Chapter 332

[ 1,048 words ]

Katia’s POV

“I am not having a second daughter scream accusations at the same man in one evening,” Martha said, voice climbing, both hands pressed to her temples like she could physically hold the night together. “I cannot survive a second one of these p>

“Then sit down and listen,” I said, and turned back to Jude before anyone else could speak. “Three years ago, a man named Jude Wolfe married a model named Hailey Maddison. Public ceremony. Registered. Never annulled. Never divorced. So either there are two Jude Wolfes in this world, or the man sitting at my family’s table tonight cannot possibly be the husband I married seven years before that marriage ever happened, because that man would already have a wife p>

“That proves nothing,” Jude said, too fast. “Anyone can find a name that matches. There are probably a dozen Jude Wolfes in this country alone p>

“Then prove you’re not one of them,” David said, his voice flat and hard, cutting clean through. “Sam. Open it p>

Sam looked at me first. I nodded.

She flipped the folder open and turned it so the table could see; a copy of the registry page lay flat against the white tablecloth, names typed clean across the middle of it, and a date stamped in the corner, three years old.

Martha’s hand came up to her mouth.

“That’s his face,” she said, softly, almost to herself, staring at a photograph clipped beside the registry copy. “David, that is his face on that page p>

“It’s an old photo,” Jude said, too quickly, before anyone had even asked him. “It could be anyone. The lighting in those wedding photos is terrible, you can barely make out p>

“It’s you,” Martha said, and her voice cracked on the second word, something genuinely broken moving through it now, all the brightness she’d walked in with hours ago gone entirely. “I sat across from you at dinners. I know your face, Jude. That is your face p>

“I’m looking,” my father said, and he didn’t sound like a man relieved. He sounded like a man watching the floor of his own understanding give way one board at a time.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Jude said, backing half a step from the table, his hand dragging through his hair. “You people decided I was lying before I even walked through that door tonight, and no matter what I say it’s apparently not going to be enough, so let’s talk about why you actually care this much, Katia. You’re not doing this because you suddenly distrust your husband. You’re doing this because of him.” He pointed, finally, at Julian, without looking at him. “This whole performance, the folder, the assistant, all of it, it’s not about who I am. It’s about clearing a path to who you actually want p>

“Don’t,” I said, quietly, and something about the single word made him stop talking the same way it had twenty minutes earlier.

“I’m only saying what everyone at this table is too polite to say out loud,” Jude pushed on anyway, panic bleeding through now. “You’ve been distant with me for weeks. Cold. The second he’s in the room, you forget I exist. Maybe this whole investigation started the moment you decided you’d rather have him than the man you actually married p>

“Careful,” I said. “You’re so busy accusing me of wanting someone else that you still haven’t answered the only question that matters tonight. Are you, or are you not, already married to that woman in the folder p>

He didn’t answer.

“Sit down,” David said again, “and explain to my family what that paper is, or get out of this house tonight and never come back p>

Nobody moved.

Jude looked at the page. Looked at me. Looked, finally, toward the doorway, toward the second set of footsteps that had stayed just out of the light this entire time, waiting.

“You wouldn’t,” he said, his voice gone somewhere small and frightened now, nothing left in it of the man who’d walked in tonight calling himself my husband.

“Wouldn’t what p>

“You know exactly what I mean p>

“I really don’t,” I said, and smiled at him, the same smile I’d been saving all night. “Why don’t you say it? Out loud. In front of everyone p>

He didn’t say it.

So I looked past him, toward the hallway, and raised my voice just enough to carry.

“You can come in now p>

The footsteps that had been waiting finally moved, slow at first, then faster, heels striking the marble in a rhythm none of us had heard before tonight, and I watched every person at that table turn toward the doorway at once. Jude’s whole body went rigid, like a man bracing for an impact he had no way of stopping, and when the woman finally stepped fully into the light of the dining room, I watched his mouth open and absolutely nothing come out of it at all.

She was beautiful in the kind of effortless way that made the whole room feel slightly underdressed, dark hair pulled back from a face that hadn’t bothered with much makeup, like she’d left wherever she’d been living in a hurry and hadn’t stopped to care how she looked doing it.

She stood in the doorway for exactly one second, taking in the table, the wreckage of dinner, the wine stain still drying on the marble where Delia had shattered her glass an hour earlier, and then her eyes found Jude and stopped moving entirely.

“You,” she said.

One word. It landed harder than anything I’d said all night.

“Hailey.” Jude’s voice came out wrong, too high, nothing left of the smooth charm he’d walked in wearing three hours ago. “What are you doing here. How did you even p>

“How did I get here?” Her laugh had no humor in it at all. “A very polite woman called me this morning and told me my husband was about to be exposed as a liar at a family dinner in another country and asked if I wanted a flight.” She looked around the table slowly, taking in Martha’s stricken face, David braced against the bar cart, and Delia frozen by the doorway. “I should have asked for first class. I would have liked a drink before this p>

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