Chapter 329
[ 1,080 words ]
Katia’s POV
“There’s no home to wreck, Delia,” I said. “That’s the part you can’t say out loud. A home requires two people choosing each other. You’ve spent two years choosing a name and a bank account and calling it a marriage because the alternative was admitting you’d settled for less than you actually wanted p>
“You don’t know what I wanted p>
“Don’t I,” I said. “You wanted to be Mrs. Windsor. You wanted the title, the parties, and the way people’s faces change the moment they hear his name attached to yours. You never actually wanted him, not the way a wife is supposed to want her husband, and somewhere along the way you convinced yourself that didn’t matter as long as everyone else believed the performance p>
“That’s cruel,” Martha said quietly, though I noticed she did not actually deny it.
“It’s honest,” I said. “Cruelty would be letting her keep living this lie for another two years while everyone in this family pretends not to notice how empty it’s become p>
“Am I even tired?” Delia said, almost to herself now, repeating my question back like she was testing the words for the first time, seeing if they fit anywhere inside her.
“Are you?” I said.
“You don’t get to do this,” Delia said, her voice breaking on every word now. “You don’t get to stand in your perfect penthouse with your fake husband and your stolen one and tell me my marriage was never real p>
“I’m not telling you it was never real,” I said. “I’m telling you it was never returned. There’s a difference, and you’ve known the difference for two years. You just never had anyone willing to say it to your face until tonight p>
“Stop,” she said again, weaker this time.
“I’ll stop the moment you stop pretending,” I said.
Delia stared at me, her chest heaving, her hands trembling visibly now at her sides, and for one long moment I genuinely believed she might finally say something true.
Instead, without another word, she turned and bolted from the room, moving so fast and so hard that she caught the edge of the side table on her way past it, sending the wine glass she had abandoned there crashing to the marble floor in a spray of glass and red wine that nobody in that room moved to clean up.
The crash of the wine glass still hung in the air when Delia reappeared in the doorway, her face streaked and furious, apparently unwilling to let the rest of us finish destroying her reputation without her standing there to hear every word of it.
“I’m not done,” she said, her voice raw. “You don’t get to say all of that and then let me walk out while everyone just stands here agreeing with you p>
“Nobody’s agreeing with anything,” I said. “We’re simply waiting to see if you’ll finally tell the truth p>
Jude seized the moment, stepping forward with both hands raised slightly, the posture of a man trying to physically calm a room he had lost control of several minutes ago.
“I think,” he said, “we should all take a breath. This has clearly become about old wounds between sisters, and I don’t think any of us benefit from p>
“Don’t,” I said, and turned the full weight of my attention onto him for the first time in several minutes. “Don’t you dare try to use Delia’s pain as a shield for yourself right now p>
“I’m simply trying to de-escalate p>
“You’re trying to disappear into the background before anyone asks you a question you can’t answer,” I said. “So let’s ask it now, while everyone’s still in the room. How did you know about Victor Hale’s fall p>
The room shifted again, something in the air changing entirely, Jude’s careful composure cracking visibly for the first time since dinner began.
“I told you already,” he said. “I had contacts who fed me the footage. It’s how I cleared your name p>
“Whose contacts?” I said.
“I don’t reveal sources,” he said, and the line came out far too smooth, far too rehearsed, the kind of answer a man gave when he had practiced it in a mirror.
“Convenient,” I said. “Because I had Sam pull the access logs on that footage this week. Do you know what she found, Jude? The original file was only ever accessed by two people before it reached you. Security, and one member of this family who still had clearance to that building’s system from when she lived there as Julian’s wife p>
Martha’s hand drifted up to her mouth.
David set down a glass he had only just picked back up.
“Delia,” I said, turning to my sister, “handed you that footage. Didn’t she p>
“That’s not true,” Jude said quickly, too quickly, his eyes flicking toward Delia for half a second before he caught himself.
“I didn’t ask you,” I said. “I asked her p>
Delia’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“You staged it,” I said, looking between the two of them now, watching the pieces finally lock into place out loud, in front of everyone, exactly the way Sam and I had assembled them across her desk that morning. “She gave you the footage. You used it to walk in and play hero, clear my name, and earn yourself a place in this family you had absolutely no legitimate claim to. The two of you built an entire rescue out of evidence she had no right giving you p>
“Why?” Martha said, her voice barely above a whisper, looking at her eldest daughter now with something close to horror. “Why would you do that, Delia? Why would you hand a stranger evidence about your own sister’s case p>
“It wasn’t like that,” Delia said, the words coming apart even as she said them.
“Then tell us what it was like,” I said. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks exactly like a woman so desperate to punish her sister that she handed a con artist the tools to walk into this family and steal her place at the table p>
“I didn’t know what he was going to do with it,” Delia said, her voice shaking badly now. “I gave it to him because he asked, because he said it would help. I didn’t think p>
“You didn’t think,” I repeated. “You didn’t think a man you barely knew, asking for confidential evidence in a murder case involving your own sister, might have something other than good intentions p>
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