Chapter 244

[ 946 words ]

Katia’s POV

“I’m back,” she said. Simply. Like it explained everything. Like it was supposed to.

She looked at Delia briefly—one second, the assessment of a woman who had already decided something was not a threat and was moving on—and then her eyes came to me.

She looked at me the way you looked at a person who was standing somewhere you had not expected anyone to be.

“Katia Kensington,” I said. “IG Technologies p>

“I know who you are,” she said. Not unkindly. Just factually. The way you acknowledged a headline sponsor. “The tech company.” She smiled—not at me, already moving back to Julian. “You have interesting friends, Julian p>

“Business partners,” I said.

She did not respond to that. She was already focused entirely on Julian, her body angled toward him, the rest of the room existing only as background to the conversation she had decided she was having.

“We need to catch up,” she said to him. “I have a proposal for WEG. Sterling Motorsports is looking for a new title sponsor for next season.” She tilted her head slightly. “I thought of you immediately p>

“My office can arrange a meeting,” Julian said.

“I was thinking dinner,” Tessa said.

The silence that followed that was extremely short and extremely loud.

Delia’s grip on Julian’s arm had gone rigid.

I turned slightly and looked at the McLaren Senna again because looking at the car was more productive than watching what was happening beside me, and I needed something to do with my face that was not what I was actually feeling.

“I’ll have my assistant reach out,” Julian said.

Tessa smiled. The smile of a woman who had just received an answer she had expected and was not finished yet.

“I look forward to it,” she said.

She held his gaze for one beat longer than necessary.

Then she moved away, back into the crowd, the gold dress catching the light as she went.

The room exhaled.

I looked at the McLaren.

Beside me, Delia said nothing. Her hand had dropped from Julian’s arm.

Julian looked at the car.

“Former sponsor relationship,” he said, quietly, or possibly to me.

“I did not ask,” I said.

He said nothing else.

I finished my water.

The exhibition continued around us—the cars, the champagne, the money, and the speed trying to exist in the same room—and somewhere across the floor Tessa Sterling was working the crowd with the ease of a woman who had decided she had already won something.

I did not know what she thought she had won.

But I knew one thing.

The room had just gotten significantly more complicated.

The media wall was positioned near the exit to the VIP terrace, a massive step-and-repeat branded with the IG Technologies and WEG logos.

The press was a wall of noise—the rapid clicking of shutter lenses, the bright, blinding flash of bulbs, and the shouting of names from journalists desperate for a quote. I stood slightly to the side, my glass of water still in my hand, watching Delia execute her performance.

She had dragged Julian toward the center of the backdrop. Her hand was locked around his arm, her body angled so close to his that the red fabric of her dress was practically bleeding into his dark suit. She was smiling for the cameras, the wide, bright, rehearsed smile of a Kensington who had been taught from birth that public perception was the only currency that mattered.

Julian was not smiling.

He stood there like a stone pillar, his jaw set, his eyes completely dark as he stared over the heads of the photographers. He was tolerating it. He was letting her play the wife for exactly three more frames before he walked away, and Delia knew it, her fingers gripping his sleeve with a desperate, white-knuckled tightness.

Then, the noise of the press bank shifted.

It didn’t quiet down; it reached a frantic, screeching peak. The photographers began shifting their lenses, abandoning the shot of Julian and Delia to capture the woman moving past the security stanchions.

Tessa Sterling didn’t wait for an invitation. She walked straight past the red carpet handlers, her gold gown catching the light with every long, athletic stride. She didn’t look at the cameras. She didn’t look at the reporters shouting her name.

And she didn’t look at Delia.

Tessa walked right past my sister as if she were nothing more than a piece of cheap cardboard scenery. Her eyes were locked entirely on Julian. The certainty in her face was absolute—the look of a woman who had decided years ago that something belonged to her, and she had simply arrived to collect the debt.

Delia’s smile froze. Her hand stayed on Julian’s arm, but her body went entirely rigid as Tessa stepped onto the branded backdrop, directly into their space.

“Tessa,” Delia began, her voice high and sharp, trying to inject her standard social authority into the air. “We were just p>

Tessa didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge the sound of Delia’s voice. She didn’t give her a fraction of a second.

She stopped inches from Julian.

In front of the flashing cameras, in front of the fifty journalists, in front of Delia, and in front of me, Tessa reached out. Her hands, strong and calloused from years of gripping a steering wheel at two hundred miles per hour, grabbed Julian by the lapels of his suit.

She pulled him down. And she kissed him.

It wasn’t a polite cheek kiss. It wasn’t a social greeting. She pressed her mouth fully, deeply against his, her lips parting as she claimed him in front of the entire world.

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