My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 112

The Phantom Rival

~Julian-

The Dubai 24 Hour Race VIP lounge was exactly what it always was — money and performance and the specific social theatre of people who had paid significant amounts to be seen being interested in motorsport. I had been in this lounge three times before. I knew its rhythms. I knew who mattered and who was performing, and I could tell the difference within sixty seconds of a conversation starting.

Victor Hale took forty–five.

He was introduced to me by the race director at seven PM – British, mid–forties, the kind of fase that had been handsome twenty years ago and had settled into something more interesting. He moved through rooms the way intelligent people moved through rooms – not commanding attention, just always positioned correctly. Ex–MI6, Zane had told me earlier when his name appeared on the guest list. Now CEO of Halo Systems. Global cybersecurity. Serious money and serious connections and the specific confidence of a man who had spent a career knowing things other people did not.

“Julian Windsor,” he said. His handshake was firm without being aggressive. “I’ve been hoping to cross paths.”

“Is that so?” I said.

“WEG’s infrastructure work is impressive. The I* partnership particularly.” He smiled. It was a very good smile. Practised without looking, practised. “Al logistics integration at that scale – your partner has built something reraarkable.”

“She has,” I said.

His eyes moved across the room. I watched them move. I watched where they landed.

Katia. I almost punched his fucking face.

She was across the lounge with Sam, talking to two of the WEG regional directors. She was in something dark and professional, her attention fully on the conversation, completely unaware of being observed.

Victor Hale looked at her for three seconds. Then he looked back at me.

“Katia Kensington,” he said. “I’d like to be introduced.”

Something moved in my chest. Not quite a warning. Something adjacent to one.

“Of course,” I said.

I watched him cross the room.

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I watched him introduce himself. I watched Katia’s professional smile engage – the one that was warm and present and gave away absolutely nothing. I watched her shake his hand and listen to whatever he was saying and respond with the composed intelligence she brought to every professional interaction.

I watched Victor Hale lean slightly too close when he handed her his card. I scoffed. Fucking hell!

I watched Katia not step back. Not because she was comfortable with the proximity – I knew her well enough now to read the fractional adjustment of her posture that meant someone had entered her space without being invited. She didn’t step back because she was professional, and this was a professional event, and Katia Kensington did not give people the satisfaction of

visible reactions.

But she noticed.

And I noticed that she noticed.

Zane appeared at my shoulder. “You’re staring.”

“I’m observing,” I said.

The Phona Rival

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“There’s a differ

“Don’t.”

”

Zane was quiet for a moment. “Victor Hale. Ex–MI6. Halo Systems. The man collects information for a living. Has done for ten years, just in different suits.” He paused “Why is he interested in Katia?”

“That’s what I intend to find out,” I said.

Across the room Victor Hale was still talking to Katia. She was listening with the polite attention of someone who was present but not engaged. She glanced across the room once – briefly, instinctively — and found me. Our eyes met for less than a second. Then she looked back at Victor.

I picked up my phone and sent one message to my intelligence team.

Victor Hale. Full profile. Everything. By morning.

The race itself was everything the Dubai 24 Hour Race always was – endurance, strategy, and the long, grinding mathematics of keeping a car on track for a full day and night. The VIP lounge watched through floor–to–ceiling glass, champagne in hand, the kind of crowd that appreciated the spectacle without necessarily understanding what they were watching.

Delia was there.

She had positioned herself perfectly – visible, photographed, smiling. She was wearing something that read as racing–adjacent without being ridiculous. She had done her research. Someone had advised her, or she had advised herself, on how to look the

part without overclaiming it.

It would not be enough.

At nine PM a journalist from one of the racing publications found her in the lounge. I watched it happen from across the room. The journalist was the same woman – Riya Mehta — who had broken the original story. She had a recorder and a photographer and the specific hungry alertness of someone who had a follow–up question and had waited all day to ask it.

She asked Delia to describe Catwoman’s signature move from the previous night’s underground race.

Delia smiled.

She said something. I could not hear it from where I was standing, but I could see the journalist’s expression change. The smile thinning. The recorder lowering slightly.

Then the journalist pulled up footage on her phone. Showed it to Delia. Catwoman’s run from last night — the final corner, the exit speed, the specific geometry of a move that required years of instinct to execute.

Delia looked at the footage.

She looked at it for too long.

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Then she said something else, and the journalist’s expression completed its journey from professional warmth to professional

assessment.

Within twenty minutes the first post was live. Fake Catwoman Exposed? Within an hour it had been picked up by four publications. The photograph of Delia looking at the footage was everywhere – the specific look of someone who had claimed something they could not substantiate and had just been asked to substantiate it.

Delia left the lounge at ten thirty. She did not look at me on her way out.

I did not follow her.

The profile on Victor Hale arrived at four in the morning.

I was in my suite, jacket off, the Dubai skyline doing its nighttime thing outside the window. I read the file twice. Then I sat very

The Phonts Rival

still for a long time.

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Halo Systems had been quietly acquiring contracts that 1* Technologies was positioned to win. Not competing for them- acquiring them through back channels, through relationships built specifically to intercept I*‘s pipeline. Eighteen months of it. Systematic and deliberate.

Victor Hale had been looking for the owner of Technologies for longer than that.

Not the company. The owner. Specifically, personally, the woman who had built it.

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