My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 146

That Ring Incks Like My Mother’s Ring

+25 BONUS

That Ring looks Like My Mother’s Ring

~Gail-

Katia called at two thirty.

I could hear it in her voice before she said anything

the compressed, controlled tension of someone managing six things at

once and holding all of them together through sheer will.

“I’m not going to make it to school pickup,” she said. “Victor Hale just threatened litigation. IP theft claim on the Meridian acquisition. I have three weeks before his lawyers file, and I need every hour I have to find the hole in his case.”

“Go,” I said. “I’ve got Aiden.”

“Gail-”

“Katia. I have him. Go find a way to crash Victor.”

She paused; I knew she was about to say, ‘Where would I be without you?‘ Then, quietly: “Thank you.”

She hung up.

I was already in the car.

Aiden was waiting at the school gate with his backpack on both shoulders and a drawing in his hand that he had apparently been working on all afternoon. He saw me before I saw him. I heard him before I saw him, the sound of small feet running across the

pavement.

“Aunty Gail!”

He hit me at full speed. I caught him, and he immediately held up the drawing. It was a racing car – detailed, accurate, with careful attention to the wheel arches that told me he had been studying reference material.

“For Mummy,” he said. “She can put it in her office.”

“She’s going to love it,” I said.

He looked around. “Where’s Mummy?”

“She’s at work,” I said. “Something important came up. You’re coming with me today.”

He processed this. “Okay,” he said. “Where are we going?”

I opened the car door. “You’ll see.”

He knew it was somewhere significant the moment we turned through the gates.

I watched him in the rearview mirror, the way his eyes went wide as the driveway opened up and the Windsor estate appeared at the end of it. The house sat at the top of a long approach, grey stone and old windows and the weight of a building that had been standing in the same place for a very long time.

“That’s a house?” Aiden said.

“That’s a house,” I confirmed.

“It’s enormous.”

“Yes.”

He pressed his face against the window. “Is this where you grew up?”

“It is,” I said.

That Ring looks Like My Mothor’s Ring

+25 BONUS

He was quiet for a moment, taking it in with the serious attention he brought to things that impressed him. Then: “Your house is better than my house.”

“Your house has better snacks,“I said.

He considered this. “That’s true,” he said.

I parked and got out and he took my hand as we walked to the front door, which he examined in detail before we went through it. Inside he stopped in the entrance hall and looked up at the ceiling and then around at the portraits and the staircase and the general scale of everything.

“Aunty Gail,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I think your house might be a castle.”

I laughed. “Come on.”

Grandma was in the sitting room.

She looked up when we came in, and I watched it happen. The moment her eyes moved from me to Aiden. The way her

expression changed.

Grandma Celeste did not do drama. But something moved across her face something that started as recognition and moved into something I did not have a clean word for. She went

ery still.

Aiden, completely unaware of any of this, was looking at the fireplace,

“Gail,” Grandma said. Her voice was careful and measured.

“Grandma,” I said. “This is Aiden. Katia’s son. She got caught up with work, and I offered to take him for the afternoon.”

Grandma looked at Aiden for a long moment. Then she looked at me.

“Sit down,” she said. “Both of you.”

Aiden sat without being asked twice. He had found a small bronze sculpture on the side table and was examining it with both hands, turning it over.

“Careful with that,” I said.

“I am being careful,” he said seriously. “I’m just looking with my hands.”

Grandma almost smiled.

Then she looked at me again, and the almost–smile was gone.

“Gail,” she said quietly. Aiden was absorbed in the sculpture. “How long have you known Katia?”

“Since Harvard,” I said. “Years. You know that.”

“And the boy.” Her eyes moved to Aiden again. “How old is he?”

“Five,” I said. “Nearly six.”

Grandma was quiet.

Then she said, in a voice so low I almost didn’t catch it, “Ever since I saw this boy at the dinner that night, I haven’t rested.”

I said nothing.

That Ring Incks Like My Mother’s Ring

+25 BONUS

“There is something about him,” she said. “Something I cannot put down.” She looked at me directly. “I think this boy is a Windsor, Gail.”

The room was very quiet.

Aiden put the sculpture down carefully and moved on to a book on the shelf, pulling it out to look at the spine.

“And if he is,” Grandma said, “we are in deep trouble. Because Julian is now married to this boy’s aunt.”

I pressed my lips together.

“I have been suspicious for a long time,” I said. It was the first time I had said it out loud to anyone except Katia. “The jaw. The hands. The way he tilts his head. I’ve been watching it for months.” I paused. “But Kafia told me stre never met Julian before the WEG partnership. So I didn’t say anything.”

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