Chapter 346

[ 1,039 words ]

Katia’s POV

My penthouse, the one I had signed for on my own at twenty-two with money I had earned myself, the one I had stood in the middle of the first night and told myself was proof that I needed nothing and nobody, that whatever had happened in Vegas seven years ago with a stranger whose face I couldn’t remember was not something that could define me or diminish what I was building on my own.

I had spent four years in that penthouse convincing myself I was independent, untethered, and a woman who had chosen her own life.

And the entire time, my name had been on a mansion I had never once been invited to think of as mine.

I was done being managed. I was done being the last person in every room to know the truth about her own life. If Julian Windsor wanted to play games with information, I could play those games too, and I had spent my entire career learning how to play them better than anyone sitting across from me.

My phone lit up on the passenger seat.

I glanced at it without picking it up, and then I looked again, because the screen had not stopped lighting up the way a phone lit up when one call ended and another started immediately after, the way a man called when he already knew you were not going to pick up and kept going anyway.

I picked it up.

Seven missed calls. All Julian. The most recent one was two minutes ago; the oldest one was timestamped from just under an hour back, which meant he had started calling before I had even made it through the front door of this house, which meant someone had told him I was coming, which meant the warning system in this family ran faster and more efficiently than I had given it credit for.

I set the phone face down on the passenger seat and looked out the windscreen at the long, empty driveway.

He had the whole year from the moment he knew we were husband and wife to explain to me. He could wait. Whatever urgency he was feeling right now was not my problem to manage, and I was finished managing things that belonged to other people when my own life had been sitting unmanned and unexamined for years while everyone around me knew exactly who I was and said nothing.

I gave myself one more minute. Then I picked the phone back up, scrolled past Julian’s name without stopping, and called Sam.

She picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?” she said, which told me she already knew something was happening without my having to explain it.

“Outside the Windsor mansion,” I said.

She paused and then spoke. “Are you alright p>

“I need you to do something for me,” I said, skipping past the question entirely. “Call the helpers at the penthouse. Tell them to start packing my clothes. All of them. But I want one suitcase ready for tonight. Just one, just what I need for now. The rest can follow p>

The silence on Sam’s end lasted exactly three seconds, which was three seconds longer than Sam usually needed to process anything.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“I’m going to Julian’s mansion,” I said.

“What?” The word came out flat and uncharacteristic, Sam’s composure cracking in a way it almost never did, not in boardrooms; not in family dinners that ended in shattered wine glasses; and not even the morning I had called her from a bathroom floor in the Maldives. “Katia p>

“I need one suitcase, Sam. Tonight p>

“You’re moving into his house p>

“I’m moving into my house,” I said. “There’s a difference p>

Another silence, longer this time, and I could hear her turning it over, the way she turned over everything I gave her that she didn’t entirely understand yet, filing it under things she would ask about later when the dust had settled enough to ask.

“Does he know you’re coming?” Sam said.

“He will,” I said. “Soon enough p>

“Katia, if this is about what I found, if you are doing this because of the results and you haven’t thought it through p>

“I have thought it through,” I said. “Every single inch of it. For the last hour in this car and for the last two weeks before that. I am not acting on impulse, Sam. I am acting on information, and the information tells me that I have been living in the wrong house.” I paused. “Now are you going to help me, or are you going to keep asking questions p>

A beat. Then a small sound that was almost a laugh.

“And Sam,” I said, before she could speak again. “Sell the penthouse p>

The silence that followed that one was a different kind entirely.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “Say that again p>

“The penthouse,” I said. “Sell it. I won’t be needing it p>

“Katia, that penthouse is worth p>

“I know what it’s worth,” I said. “Sell it p>

A long beat. Then, very carefully, in the voice Sam used when she was deciding whether to laugh or call a doctor: “Who are you, and what have you done with my boss p>

I looked at myself in the rearview mirror, at the woman sitting in a car outside a mansion with her name on the deed, with her name on twenty-five percent of an empire, with her name on a savings account that had been opened seven years ago after our marriage.

“She’s still here,” I said. “But she’s about to get nasty p>

The clock on my dashboard read exactly 8:30 PM when I pulled into the circular driveway. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely keep the car straight. I sat there for a minute, staring at the mansion, heart hammering in my chest. I finally turned the engine off, got out, and dragged the single leather suitcase from the trunk. It was light. Sam had packed it fast. Just some clothes, toiletries, and the prenatal vitamins I’d been hiding.

I walked up the stone steps. My heels clicked way too loud. I felt sick. I raised my hand and knocked. Hard.

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