Chapter 216

[ 914 words ]

Katia’s POV

It had been a week.

Seven mornings of waking up next to him. Seven nights of him appearing in my bed—at the penthouse mostly, once at his mansion the night of the family dinner, and once in a hotel in the city when we had worked late and he had simply booked a suite and told me I was not going home. Seven mornings of coffee already made when I opened my eyes and Julian sitting at whatever table was available, reading something on his phone with the stillness of someone completely comfortable in a space.

It was good.

That was the honest thing I kept coming back to and kept not wanting to say out loud even to myself. It was good to wake up next to someone. It was good to have the weight of another person in the bed and the sounds of someone moving around a kitchen and the coffee that appeared before I asked for it.

It was good.

And it was wrong.

Because the man was not mine.

He was my sister’s husband—arrangement or not, paperwork or not. I had spent a week in his bed, knowing that and telling myself it was temporary, and each morning waking up and not making it stop.

I had tried. The first three mornings I had tried to establish that this was not sustainable, that it needed to end, that I was a woman with a son and a company and a husband somewhere whose name I did not know, and I could not keep doing this.

Julian had listened to all of it.

And then he had kissed me, and I had stopped talking.

There was no turning back. That was the thing I had finally admitted to myself on the fourth morning. I had passed a point, and the point was behind me now, and there was no clean way back to the woman who had not spent six nights in Julian Windsor’s bed.

I opened the contract on my screen.

I had work to do.

Sam had been watching me for twenty minutes.

I knew it. Sam had the kind of attention that was physical — you felt it the way you felt a change in temperature. She had been sitting across the office with her laptop open and her eyes doing that thing where they were technically on the screen but were actually on me.

I reviewed the contract clause.

Sam closed her laptop.

“Are we going to talk about you playing with fire?” Sam asked.

“Sam,” I said.

“That is not an answer p>

“Sam, please,” I said.

“I am going to take that as a no and talk anyway,” Sam said, “because that is what I am here for and also because you need someone to say the thing you are not saying to yourself.” She leaned forward. “Your sister is always looking for ammunition, Katia. She will find out you are sleeping with her supposed husband. What exactly are you going to do when that happens p>

I looked at the contract.

The clause was about liability transfer during the acquisition period. It was a perfectly straightforward clause. I couldn’t focus on it at all.

“I do not know,” I said.

“That is honest at least,” Sam said. “Here is the part I actually cannot work out — why is Julian not interested in Delia? She is in his house. She has been in his house for over a year. She is a Kensington, she is not without resources or appeal, and yet he looks through her like she does not exist. But you walk into a room p>

“Sam p>

“I am making an observation p>

I put the contract down.

“Here is the one thing I genuinely do not understand,” I said. “Why me and not her? Delia has been right there. She has been available and present and she clearly—” I stopped. “I do not understand it p>

Sam looked at her for a moment.

“I have been doing some digging,” Sam said.

I looked at her.

“Julian did not lie to you,” Sam said. “He is not married to Delia. He has never been married to Delia. The arrangement is exactly what he said it was — an arrangement. A ceremony to please the families, no legal documentation, and nothing binding.” She paused. “Delia has apparently been throwing herself at him since she moved in, and the man has not moved an inch. He has never touched her. Not once p>

I stared at her.

“Not once?” I said.

“Not once,” Sam confirmed. “And there is something else.” She tilted her head. “Your sister has been sleeping with Victor Hale since Dubai p>

“What?” I said.

“Mm,” Sam said.

I sat back in my chair.

Victor Hale. The man who had filed a fraudulent IP lawsuit against her company. The man whose evidence had been manufactured. The man who had been running a campaign against IG Technologies for eighteen months.

And Delia had been sleeping with him since Dubai.

“Does Julian know?” I said.

“Julian knows,” Sam said. “Apparently before the arrangement even started, he told Delia he would never touch her, that she could sleep with whoever she wanted, and that he did not care.” She paused. “And last week—I heard this secondhand, so take it as you will—he told her she should go to Hale. That Victor or one of his guards would find her interesting p>

I pressed my hand flat on the desk.

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