Chapter 237

[ 1,023 words ]

Katia’s POV

The bench was cold.

It was a flat, solid slab of stainless steel bolted directly into the concrete wall of the holding cell. The air in the small space smelled heavily of industrial bleach, old sweat, and the damp, musty odor of wet wool. I sat with my hands clasped tightly in my lap, my knuckles white, staring at the grey steel bars in front of me. I didn’t move.

I didn’t want to shift my weight because every muscle in my body protested. My thighs and my hips were still deeply sore from the way Julian had pinned me against the wall of my penthouse at three in the morning, his weight heavy and punishing as he claimed me. Now, that soreness was a dull, throbbing ache aggravated by the freezing metal of the bench.

I had never thought I would be behind bars. Not for a corporate dispute, not for a traffic violation, and certainly not for murder. The weight of the heavy metal handcuffs on my wrists earlier had left a deep, red ring in my skin, but the mental shock was worse. I was Katia Kensington. I was the CEO of IG Technologies. I was a mother. Yet, here I was, locked in a cell in a New York precinct, waiting for a legal team that had not yet arrived.

The humiliation was a physical pressure in my throat, hot and suffocating. I wanted to scream, to kick the metal door, to demand to know how a spliced, fabricated security loop was enough to lock me in a cage. But I forced myself to sit still. If I broke now, if I let the panic take over, I would lose the composure I needed to survive this.

My mind kept spinning back to the Windsor estate. I remembered the flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the high glass windows of the lobby. I remembered the terror of hearing the police cruisers’ gravel-crunching up the driveway at four in the afternoon. But most of all, I thought about Aiden.

I remembered the small, pale look on my son’s face as he stood at the top of the stairs, confused and frightened by the uniform-clad men in our space. Julian had taken him away quickly, his large hands holding Aiden’s shoulders, shielding him from the sight of his mother being treated like a criminal.

Is he safe? I thought, my chest tightening.

Did Gail get him to the guest cabin?

Does he know what’s happening?

Julian had promised me he would be at the precinct in twenty minutes. It had been hours. Night was fully falling now, casting long, dark shadows of the evening through the high, barred window of the holding block. I knew he was working. I knew his legal team was probably tearing the NYPD’s files apart, but the isolation inside the cell was a physical weight.

The grey jumpsuit they had made me change into was scratchy and smelled of institutional laundry. It offered no warmth against the draft coming from the corridor.

Footsteps echoed down the concrete corridor. Slow, deliberate, and clicking with the unmistakable sound of designer heels.

I didn’t stand up. I didn’t even look up until the shadow fell across the bars of my cell.

Delia stood there. She was wearing a cream-colored wool coat that cost more than most people made in a month, her hair perfectly styled, her face carrying an expression of smug, victorious satisfaction. She looked down at me through the steel, her eyes tracking the scratchy grey jumpsuit and the bare concrete floor of my cage.

“Well, being behind bars suits you, sis,” she said.

Her voice was clear, sharp, and dripping with an artificial sweetness that made my stomach turn.

I didn’t reply. I kept my eyes on her, my face completely blank. I didn’t want to waste my energy on small talk, and I certainly wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing me look desperate, broken, or dirty. I had spent my entire life dealing with Delia’s calculated cruelty and my mother’s management. I knew exactly how to starve them of the reaction they wanted.

“Well, even if you do not answer, one thing I know is that you are not coming out of this one,” Delia continued, her voice echoing in the quiet corridor. She stepped closer to the bars, her fingers wrapping around the cold steel. Her eyes narrowed, the smugness hardening into something ugly and desperate. “And you will stop clinging to my husband as if he were yours p>

A slow smirk touched my lips. The sheer predictability of her jealousy was almost pathetic. She had brought a man to my mother’s dinner table to bait me, she had watched me walk out, and now she was here, standing in a dirty police precinct, trying to stake a claim on a man who had never belonged to her.

I stood up from the metal bench. My movements were slow. My legs were stiff, the soreness in my inner thighs making the simple act of walking a calculated effort, but I kept my posture completely straight. I walked toward the bars, stopping just inches from where she stood, our faces separated only by the cold grey metal.

“Delia, why are you here?” I asked, my voice calm, level, and completely devoid of emotion.

Delia looked at me, her chin raised, her eyes flitting over my face to search for any crack in my armor. “To tell you that my husband and I can finally breathe p>

“Your husband, you say,” I said, tilting my head slightly. I raised a brow, letting my gaze drift slowly over her face, noting the heavy makeup she had used to hide the dark circles under her eyes. “You know, Delia, the way you talk, one can actually think you aren’t really the wife. Because what do you mean, your husband and you can finally breathe? Were you guys not breathing before p>

Her face flushed a dark, angry red. The perfect composure she had spent the afternoon preparing cracked in a fraction of a second.

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