Chapter 333

[ 1,009 words ]

Katia’s POV

“Sit down, Hailey, please; you don’t understand the situation p>

“Oh, I understand it perfectly.” She crossed the room toward him, and he actually flinched, an honest-to-God flinch, the first one I’d seen out of him all night. “I understand that my husband has been gone for months, telling me it was business. Motorsport sponsorship deals. Investor meetings. I understand I have been sitting in our flat in London wondering why you stopped calling back, and the entire time you were here, playing house, wearing a wedding ring that isn’t even mine p>

“Wedding ring,” Martha repeated faintly, like the words didn’t fit together in her mouth.

“His,” Hailey said, not even looking at her. “He’s still wearing it. Look at his hand. I thought he removed it for a new one p>

Every eye at the table went to Jude’s left hand at once, and for the first time all night I watched him actually try to hide something physically, curling his fingers into his palm like that might make the thin band of gold disappear.

“This is not what it looks like,” he said.

“It is exactly what it looks like,” I said. “You’ve spent months telling my city you were the man I married in Vegas, all while wearing the ring your actual wife gave you, and you didn’t even have the decency to take it off p>

“That’s not, I can explain p>

“Explain what,” Hailey said, rounding on him now, all the careful poise from the doorway burning away into something raw. “Explain why you took a job that meant pretending to be married to another woman? Explain why you let me think you were drowning in spreadsheets while you were sitting at someone else’s dinner table calling her sweetheart?” Her voice cracked. “Explain why, when I called the company looking for you, three different people told me Jude Wolfe doesn’t currently have any sponsorship meetings scheduled p>

“It’s complicated,” Jude said.

“It is the least complicated thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Hailey said. “You sold yourself to someone. I don’t know who. I don’t know why. But you sold yourself, and you didn’t even tell your own wife you were doing it p>

David’s hand had gone very still on the bar cart.

“Sold himself,” he repeated. “To who p>

“I told you, I don’t know,” Hailey said, and something in the way she said it, flat and tired, told me she’d already asked herself that question a hundred times on the flight over and arrived nowhere useful. “He stopped telling me things months ago. Before that, even. I used to know every name on his calendar. Then one day I didn’t, and I told myself that was normal, that men got busy, that marriages went quiet sometimes and came back around if you were patient enough p>

“And now,” I said.

“Now I know exactly how patient I was for,” she said. “Months. While he sat at a different table calling another woman his wife p>

Hailey turned, finally, toward the rest of the table, like she was only now remembering there were other people in the room who deserved an answer too.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He told me it was a sponsorship contract worth more than anything Wolfe Motorsport had seen in years. I assumed it meant flying around the world kissing rich men’s hands at dinner parties. I didn’t think it meant,” her eyes swept the room again, “this p>

“Somebody is paying you,” I said to Jude, my voice very quiet now. “To do exactly this. To walk into my family and claim a marriage that never happened. Who p>

“I’m not telling you that,” Jude said.

“You don’t have a choice anymore,” I said. “Your wife just flew across an ocean to watch you fall apart in front of strangers. I think the least you owe her, and this family, is a name p>

“You don’t understand what happens to me if I say it,” Jude said, and for the first time all night, the fear in his voice sounded entirely real, nothing performed about it. “You don’t understand who I’d be talking about p>

“Then maybe you should have thought about that before you took the money,” Delia said, quiet, from the doorway, the first thing she’d said in several minutes.

“This is rich, coming from you,” Jude snapped, turning on her. “You think I don’t know exactly how I ended up at this family’s table in the first place? You handed me a name and an opening like it was a gift, and you never once asked what I’d actually be asked to do once I walked through that door p>

The room went very still.

Martha’s head turned slowly toward her younger daughter.

“What does that mean?” she said. “Delia. What is he talking about p>

“Nothing,” Delia said, too fast.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” David said.

Hailey looked between all of them, confusion and exhaustion warring across her face, like she’d flown six hours into a war she hadn’t known existed until she landed in the middle of it.

“I don’t care about any of this family politics,” she said. “I came here for one reason.” She turned back to Jude, and whatever softness had been left in her voice was gone now entirely. “I want a divorce. Tonight. I want it filed before you leave this country, because I refuse to spend one more day legally tied to whatever you’ve turned yourself into p>

Jude’s jaw worked silently.

“And then,” Hailey said, quieter now, almost to herself, “I want to know who is paying you enough money to risk everything we ever had. Because from where I’m standing, that person owns you a great deal more than I ever did p>

Nobody at that table said a word.

And in the silence that followed, I watched Jude’s eyes flick, just once, toward the doorway behind Hailey, like some part of him was already calculating how fast he could be out of this penthouse and gone before anyone in that room thought to stop him.

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