Chapter 156

[ 1,090 words ]

Julian’s POV

I called the meeting on a Friday morning.

Not my usual legal team — not the WEG corporate lawyers who handled contracts and acquisitions and the day-to-day business of running an empire. My private lawyers. The ones who handled the things that didn’t go through company channels. There were three of them, and they had worked for me for eight years, and they knew how to receive unusual instructions without making them into a drama.

I put the marriage certificate on the table.

All three of them looked at it.

“Las Vegas,” the senior partner said. “Six years ago p>

“Yes p>

“The names on the certificate are Jules and Kat.” He looked at me over his glasses. “No surnames p>

“Correct p>

“And this is a fully registered marriage. Nevada county record, official seal, valid under US law p>

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at the certificate for another moment. “What would you like us to do with it p>

“I want the names completed,” I said. “I want full legal names attached to this certificate. Julian Alexander Windsor and—” I paused. “The woman’s full name, once identified p>

The room was very quiet.

“You don’t know her full name,” the second lawyer said carefully.

“I have a strong suspicion who she is,” I said. “I don’t have confirmation. What I need to know is the legal process for completing a marriage record where aliases were used at the time of registration p>

The senior partner leaned back. “It’s possible. Both parties would need to appear before a Nevada registrar and provide legal identification. The certificate would be amended to reflect full names. The marriage remains valid — it has been valid since the night it was signed. This is purely administrative p>

“Good,” I said.

“If the woman in question is unaware that this marriage exists p>

“She’s aware she was married,” I said. “She may not know to whom p>

Another silence.

“Mr Windsor,” the second lawyer said. “If you identify this woman and she does not wish to complete the registration p>

“That’s her right,” I said. “I’m not forcing anything. I want to understand the process. What happens when I’m ready to move p>

The senior partner made a note. “And the current arrangement? With Miss Kensington p>

“Miss Delia Kensington,” I said, “signed a private agreement to play a social role. There is no marriage certificate. There is no legal union. Ending that arrangement requires a conversation, not a lawyer.” I looked at him directly. “She is not my wife. She has never been my wife. The only marriage certificate with my name on it under any alias is the one on this table p>

The lawyers exchanged a look.

“There is one complication,” the senior partner said. “Once the certificate is formally amended with full legal names, it becomes part of the public record. A registered marriage between Julian Windsor and whoever this woman is would be, findable. By anyone who looked p>

I thought about that.

I thought about Delia. About Victor. About the investigator Delia had hired whose report she had been building into a list titled ’What I Know’. About the eighteen months Victor had spent dismantling IG from the outside and the bounty he had posted to unmask Catwoman and the dinner he had engineered with his hand on Katia’s and the photographs he had probably already commissioned.

“How long from the amendment to public record?” I said.

“Standard processing. Four to six weeks p>

“And in that window — who has access p>

“The parties involved and their legal representatives p>

“Nobody else p>

“Not unless someone knew to look and had reason to subpoena the records.” He paused. “Which would require knowing the certificate existed p>

I looked at the certificate on the table.

Jules and Kat. Two names I had looked at for six years. Two names that had been the only thread connecting me to a night I remembered in fragments and a morning I had woken up from alone.

She did not know she was married to me.

She thought she was married to a man she had met once in Las Vegas whose face she had never seen clearly. A man she had spent six years not looking for, not publicly, though she wore the evidence of the night on her left hand every day.

I had spent six years looking for her.

And she had been in my boardroom. In my grandmother’s garden. In a desert at sunset with her head tilted toward mine while our shadows stretched long across the sand.

I had told her I loved her. I had promised to fix things. I had said I know who she is to Zane in a port road at two in the morning with the tyre mark still warm under my fingers.

I had not yet told her what I suspected.

I had been waiting until I was certain. Until I had proof and not just a pattern. Until I could look her in the eyes and say it with the weight of something that could not be argued with.

I wanted to be the one to tell her.

Not Gail, who was getting closer to saying it out loud. Not Delia, who was building a list of everything she knew. Not Victor, who was circling both of them from different angles. Not a court document or a public record or a newspaper article.

Me.

I wanted to look at her across a table — or in a car park or on a balcony or wherever it happened — and I wanted to say, ’I know who you are.’ I have known for months. And I am not going anywhere.

And then I wanted to watch her face when she understood that the man she had been telling herself she had never met before the WEG partnership was the same man who had been on the other side of a Las Vegas marriage certificate for six years.

“Proceed,” I said. “Quietly. Nothing moves to public record until I tell you it can p>

The senior partner nodded. “And the woman’s name p>

I picked up the certificate. I looked at it one more time.

“I’ll give it to you,” I said, “when I’m ready p>

I folded it carefully and put it back in my jacket pocket.

I had carried it there before. The first time I had taken it out of the safe and held it, I had been twenty-eight years old and angry and certain she would be found within a year.

Six years later. Still in my pocket. Almost ready.

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