Chapter 279

[ 1,266 words ]

Delia’s POV

I had chosen Maison Noir because nobody I knew ate there on Tuesdays.

That was the entire reason. I needed a meal that was not inside Julian’s mansion; I needed a table where nobody was going to look at me with the quiet assessment of a Windsor security team member, and I needed forty-five minutes of not being invisible in my own home. Maison Noir was dark, expensive, and discreet. The kind of restaurant that attracted people who did not want to be seen.

Which was why I was surprised when Tessa Sterling sat down across from me uninvited.

She did not ask. She simply arrived at my table with the casual authority of a woman who had never once in her life waited for permission to occupy a space. She was in a dark blazer, her hair down, no racing gear, no corporate performance. She looked like a woman who had decided to be off duty and was still more intimidating than most people at full capacity.

She picked up the menu.

“The duck here is good,” she said.

I stared at her.

“You threw me out of your office,” I said.

“I did,” she agreed, without looking up from the menu. “And I stand by that decision. But you gave me information that I have been sitting with for a week, and I have some follow-up questions.” She set the menu down and looked at me directly. “So. Shall we be civil or shall I leave and you can go back to eating alone p>

I looked at her.

I looked at my wine glass.

“Civil,” I said.

Tessa signalled the waiter.

She ordered the duck and a glass of something red that cost more than my first car. She did it without looking at the price list. I had always done that too — I was a Kensington; we did not look at price lists — but watching Tessa do it made me feel obscurely competitive in a way I could not entirely explain.

“You told me Julian is obsessed with Katia,” Tessa said once the waiter had gone. Her voice was low and conversational. The tone of someone discussing the weather rather than the thing that had been sitting in her chest for seven days.

“He is,” I said.

“I have been thinking about that,” Tessa said. “And I am not sure that is the right reading of the situation p>

I looked at her. “What do you mean p>

“I mean that Julian Windsor is a man who has been protecting a business investment,” she said. “Katia’s company is deeply embedded in WEG’s infrastructure contracts. She is worth protecting from a purely financial perspective.” She paused, picking up her wine when it arrived, turning the glass slowly. “But I watched them together at the committee luncheon. And I watched him at the Grand Prix.” She looked at me. “He was not watching Katia at the Grand Prix p>

I frowned. “What do you mean p>

“He was watching the circuit,” Tessa said. “Specifically, the underground section after the main race. The service exit.” She set her glass down. “He was not watching your sister. He was watching something else entirely.” Her eyes moved to my face with a careful, assessing focus. “Tell me about Catwoman p>

I blinked.

Of all the things I had expected to come out of Tessa Sterling’s mouth at a Tuesday dinner in Maison Noir, that was not on the list.

“The underground racer?” I said.

“Yes,” Tessa said. “The one who beat me at the Brooklyn Grand Prix.” She said it flatly, without embarrassment, which I had to admit took real composure. “Eight seconds. On a wet circuit. In a car that should not have been able to do what it did in those conditions.” She paused. “Julian Windsor drove a matching McLaren into the service exit immediately after the race to block three cars that were trying to corner her. And then he sat in his suite and watched the victory replay with the expression of a man who was—” she paused, choosing the word carefully, “—proud p>

I stared at her.

“You think Julian knows who Catwoman is?” I said.

“I think,” Tessa said, “that Julian Windsor has been driving to underground racing circuits at midnight for months. I think his security team has been monitoring the Brooklyn circuit specifically. And I think the expression on his face at the Grand Prix was not the expression of a man watching a stranger race.” She picked up her fork. “He is obsessed with her. Not with Katia. With Catwoman p>

The information landed in my chest and rearranged something.

I thought about the nights Julian did not come home. The car returned at four in the morning, smelling of cold air and something I could not identify. The nights I had assumed he was with Katia — and maybe some of them he was, I was not naive — but some of them.

Some of them he had been at a circuit.

“He doesn’t know who she is, though,” I said, the words coming out before I had fully decided to say them. “He is obsessed with her, but I don’t think he knows who is under the helmet. Nobody does. Catwoman’s identity is the biggest secret on the underground circuit. People have been trying to unmask her for years p>

Tessa was quiet for a moment.

She cut a piece of duck with the precise, controlled movements of someone whose hands were trained for accuracy.

“Interesting,” she said.

“Why?” I said.

“Because I had assumed,” Tessa said carefully, “that Julian’s behaviour at the committee luncheon — the wrist, the comment about his wife — was about Katia. That she was the woman he was protecting.” She paused. “But if he is obsessed with a masked driver he has never seen the face of—” She stopped. Let the thought sit unfinished.

“You thought it was Katia,” I said.

“I thought he was being protective of your sister,” Tessa said simply. “A business partner. A family connection through your marriage. It made a kind of sense.” She looked at me. “But a man does not drive to midnight circuits and block service exits for a business partner. That is something else p>

Something shifted in her face. A recalibration. The stillness of a woman who had been looking in one direction for a long time and had just been given a reason to look somewhere else entirely.

She picked up her wine.

“Catwoman,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “Who are you p>

It was not a question directed at me. She had already forgotten I was there.

I sat across from her with my own wine and watched Tessa Sterling’s obsession migrate in real time — away from Katia, away from the committee luncheon and the boardroom and the press stunts — and settle with complete, total focus onto the masked driver who had beaten her by eight seconds on a wet Brooklyn circuit.

She was going to find out who Catwoman was.

I could see it in her face. The decision was being made behind her eyes, the strategy already beginning to form.

I should have felt something about that. Relief may be that the heat was moving away from my sister. Or satisfaction that Tessa had found a new target.

Instead, I just felt the familiar, hollow weight of a woman sitting in a dark restaurant on a Tuesday night who had given away something she had not fully understood yet.

I reached for my wine and drank. The duck was good.

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