Chapter 399

[ 1,029 words ]

Katia’s POV

The silence that followed was absolute.

“I suspected Julian was Aiden’s father,” I said, my voice quieter now, the anger giving way to something closer to exhaustion. “For a while. I noticed the resemblance long before I understood what it actually meant. But I did not act on that suspicion, because as far as I understood the world, he was my sister’s husband, and I refused to be the woman who destroyed her own sister’s marriage over a feeling I could not fully explain p>

I looked at Martha.

“Then came the interview,” I said. “The one you pushed me into, Mother, because you were tired of the fact that I had a husband nobody had ever met, tired of the story not fitting neatly into whatever narrative you wanted the world to believe about this family. I wore the ring that day because I never took it off, because some part of me had spent seven years unable to let go of the one physical proof that the night in Vegas had actually happened. Grandma Celeste recognized it immediately. Julian recognized it too. And once he understood exactly who I was, he spent weeks trying to find a way to untangle everything quietly, carefully, without destroying anyone in the process, including you, Delia p>

Delia’s composure was cracking now, her arms still crossed, but her chin no longer held quite as high.

“But you,” I said, looking directly at her, “you brought media into this family’s home. Knowing full well by then that you were never actually Julian’s wife, knowing the arrangement had always been exactly what he told you it would be from the very first day. You invited cameras into a moment that was never yours to weaponize, hoping to paint me as the villain, hoping the story would write itself in your favor if enough people saw you standing there looking wounded p>

“I was wounded,” Delia said, her voice breaking slightly.

“I know,” I said, and for the first time all evening, something softened in my own chest despite everything. “I do believe you were hurt, Delia. I am not standing here telling you your pain was not real. But hurt does not give you the right to harass a six-year-old boy outside his school because his existence reminds you of everything you lost. Hurt does not give you the right to drag this family’s name through headlines because the truth did not arrive in a way that flattered you p>

Delia said nothing.

Martha, who had been standing silently near the doorway through the entire conversation, finally stepped forward, her hands trembling slightly at her sides.

“Katia,” she said, her voice thick with something I had never heard from her before, not in my entire life. “I am so sorry. For all of it. For pushing you into that interview without understanding what it would cost you. For every year I spent believing the version of this family that was easiest for me to accept, rather than asking the harder questions I should have asked from the very beginning. I failed you, as a mother, in ways I do not think I can properly apologize for in one evening, in one conversation, but I need you to know that I understand that now. I understand what I did p>

I looked at her for a long moment, the years of distance between us settling into something heavier than anger, something closer to grief for all the versions of this relationship that might have existed if things had gone differently from the very start.

I did not have anything left to say.

I picked up my bag from where I had set it beside the chair, and without another word, I walked toward the front door, leaving all three of them sitting in that room with everything I had finally said hanging in the air behind me.

I did not look back.

Delia’s POV

I had chosen the restaurant carefully, a quiet place two neighborhoods away from anywhere I usually went, hoping the distance alone might buy me a meal without a single stranger recognizing my face from the headlines that had multiplied online over the past several days.

I should have known better.

I was three bites into a salad I had barely touched when I heard the voice, sharp and familiar, carrying the confidence of a woman who had built an entire career out of never once doubting her own timing.

“Delia Kensington,” Tessa Sterling said, sliding into the empty chair across from me without being invited. “Or should I say, the artist formerly known as Mrs. Windsor p>

I set my fork down.

“I did not invite you to sit,” I said.

“You did not need to,” she said, unbothered, waving down a server with the ease of someone who considered every room she entered her own territory. “I am simply here for the story. And you, my dear, have become quite the story this week p>

“I have nothing to say to you,” I said.

“You do not need to say anything,” she said. “I already know everything. Two years playing house in a marriage that never legally existed. Galas, interviews, photographs where you clung to a man who barely acknowledged your presence in the frame. All while the real Mrs. Windsor was somewhere else entirely, quietly living the life you spent two years pretending to have p>

I felt my jaw tighten.

“You do not know anything about what those two years actually cost me,” I said.

“I know enough,” Tessa said, leaning back in her chair, studying me the way a predator studied something it had already decided was not worth the effort of chasing. “I have spent months chasing a much more interesting mystery than you, Delia. Catwoman. A woman clever enough to hide in plain sight for years, dangerous enough to make grown men nervous, and elusive enough that even I have not managed to pin her down completely.” She smiled, thin and unkind. “And here you are. The opposite of elusive. A woman who spent two years loudly announcing an identity that was never actually hers to claim p>

“Leave,” I said.

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