raised at by Katia’s assistant in Katia’s penthouse, and something about that was the final insult in a night full of them.

“Don’t you fucking raise your eyebrow at me,” I said. “Where is your slut of a boss p>

Sam looked at me for a moment.

“Girl,” she said, “I think you need some water. Because you look like you need it p>

I stared at her.

The assistant. The assistant had just spoken to me like that. I was a Kensington. I had been raised for rooms that people like Sam did not get invited into, and she was standing in the doorway of her boss’s penthouse offering me water with the calm of someone who found me entirely manageable.

I could not find a response.

Katia appeared from the hallway.

She looked at me and smiled.

Not warmly. Not the social smile. The smile of someone who had expected this visit and was not surprised and was not impressed and was also not going to pretend it was anything other than what it was.

“It’s past three in the morning,” she said. “How can I help you p>

The calmness of it. The absolute, infuriating calmness.

I crossed the room and slapped her.

Full force, open palm, across the face. The sound of it filled the room. Katia’s head turned with the impact, and she held her cheek, and the room went completely still.

Then she looked at me.

And she slapped me back.

I did not see it coming. I had expected the pushover, the sister who had been thrown out at twenty and had spent six years running. I had not expected this. The force of it spun me, and my balance went entirely, and Sam was suddenly behind me, hands on my arms, holding me up before I hit the floor.

“You fuck my husband and have the audacity to slap me?” I said.

Katia walked toward me. Sam was still holding me; my legs were not entirely reliable—and Katia stopped a foot away and looked at me with the expression she had probably used on Victor Hale and in boardrooms and on everyone who had ever underestimated her.

“You are so pathetic,” she said. Her voice was completely even. “Instead of warming your husband’s bed, you are here at three in the morning telling me I slept with him.” She tilted her head. “Do you want me to agree or deny? Which one will make you sleep better at night p>

I looked at her.

This was not the sister I remembered. This was someone else entirely. Someone who had been somewhere difficult and had come back with edges.

“Are you sleeping with him?” I said. Quietly this time.

Katia looked at me. “I asked you which one would make you sleep better p>

“He told me,” I said. “He said it felt good p>

“Your husband told you he slept with me,” Katia said, “and you drove from Manhattan to Brooklyn at three AM to confirm it.” She looked at me without blinking. “Do you know how pathetic that sounds p>

I found my balance. Sam’s hands loosened.

“You never wanted him,” I said. “They told you about him on your twentieth birthday, and you ran to Vegas instead. You were gone for six years. You came back with your bastard son, and now you want my husband p>

Katia hit me so hard that I went down.

I was on the floor before I understood what had happened. She crouched down to my level and looked at me, and her voice when she spoke was the quietest it had been all night.

“No one calls my son that,” she said. “Get out p>

I got up.

I held my cheek and left.

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