Chapter 205

[ 1,128 words ]

Julian’s POV

I had called Seraphina at five in the morning.

She had answered on the second ring—that was the thing about Seraphina; she was always available when the money was right, and she had never once asked a question she did not want the answer to. I had told her what I needed. She had arrived at the estate forty minutes later wearing her own coat over nothing because I had asked her to put on the gown I had left outside the guest room door.

She had done it without asking why.

That was also the thing about Seraphina.

She was standing in the kitchen now, holding the breakfast tray I had asked the cook to prepare—two portions, enough for two people, the things I knew Katia would want in the morning—and looking at me with the expression she wore when she was about to present a bill.

She handed me the tray.

“You are going to pay more for that slap, Julian,” she said. Her voice was pleasant. It was always pleasant. “I did not sign up to be slapped by your wife. Two thousand dollars for the slap. I am not playing with you p>

I smiled.

That was the thing about her. Money always talked. There was never any ambiguity, never any drama that could not be resolved with a clear financial arrangement. It was, in its way, the simplest relationship I had.

“Two thousand,” I said. “Done p>

“Thank you,” she adjusted the sleeve of the gown. “Julian p>

“Yes p>

“Why do you keep that Delia woman when you do not even like her?” She tilted her head slightly. “This is not the first time I have asked you p>

“No,” I agreed. “It is not p>

“So p>

“It is a long story,” I said. “But I will sort it out soon p>

She looked at me for a moment. Seraphina had always had the ability to look at a situation and understand more of it than she was meant to without asking any further questions. She had been doing it for as long as I had known her.

“Well,” she said. She looked at the tray. “Whoever is going to eat this breakfast is very lucky p>

I smiled at her.

She looked at me with the particular expression that meant she knew everything she needed to know and was choosing not to say it.

I left her standing in the kitchen and went upstairs.

She would find the guest room. I had left it prepared. Seraphina knew how to navigate a house.

The bedroom was quiet.

Katia was still asleep. She had not moved — she was on her side, the duvet pulled up, her hair loose across the pillow. The morning light was coming through the curtains at an angle that caught the ends of it.

I set the tray down on the bedside table.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

I leaned over and kissed her.

She stirred slightly. A small sound. Her brow furrowed the way it did when she was between sleep and waking and was not entirely sure which direction to go.

I kissed her again.

She opened her eyes.

She looked at me for a moment with the unfocused attention of someone who had not yet fully decided where they were. Then something settled in her face, and she was present.

“Good morning,” I said.

She sat up slowly. I noticed it immediately—the slight difficulty of it, the careful way she shifted her weight. I had expected that. I had not gone easy on her, and she had not asked me to, and the morning after was its own accounting.

I picked up a grape from the tray and held it out.

She looked at it. Then at me. She opened her mouth, and I placed it on her tongue, and she ate it with the slightly suspicious expression of someone who was not yet sure what was happening but was too tired to object.

I kissed her.

“No sex,” she said.

I laughed.

It arrived before I decided to let it—a real laugh, complete, the kind I did not produce very often. She looked at me when it happened with slightly wide eyes like she had not been expecting that sound and was not sure what to do with it.

“You will have to get used to this cock,” I said. “To me, all of me p>

She looked at me.

“I said no sex,” she said.

“I heard you,” I said. “Eat your breakfast p>

I poured the coffee. I handed her the cup, and she took it with both hands and drank, and some of the wariness left her face the way it always left her face when she had coffee.

I watched her try to shift to a more comfortable position and not quite manage it.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I went too hard; it’s hard to control myself around you. Even now, I’m hard and need a release p>

She looked at me with an expression that said she was deciding between several responses.

“I will be gentle next time,” I said.

She looked at me for another moment.

“I do not think,” she said, “that gentle and you should be in the same sentence p>

I laughed again.

She almost smiled. The almost version—the one that arrived at the corner of her mouth and decided not to commit fully, the one I had catalogued without meaning to across a year of boardrooms and war rooms and late nights.

I put food on her plate. She ate. I ate. The bedroom was quiet around us — the morning light moving, the city beyond the windows doing its Sunday thing, the house below us quiet in the way it was quiet after a significant evening.

We ate breakfast together.

She did not ask me what any of it meant. She did not ask about the families or Delia or the London expansion that had never been about the London expansion. She ate her food and drank her coffee and sat in my bed in the morning light, and I sat beside her and thought about seven years and how this was what the end of them looked like.

Not a revelation. Not a confrontation.

Just breakfast.

My wife was eating breakfast in my bed on a Sunday morning while the city moved below us and the conversation that still needed to happen sat quietly between us, waiting for its moment.

It could wait a little longer.

She handed me her empty cup.

I refilled it.

She took it back without saying anything.

That was enough for now. Though, I will not tell her I was the man from seven years ago. She will have to earn that part.

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