Chapter 154

[ 1,111 words ]

Julian’s POV

The report landed at midnight.

Reid sent it with no commentary — just the file, the timestamp, and a photograph. Katia Kensington at a restaurant in Tribeca. Private room. Victor sat across the table from her. His hand over hers. The photograph was taken through the window from street level, and it was grainy, but it was enough.

It was more than enough to make me want to burn the city to the ground.

I stared at the image until the edges of my vision blurred into a jagged, pulsing red. I knew Victor was dangerous. I had the full file on him. I had watched him move in Dubai with the smooth, deliberate confidence of a predator. I had tracked every corporate attack, every planted article, every fucking cent of that bounty.

What I had not known, what I could not fathom, was that she would go to dinner with him. Alone. Without telling me.

The rage didn’t arrive as a wave; it arrived as a detonator. I swept a heavy crystal decanter off my desk, watching it shatter against the floor, the amber liquid staining the rug like a wound. “Motherfucker,” I hissed, my voice a broken snarl.

I called Zane at twelve thirty. My hand was shaking so violently I almost dropped the phone.

“I know,” Zane said immediately. “I saw the report p>

“She went to him,” I said, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat.

“Yes p>

“She sat across from Victor Hale and had dinner and did not fucking tell me, Zane!” I roared, the sound echoing off the wood-panelled walls. “She let him touch her. Look at the photograph. He has his hand on her. He’s claiming her right in front of the goddamn window p>

“Julian.” Zane’s voice had the tone it got when he was about to say something I needed to hear and was not going to enjoy. “Before you do whatever you’re thinking about doing p>

“I’m going to her apartment. I’m going to drag her out of there and p>

“I know. Don’t p>

“Zane, don’t you fucking start with me p>

“You are not her husband,” he said flatly. “You are not her anything officially. Beyond that, you are still very much married to her sister, Julian. You need to be extremely careful what you do and where you show up at this hour. You do not get to show up at her apartment at midnight because she had dinner with someone you don’t like p>

I stood up and kicked the heavy desk chair, sending it skidding across the room, where it splintered against the baseboard. “You think this is just someone I don’t like? I heard the wire, Zane. I heard that piece of shit tell her he wanted to rub his cock between her thighs. My thighs! Katia’s thighs are mine! He was talking about ruining her while he bought her sea bass. And she sat there. She played along. She fucking giggled p>

“She was protecting the mission,” Zane said. “She was playing the part p>

I stepped toward the window, my reflection looking like a stranger’s — eyes wired, a man on the edge of a violent break. “I don’t give a fuck about the mission! You want to know why I’m mad? Because she’s mine to fuck. She’s mine to ruin. Not some motherfucker like Victor Hale. I am the only one who gets to see her fall apart. I am the only one who gets to taste her. If he so much as thinks about those thighs again, I will dismantle every brick of his life p>

Silence on the other end. Then Zane breathed, “You’re acting like a lunatic. You’re acting like she’s your property p>

“She is mine,” I snapped, then hung up.

I looked at the photograph for another ten minutes. Victor’s hand over hers. His body angled toward her. Then I picked up my phone and typed, ’Hale is not what he told you p>

I sent it. I stared at the ceiling for forty minutes of agonizing silence. Something sat low and tight in my chest, a possessive rot that did not respond to logic.

My phone lit up. I know. But he said something interesting. Tell me, I typed. Not tonight.

I stared at the screen. Not tonight. She had gone to dinner with him, let him touch her hand — I had seen the photograph; I knew what that looked like, and had come home and was now shutting me out.

I stood up from my desk and walked to the window. I thought about the three words she’d sent and the fact that she had not told me she was going. Had not mentioned it. I knew her — I had spent thirty days noticing everything about her — and I knew she had a reason.

That did not make the photograph easier to look at. It made me want to kill.

I called Zane back. “She said he told her something interesting. And she told me ’not tonight.’ She’s managing me, Zane. Just like she was managing him p>

“Julian,” Zane sighed. “Go to bed. You are in love with a woman while still married to her sister. This is the situation you created p>

“I am going to be anything but calm about this,” I said, ignoring him. “When I see her tomorrow, I’m going to make sure she remembers who she belongs to. Hale doesn’t get a single thought. He doesn’t get a single look p>

I closed the photograph, but the image was seared into my brain. At three AM my phone lit up again.

He claims Meridian’s algorithm was stolen from him. If he’s right, IG’s foundation is compromised. We need to talk tomorrow.

I read it twice. Then the second text came:

He had his hands all over me by the way. Just thought you should know.

I stared at the screen for a full minute, my breath coming in ragged, predatory gasps. She was poking the bear. She knew exactly what that sentence would do to me. She was challenging the claim.

I typed back, ’I know.’ I have the photograph. Three seconds. Of course you do.

I put the phone down. I was not going to sleep. I was going to spend the next four hours imagining exactly how I was going to mark her tomorrow — how I was going to erase Victor Hale’s lingering touch with a possessiveness that would leave her with no doubt whose hands were allowed to be on her.

Tomorrow wasn’t just a conversation. It was a reclaiming. And I was going to ruin anyone who got in the way.

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