Chapter 287

[ 1,085 words ]

Julian’s POV

He was a fraud. He had never touched her. He had never seen her naked, he was not married to her, and he certainly was not the father of the boy sleeping upstate. He had fabricated the entire husband narrative from London to secure IG Technologies’ telemetry assets. If he tried to challenge this fake document, the court would demand a DNA test—and the second his DNA failed to match Aiden’s, his entire global lie would be completely incinerated. He would be exposed as a public fraud, his racing division would be ruined, and he would face immediate prosecution for corporate extortion.

He didn’t dare verify the document. He couldn’t.

I knew that Aiden carried my jaw, my hands, and my blood. The boy was mine, legally and biologically, and Jude was nothing but a cheap, desperate actor who had stepped into a war he wasn’t prepared for.

“You’re very clever, Julian,” Jude whispered, his voice shaking with a sudden, deep-seated terror. “You… you actually think she belongs to you. You’re completely mad p>

“I don’t think,” I hissed, my hand reaching down to grab his right wrist—the hand he had raised to strike my wife across the face. “I know p>

I gripped his right index finger. I didn’t squeeze slowly. I twisted it.

Snap.

Jude let out a high-pitched, screeching scream of pure, agonizing torment that bounced off the high steel ceilings of the warehouse. His body arched violently off the chair, his veins bulging against his neck, his face turning a ghastly shade of grey as the bone in his finger fractured completely.

“You used this hand to slap her,” I growled, my voice dropping to a low, whispering register that was entirely empty of warmth. “You used this hand to write your name on what is not yours. You will never use it again p>

I grabbed the heavy black titanium pen and forced it into his left hand, slapping it against the paper.

“You have five seconds to sign with your left hand,” I commanded, my taped fingers wrapping around his broken right hand, ready to take the next finger off. “Or I will start stripping your hand down to the bone p>

“I’ll sign! I’ll sign!” Jude choked out, his chest heaving in wild, hysterical gasps.

His left hand was trembling violently, his fingers barely able to grip the heavy metal pen. But the sheer terror of my grip on his broken hand was enough to force his compliance. Using his left hand, his face slick with sweat and blood, he scribbled his signature across the bottom of the document, the ink scratching messily against the white paper.

The second his pen left the paper, I snatched the document away. I folded it carefully, sliding it deep inside the pocket of my overcoat.

I looked down at him. He was broken, trembling, and utterly dismantled, his head resting against his chest as he wept silent, agonizing tears of pain and defeat.

I had the signature. I had the confession. But as I looked at his ruined face, the calculating side of my brain was still tracking the missing puzzle piece. He was a billionaire. He ran a massive global motorsport division. He had risked his entire career, his reputation, and his physical health to fly across the Atlantic and play husband to a woman he had never seen before.

Why?

“Why Katia, Jude?” I asked, my voice a quiet, level murmur that cut through the sound of the rain. “Why did you leave London to play husband to a woman you aren’t married to p>

Jude let out a wet, rattling wheeze, his head slowly tilting up. Through the swelling of his left eye, a tight, vicious smirk touched the corner of his bloody lips—the final, desperate defiance of a dying predator.

“Ask… ask your sister-in-law, Julian,” Jude whistled through his wired teeth, his voice shaking. “Ask her… who she met… in Las Vegas seven years ago. Ask her… who actually owns… that pretty little ass of hers. Because… it’s me p>

The statement landed in the cold air of the warehouse, but it didn’t hit the target he wanted.

Inside my chest, a cold, dangerous smile touched my own lips. I raised my chin, looking down at his broken, arrogant face with the quiet, detached curiosity of a scientist studying a nuisance.

“I don’t need to ask her,” I said, my voice carrying a quiet, terrifying finality. “Because I already know the answer p>

I turned on my heel and walked out of the light, my strides long, heavy, and deliberate as I headed back toward the double metal doors of the warehouse. Behind me, Jude’s shallow, rattling breathing was the only sound, but I didn’t look back.

The lights in the dining room were warm when I walked through the front doors.

I could hear them, Grandma Celeste’s voice, low and measured; Gail responding; the faint clink of silverware against porcelain. A normal evening. Dinner at the Windsor family mansion was the way it had always been—quiet for a household that had learned to function around the silences its men left behind.

I did not stop.

I walked through the entrance hall, past the open dining room doors, and I did not look in. I heard the conversation stop. I heard the clink of silverware pause. I heard Grandma say nothing, which was the loudest thing she could have done, because Grandma Celeste always knew when to say nothing.

I kept walking.

The blood on my shirt was dry in places and still wet in others. My knuckles had bled through the medical tape again—the warehouse had been thorough work. My face was clean. That was the only clean thing about me.

I took the east corridor to the guest wing.

I stopped outside her door.

I stood there for a moment in the quiet hallway, my hand flat against the wood, the sound of my own breathing the only thing in the corridor. Behind me the house was holding itself still. Nobody was going to come out of that dining room and ask me anything. They knew better.

I opened the door.

The room was dark. The curtains were drawn against the evening, and the only light was the thin line of the city coming through the gap at the bottom of the fabric. She was in the bed—on her side, facing the window, the duvet pulled up to her shoulder, her breathing the slow, even rhythm of someone genuinely asleep.

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