Chapter 34

[ 1,089 words ]

Julian’s POV

Zane whistled, a long, low sound of genuine appreciation. “Bold move. Taking your sister-in-law to a candlelit jazz bar in Antibes while your ’bride’ is tucked away in the East Wing. You’re playing a dangerous game, even for a Windsor. You’ve gone to such obsessive lengths to hide Delia and this whole marriage from the public—all because you don’t want your ’ghost wife’ from six years ago to find out you officially moved on. But if our families see that post, they aren’t going to see a business dinner. They’re going to see you sabotaging the very merger you’re using to keep the Windsor name stable. You’re lucky the world doesn’t know about the wedding yet, or they’d be calling Katia the ’Woman Who Stole the Honeymoon’ before you even made it back to the office p>

“I didn’t plan it,” I said, and the admission felt like a catastrophic glitch in my system. I didn’t do things without a plan. I was a man of contingencies and five-year projections. “I saw her post. I saw the child’s hand. I just… I needed to see her. I needed to know if she was as unaffected as she looked in those photos. And I wanted to see if she was there with a man p>

“And?” Zane leaned forward, his smirk widening into something more pointed. “Was she p>

I stayed silent for a long moment, the image of Katia under the French stars flashing in my mind with a clarity that made my chest tighten. I remembered the way she’d looked at me, not as a CEO, not as a Windsor, but as a man who was clearly out of his depth.

“No, she was not,” I confessed, the words feeling heavy and wrong. “And for the first time in six years, Zane… I wasn’t thinking about her, the ghost wife p>

Zane’s expression shifted instantly. The playfulness died, replaced by a sharp, focused intensity. He knew exactly what I meant. He was the only person alive who knew the truth I carried in that locked desk drawer. He knew that I was already legally bound to a ghost named ’Kat’ from a neon-soaked, drunken night in Las Vegas, a woman I had chased through every database and facial recognition software on the planet to no avail.

“You didn’t think about the Vegas girl?” Zane asked quietly, his voice devoid of its usual snark.

“Not once,” I said, pacing the length of the office. “I’ve spent every waking hour for six years comparing every woman I met to a memory I can barely see. I’ve lived like a monk in a billion-dollar suit, waiting for a woman who might not even want to be found. My entire emotional life has been a placeholder for a ghost. But with Katia… it was different. She felt like home. She felt like a destination I didn’t know I was traveling toward. And that’s the problem p>

I stopped at the window, my reflection staring back at me. I was tired, conflicted, and unrecognizable. “It’s wrong. It’s logically inconsistent. She’s my sister-in-law. She’s my business partner. And more importantly, Zane, I know she’s off-limits. I know she’s married; she has a son, a life, and a man she clearly respects enough to keep buried so deep that even my best investigators can’t find a name for him. She lives her life for her family and her empire, not for some fleeting attraction in a jazz bar. And yet, despite the fact that she’s supposedly taken, I’m drawn to her in a way that makes me want to burn the contracts, the family expectations, and that Vegas marriage certificate p>

Zane didn’t look shocked. In fact, he looked bored, as if he’d been watching a movie and I was just now catching up to the plot twist he’d seen an hour ago. “Are you done? Are you finished with the logic yet? Because it’s exhausting to listen to p>

I turned to him, a flare of genuine anger sparking in my gut. “What is that supposed to mean p>

“Julian, I’ve been waiting for you to confess this since the day she walked into this boardroom to pitch IG Technologies,” Zane said, standing up and straightening his jacket. “You think you’re so hard to read? You think that cold-CEO-robot act works on me? After that presentation, you didn’t ask her a single question. Not one. You—the man who usually grills every vendor until they’re sweating through their bespoke shirts and questioning their life choices, just sat there and watched her move. You were silent because you were floored p>

I frowned, trying to recall the details of that meeting. I remembered the data. I remembered the clean energy integrations. I remembered the efficiency of her AI models.

“You weren’t looking at the AI, Julian,” Zane continued, walking toward the door. “You were looking at the woman who built it. You were caught then, and you’re caught now. The only difference is that now the rest of the world has a front-row seat to your midlife crisis. You’re worried because it feels like you’re cheating on a ghost with a real woman. But has it ever occurred to you that the ghost might be tired of being haunted p>

He paused at the door, his hand on the handle, looking back over his shoulder with a knowing look. “You’re fighting a war on two fronts, Windsor. You’re in love with a memory and obsessed with a woman who is technically off-limits. It’s a messy look on you. But frankly? It’s the most interesting thing you’ve done in a decade. It’s a start p>

He left, the click of the door echoing in the silent, cavernous office. I walked back to my desk and slumped into the chair. My hand moved instinctively to the small, hidden latch on the mahogany drawer. I pulled it open.

There it was. The Vegas marriage certificate. The paper was slightly creased, the ink of “Jules” and “Kat” a testament to a night of reckless, beautiful madness. For six years, this paper had been my anchor. It had been the reason I couldn’t look at another woman without feeling like a traitor.

But as I looked at it now, the image of Katia’s bare hand over mine in that French jazz club kept flickering over the vision of the certificate.

For the first time since I’d signed it, the paper didn’t feel like a promise. It felt like a barrier. And for a Windsor, barriers were meant to be dismantled.

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