Chapter 340

[ 1,212 words ]

Julian’s POV

I had known for nine days.

Not suspected. Known, the way I knew the exact weight of a contract before I signed it, the way I knew a board member was lying before they finished their sentence. I had watched Katia disappear into her bathroom every morning for over a week now, the water running just loud enough to cover the sound underneath it, and watched her come back out twelve minutes later with her hair freshly tied back and a smile already rebuilt on her face, like she thought I hadn’t noticed the door had been locked, like she thought I hadn’t counted the minutes, like she thought a man who studied her this closely could possibly miss something this large.

She hadn’t said a word.

Nine days, and not one word.

I had spent most of those nine days running through every version of why a woman would carry that kind of news and choose silence instead of sharing it, and none of the explanations I came up with let me sleep well at all. Maybe she didn’t know yet, some buried, careful part of her still building a case before she let herself believe it. Maybe she knew exactly what was happening and hadn’t decided yet what she wanted to do about it. Maybe she was protecting me from a decision I had no say in making. Maybe she was protecting herself from a conversation she wasn’t ready to survive yet either.

Maybe she had already decided and simply hadn’t found the words to tell me she wasn’t keeping it.

That thought alone had kept me awake more nights than I wanted to admit, lying beside her in the dark, listening to her breathe, wondering if the thing growing quietly between us was something she even wanted, or something she was carrying the way you carry a problem you haven’t found the right moment to solve.

I thought about every version of the man I could be if she told me tonight, this hour, the next time she opened her mouth to speak. I thought about the version of myself I’d been my entire life before she walked into it, a man who had built an empire out of certainty, who had never once in his years made a decision he wasn’t fully prepared to defend.

None of that certainty meant anything here. I could not negotiate a child into existing. I could not buy my way into a conversation she wasn’t ready to have. For the first time in longer than I could remember, the only leverage I had was patience, and I had never once in my life been good at exercising it.

I stopped at a small shop two streets from her office that morning and bought a thermos of ginger and lemon tea, unsweetened, the kind a pharmacist had told me settled nausea without the sharpness of mint or the heaviness of dairy, along with a tin of plain digestive biscuits, nothing flavored, nothing that might turn her stomach the way coffee apparently had been doing for weeks now. I didn’t tell the woman behind the counter who it was for. I didn’t need to explain myself to anyone yet, not until I understood what I was actually walking into.

Sam waved me through to Katia’s office without comment, the way she always did, though I caught something in her expression as I passed her desk, something careful and assessing that I filed away to think about later.

Katia looked up from her desk when I walked in, and for half a second, before she caught herself, I saw something flicker across her face that looked almost like fear.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” she said.

“I wanted to surprise you.” I set the thermos and the tin down on the corner of her desk, away from her paperwork. “Lunch p>

She looked at the thermos for a beat too long.

“Ginger tea,” I said. “And plain biscuits. Nothing with much smell to it p>

Something passed behind her eyes, quick and unreadable, and then she smiled, the same smile she’d been rebuilding every morning behind a locked bathroom door, polished enough to pass anywhere else but not quite here, not this close.

“That’s thoughtful,” she said. “Thank you p>

She didn’t ask why I’d chosen any of it. She didn’t ask how I’d known plain was better than flavored or why I’d skipped the coffee entirely, and the not asking told me more than anything she could have said out loud.

We ate at the small table by her window, mostly in silence, the city stretched out below us indifferent to either of our private wars. I watched her take small, careful bites and watched her hands stop shaking around the thermos the way they hadn’t around her coffee mug in days, and I told myself that was a good sign, even though I had no real evidence to support it beyond wanting badly for it to be true.

“You’ve seemed unwell,” I said finally, when I couldn’t hold the question in any longer. “Have you been feeling alright p>

“I’ve been better,” she said, which was not an answer, not really, the kind of sentence built to end a conversation rather than open one.

“Katia p>

“I’m fine, Julian p>

“You haven’t let me touch you in a week p>

She looked up at that, something sharp moving across her face before she smoothed it away again.

“I’ve had a lot going on,” she said.

“I’m aware,” I said. “I was there for most of it. The dinner. Delia, Hailey flying in from London. I understand exactly how much has happened in this month, and I’m not asking you to pretend none of it touched you.” I kept my voice level, though it cost me something to keep it that way. “I’m asking if there’s something you need from me that you’re not asking for. If there’s anything I can do differently. If you need space, tell me you need space. If you need me closer, tell me that instead. I just need you to tell me something true p>

“I am telling you something true,” she said. “I’m okay p>

I held her gaze across the small table, and she held mine right back, calm, composed, every inch the woman who had spent the last month dismantling every lie in her own family, one dinner at a time, without so much as a tremor in her voice.

I didn’t believe a single word of it.

“Alright,” I said, because pushing further would only build a wall instead of taking one down, and I had learned, slowly, painfully, exactly how much pressure this woman could withstand before she simply stopped letting anyone close enough to apply it at all.

She reached for the tea I’d brought her, wrapped both hands around the thermos like she needed the warmth of it more than the actual drink, and for one unguarded second, before she caught herself and smoothed her expression back into something unreadable, I watched her hand drift toward her stomach, light, almost unconscious, gone again before I could be entirely sure I hadn’t imagined it.

She caught me watching. Neither of us said anything about it at all.

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.