Chapter 331

[ 1,051 words ]

Katia’s POV

My father set his glass down, slow and deliberate, on the bar cart beside him.

“Jude,” he said, and his voice had none of its usual gentleness left in it, “if my daughter says she has paperwork, I’d think very carefully before calling her a liar in her own home p>

“David,” Jude said, turning to him with something almost wounded in his face, the performance still running even now, “you’ve known me for months. You’ve watched me at this table more nights than you can probably count. Do you really believe I’d do something like this p>

“Correction, weeks,” David said.

“This is what she does,” Jude said, turning back to me, his voice rising further, “she finds a thread, no matter how thin, and she pulls until something looks like proof, and then she stands in front of her own family and performs outrage like she’s the only person in this house who’s ever been wronged. First it’s Delia. Now it’s me. Who’s next, Katia? Your own mother p>

“Don’t,” I said quietly, and something about the single word made him actually stop talking, the way it had with Jude’s own performance not twenty minutes earlier. “Don’t turn this into me being cruel for asking a question you could answer in one sentence if it were actually false p>

“I did answer it p>

“You answered it the way a guilty man answers things. Loud. Insulted. Everywhere except the actual point p>

“Which is what, exactly?” Jude said. “Since apparently I’m not allowed to defend myself without it counting against me p>

“The point,” I said, “is that you’ve spent six months in this city pretending you came from nowhere, no history, no past, no complications, just a man who fell in love with me and asked my father for permission like it meant something sacred to you. And now I’m asking you to account for three years you apparently don’t have an answer for p>

“Because there’s nothing to account for p>

“Then there’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “So look me in the eye one more time and tell me you’ve never been married before p>

Jude held my gaze for exactly as long as it took him to realize I wasn’t going to look away first.

He didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought,” I said and reached for my phone on the table beside my plate, my thumb already finding Sam’s name in my contacts, watching something shift fast and ugly behind Jude’s eyes the second he understood exactly what I was about to do.

“Don’t,” he said, low now, all the performance finally gone from his voice.

I didn’t put the phone down.

“Sam,” I said, the moment the call connected, my eyes still locked on Jude’s face. “Bring it. All of it. Now p>

I hung up before he could say a single word back.

The room went perfectly silent, my mother’s breath caught somewhere in her throat, my father’s hand braced flat against the bar cart like he needed it to stay upright, and Jude stood frozen on the other side of the table with his jaw working soundlessly, watching the front door at the end of the hall the way a man watches a verdict he already knows is coming.

It took less than ninety seconds.

The elevator chimed once down the hall, and footsteps followed it, two sets, one heavier and familiar, one lighter and entirely unfamiliar, heels striking the marble in a rhythm none of us in that room had ever heard before tonight.

Jude didn’t turn around.

He just kept staring at me, like if he held my gaze long enough, the sound behind him might simply stop being real, and I watched every last trace of color drain out of his face the second I looked past his shoulder toward the doorway and let him see exactly what was written on mine.

Sam came through the doorway first, tablet already in her hand, a thin folder tucked under her arm like she’d been standing outside the elevator for the last ten minutes, waiting for exactly this moment.

She wasn’t alone. The second set of footsteps stayed behind her, just out of the light from the hall, and Jude’s eyes locked onto the shape of it the way a man watches something he already knows is going to ruin him.

“Sam,” Martha’s voice, thin and confused, said. “What is it? Why is your assistant here? What is happening p>

“Martha.” I didn’t look away from Jude. “Not now p>

“It is always not now with you, every single time, and meanwhile I am sitting at my own daughter’s table with no idea what is actually p>

“I have it,” Sam said, cutting cleanly through Martha’s spiral, holding the folder up without quite handing it over yet.

“This is absurd,” Jude said, and his voice cracked sideways, half laugh, half panic, an ugly sound that didn’t belong to the smooth man who’d kissed my cheek three hours ago. “You hired someone to dig up paperwork? Is that what tonight actually was? An ambush dressed up as a family dinner p>

“Don’t make this about what I did,” I said. “Make it about who you’ve been pretending to be for the past months p>

“I haven’t been pretending anything. I came back to you. I told you who I was the first night we met, I told your family, I stood in front of a judge p>

“You told us you were him,” I said. “The man I married in Vegas seven years ago. A stranger I never saw again until you supposedly walked back into my life with a ring and a story nobody could disprove because nobody but me was ever there that night, and I was too drunk to remember his face p>

“Because I am him p>

“Then explain Hailey Maddison p>

Something shifted behind his eyes, fast and ugly, the same flicker I’d watched all night.

“There is no Hailey Maddison,” he said. “I don’t know why you keep saying that name like it means something p>

“Liar,” Delia said suddenly and sharply, stepping fully into the room now instead of hovering near the doorway. “Look at his face, Katia, look at it; he knows exactly who that is p>

“I don’t need you to confirm it for me,” I said. “I already know p>

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.