My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 120

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The Far End of the Table

-Delia-

I sat at the far end of the table and watched my marriage end in real time.

Not legally. Not officially. Just the slow, excruciating process of understanding that the man you are contractually bound to has never once looked at you the way he looks at someone else, and that someone else is sitting three seats away, laughing at a story about a teddy bear with singed eyebrows.

Julian laughed too. Not the managed version he used at events. The real one. The one I had never once heard him produce in eight months of living in the same house.

I picked up my fork and put it down.

He had put food on her plate.

I had watched it happen. He had reached across without thinking about it – the lamb, because she had been looking at it —– and placed it on her plate with the ease of someone who did that all the time. Who knew what she wanted before she said it. Who paid that kind of attention.

He had not put food on my plate.

He had not looked at my plate once.

I was his wife. I was sitting at his grandmother’s table at his family lunch, and he had not looked at my plate once because he was too busy watching my sister laugh at a story he was clearly finding as funny as she was, which told me everything about how many times they had laughed together when nobody was watching.

I drank my wine.

Across the table his grandmother was watching him watch Katia with the expression of someone watching exactly what they had engineered happen. She had put me at the far end of this table deliberately. She had invited my sister to this lunch without telling Julian until this morning. I had heard him on the phone at nine, the controlled tone of a man who had been surprised and was managing it. His grandmother had set this up. She had put Katia at the centre of her table and put me at the edge and was sitting there looking satisfied about it.

I was twenty–four years old, and I had been handled.

Gail finished her story. Katia was still laughing. Julian said something to her quietly too quietly for me to hear from where I had been placed, and she looked at him and shook her head and said something back, and he smiled.

Not the public smile. The real one.

I had never seen Julian Windsor smile like that. In eight months of marriage I had never once seen that smile directed at anything in my vicinity.

I set my wine glass down.

“Katia.” My voice came out perfectly level. I was proud of that. “Could I speak to you for a moment? Privately.”

The table shifted slightly. Gail looked at me. Julian looked at me. Katia looked at me with the composed, neutral attention she brought to everything.

“Of course,” Katia said.

We moved to the side of the room while Julian’s grandmother excused herself to speak to the housekeeper. Just the two of us, far enough from the table that the conversation was private.

I looked at my sister.

The For End of the Table

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“I need you to stop coming here,” I said. “This house. These family events. Whatever arrangement you have with Grandma Celeste, it ends. I don’t want you setting foot in my home again.”

Katia looked at me for a moment. Her expression did not change. “Delia-”

“I am not finished.” I kept my voice very controlled. “I have watched you sit at that table for two hours while my husband looks at you like you are the only person in the room have watched him put food on your plate. I have watched his grandmother look at you like you belong here and look at me like I am furniture she didn’t choose.” I paused. “So I am asking you, as your sister, to respect the fact that I am his wife and to stay the fuck away from this family.”

“Delia.” Katia’s voice was quiet. “What Julian does or doesn’t do is between you and him. That is not something I control.”

“You could make choices-“|

“I have made choices. I’m here for lunch with Gail and Grandma Celeste. That’s it.”

“That’s it,” I repeated. I almost laughed. “Right.”

“Delia, I’m not going to stop seeing Gail. She’s my best friend. She helped raise my son. If that means I’m sometimes in this house then-”

“Then don’t be.” I held her gaze. “I’m asking you not to be.”

上

“Excuse me.”

The voice came from behind me.

I turned.

Gail was standing three feet away. Her expression was the one I had never seen on her before not the warm, easy Gail who laughed at everything and made everything feel lighter. This was something else. Something with edges.

“What exactly,” Gail said, “do you think you’re doing?”

“This is a private conversation,” I said.

“You’re having it in my family’s home,” Gail said. “So I think I get to be part of it.” She looked at me directly. “Let me be very clear, Delia. This is not your home. This is the Windsor family mansion. It belongs to this family. And Katia has been part of this family since before you had any idea Julian Windsor existed.” Her voice was completely level and completely devastating. ” you want to set rules about who comes and goes, you do that in the house Julian lives in with you. Not here. Never here,”

“Gail

“I’m not finished.” She stepped forward slightly. “Katia raised my godson. She has been my best friend for years. She will come to this house whenever she is invited, and she will be welcomed every single time because that is what this family decided long before you got married to my brother.” She paused. “And if that’s a problem for you, I genuinely suggest you take it up with your husband. Because it is not Katia’s problem. And it is absolutely not mine.”

I looked at Gail. Then at Katia.

Katia had said nothing during Gail’s speech. She was standing with her arms loose at her sides, her expression neutral, watching me with the specific calm of someone who had decided not to add to what had already been said because it didn’t need adding to.

I picked up my bag from the chair.

I walked out.

I did not say goodbye to anyone. I did not look at Julian on the way past the table. I did not look at his grandmother, who had come back to the doorway and was watching everything with the expression of a woman who had lived long enough to find most things unsurprising.

Be For Ipel of the Table

I got in the car.

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I sat in it for a full minute before I told the driver to go.

My hands were shaking. Not visibly

–

I controlled that. But underneath. The internal tremor of someone who had just lost a

confrontation they had walked into believing they would win.

Gail had looked at me like I was a guest who had forgotten her place.

Maybe I was, but I was done being handled. I picked up the burner phone.

The investigator answered on the second ring.

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