Chapter 481 The Card

Delia’s POV

The envelope was thick. A cream stock with black ink. My name was written like I was still someone they had to be polite to. Mrs. Delia Vesper. As if that title sat in the same room as Mrs. Julian Windsor.

I opened it at the kitchen counter with my coffee gone cold. Noah was in the other room on a call. The house was quiet in that expensive way that still did not feel like mine.

I read it once. Then I read it again because my brain refused the first time.

Julian Windsor and Katia Windsor request the honor of your presence at the celebration of their marriage.

Honor.

I laughed. It came out ugly.

“Honour,” I said to the card. “She wants honor now, after she took the man, the house, and the name. Now she wants flowers so the city can clap.”

Two months since Clara. Two months of pictures I did not ask to see. Katia glowing. Julian looking at her like she invented air. Aiden holding the baby like a prince in training. That old fool called Celeste in the frame like a blessing.

And me, the only fucking thing I got, was a signature, a fucking ring dropped in my palm. No dress. No aisle. No father. No guests. A man who said, “Do not get ideas.”

I sat down hard.

“Of course she gets a wedding,” I told the empty kitchen. “Saint Katia. Pregnant and forgiven. I played wife for two years, and I am a punchline. She fucks her way to the top, and they throw her silk and a photographer.”

My hands shook. I hated that. I wanted ice. I got heat.

I said worse things after that. Things I would not say in a room with witnesses.

“She already had him. She already had the announcement. She already had the child they showed the world. This is extra. This is rubbing my face in it. This is them saying we are real and you were paper.”

Noah’s footsteps. I flipped the card over too late.

“What is that?”

“An invitation.”

He picked it up. He read it. His face went soft, the way it did when he still wanted to believe families could be fixed with dinners and lilies.

“They are doing it properly. That is good.”

“Properly.” I smiled with no kindness in it. “What a pretty word for people who already won.”

“Delia.”

“Do not say my name like I am being dramatic. Look at it. Look at the paper. That is not a lunch. That is a statement. That is Katia in white with Aiden in a suit and Clara in someone’s arms and the whole rotten city pretending this was always clean.”

“We can go. Or we can send regrets.”

“We are going.” I stood. “I want a front seat. I want to watch her walk. I want to see if she looks at me when they say wife. I want to see if Julian still knows how to pretend I was never in his house.”

Noah set the card down.

“That is not fair to her.”

“Fair,” I laughed again. “Fair was me packing my life around a man who never wanted me. Fair was your father ordering you to marry me like I was a task. Fair is not Katia getting a second ceremony because the first one was not pretty enough for Celeste’s friends.”

He reached for my wrist. I let him hold it, and I did not lean in.

“You have me,” he said.

“I have a contract. She has a wedding. If you cannot hear the difference, you are not listening.”

I pulled free and walked. I needed the length of the house. I needed to spit the rest before it turned into something I did in public.

“She gets Julian. She gets Aiden. She gets Clara. She gets Celeste looking at her like she is the future of that name. I get a husband who was told to take me and a father-in-law who looks at me like a door.”

“Leave my father out of this.”

Too late. The thought was already in the room. Elliot’s mouth. Elliot’s hands. Elliot promising a bigger seat thanleftover sister.

I picked the invitation up again. Their names sat together like they had always belonged.

“She stole a life I had already unpacked,” I said. “Then she had a baby and the world called her brave. I get called desperate. That is the joke. That is what is making me sick.”

“You are not desperate.”

“I am jealous.” I said it flat. “I am jealous and I am tired of swallowing it so you can have peace. I am tired of being the sister who got the spare room. I am tired of smiling when people ask how married life is, as if they cannot see the difference between a signature and a day the magazines will eat.”

Noah was quiet. That quiet used to feel safe. Today it felt like he did not know what to do with a woman who had stopped performing okay.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Nothing. That is the point. There is nothing you can do that looks like that card.”

I put the invitation on the fridge with a magnet. Normal wife. Normal kitchen. Normal lie.

Then I went to the bedroom and opened my closet like I was already at war.

“I will look better than her,” I said to the dresses. “On her day. In her garden. In front of her guests. If I have to starve and smile and wear something that makes every aunt forget Clara for one second, I will.”

My phone lit up on the bed. I knew the number now.

I did not open it yet.

I sat on the edge of the mattress with the invitation in my head and Katia’s name in my mouth like a stone.

“Enjoy it,” I whispered. “Enjoy the white. Enjoy the vows they will print. Enjoy being the wife they throw a party for.”

I looked at my own ring. Thin. Fast. No story.