Chapter 398

[ 1,022 words ]

Katia’s POV

The drive over felt longer than it actually was, my hands tight on the wheel, my mind running through every possible version of what waited for me on the other side of that door. Since the announcement, since Julian had stood in front of cameras and claimed me publicly as his wife and Aiden as his son, my life had become a series of confrontations I had not asked for and could not fully control. I told myself this would simply be another one. I told myself I could handle it the way I had handled everything else.

I was wrong.

Martha opened the door, and I knew immediately, from the careful, apologetic set of her mouth, that this evening was not going to unfold the way Father’s phone call had promised.

“Katia,” she said. “Come in p>

I stepped into the front hall, and that was when I saw her.

Delia stood near the base of the staircase, arms crossed, her expression carrying none of the fragile uncertainty I had seen the last time we spoke. This was something harder. Something that had been sharpening itself for weeks, ever since Julian’s announcement had detonated across every headline in the city.

“The traitor is here,” Delia said.

I did not answer her.

Father appeared from the hallway a moment later, his expression tired in a way that made him look older than I remembered, and for a moment something in his face softened when he saw me, the same warmth I remembered from being small enough to sit on his shoulders at the beach, before life had complicated every single relationship in this family beyond recognition.

“Katia,” he said. “Thank you for coming. Join me in the study. We can talk properly there p>

“She would lie to you,” Delia said before I could take a single step toward him. “I want everyone to hear what she actually has to say. I want her to explain, in front of all of us, why she has spent the last several months taking my husband and sleeping with him p>

“He was never your husband,” I said quietly. The room went still, then I continued. “We can sit anywhere you like. If Delia wants an audience, she can have one. I have nothing left to hide from anyone in this house p>

Father studied my face for a long moment, something searching in his expression, and then nodded slowly, gesturing toward the sitting room instead of the study. We filed in together, all four of us, Martha hovering near the doorway as though she could not decide whether she belonged standing with her husband or her daughter, and Delia settling into the chair nearest the fireplace with the rigid posture of a woman preparing for battle.

Father sat across from me.

“What is really going on, Katia?” he asked, and his voice carried none of Delia’s sharpness, only the warm, aching confusion of a father who had watched his family come apart over the past weeks without ever understanding why.

I looked at him.

“When you told me, all those years ago, that I was engaged to Julian Windsor,” I said, “did you and I know who Julian Windsor actually was p>

Father frowned, clearly not expecting the question.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Did you know,” I said again, “that the man you were promising me to had a face, a history, a life outside of a name? Did either of you,” I looked at Martha now, “actually know Julian Windsor as a person before you decided my future belonged to him p>

Father and Martha exchanged a glance. Slowly, both of them shook their heads.

“I did not know him either,” I said. “I want you to understand that clearly before anything else. I did not know the man I slept with in Las Vegas seven years ago was Julian Windsor. I was drunk that night, more drunk than I had ever let myself be before or since, and I woke up the next morning with a stranger’s ring on my finger and no memory clear enough to hold onto his face. If I had known from the start who he actually was, do you not think I would have claimed him? Do you not think a twenty-year-old girl who had just been thrown out of her own family’s house for being pregnant would have run toward a fortune like that the moment she understood it existed p>

Nobody answered.

“The only thing Julian Windsor left me with that night was the Windsor family ring,” I continued, “and a marriage certificate that neither of us could properly use, because we signed it under names that were not entirely our own, both of us too drunk to think clearly about anything beyond the moment we were standing in. I have been married to Julian Windsor for seven years, and until a month ago, I did not even know it p>

Delia’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.

“I do not understand why you are so angry with me,” I said, turning to look at her directly for the first time since I had walked into this house. “Julian never married you. From the very beginning, he told you exactly what your arrangement was going to be. No intimacy. No real marriage. A name and an appearance in exchange for whatever benefits came with carrying the Windsor family reputation. You knew that, Delia. You told our parents that yourself, weeks ago, in this very house p>

“That is not the same thing,” Delia said, her voice tight.

“Is it not?” I asked. “Because from where I am standing, it sounds like you loved the status of being Mrs. Windsor far more than you ever loved the man attached to the name. You built two years of your life around a title, not a person, and now that the title has been taken from you, you are angry, not because you lost Julian, because you never had him to begin with, but because you lost the version of yourself that got to walk into rooms and be introduced as his wife p>

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