My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 148

Gigi

~Gail-

Grandma sat with Aiden for a long time after the chess set conversation.

I watched from across the room, I did not interrupt. There was something happening between the two of them that did not need me in it — a quiet, careful getting–to–know–you that Grandma was conducting with the patience she brought to everything that mattered to her. Aiden, for his part, had decided she was interesting and was giving her his full attention, which was the highest

compliment he gave anyone.

At some point Grandma looked up at me and said, “Can I borrow your phone?”

I handed it over without asking why.

She scrolled to Katia’s number and called.

–

Katia answered on the second ring. I could hear her voice through the phone from across the room and behind it, faint but unmistakable, Julian’s voice saying something in the background.

Grandma heard it too.

She smiled. Just slightly. The private smile she wore when something confirmed what she had already suspected.

“Katia,” she said. “It’s Celeste. I’m calling from Gail’s phone.”

I heard Katia’s tone shift, the slight adjustment of someone who had not expected this particular caller and was recalibrating.

“Grandma Celeste,” Katia said. “Is everything alright? Is Aiden-

“Aiden is perfectly fine,” Grandma said. “He is sitting across from me eating a biscuit and telling me about the structural differences between two types of go–kart chassis.” She paused. “He is extraordinary.”

“He is,” Katia said softly.

“I don’t want to disturb you,” Grandma said. She said it warmly, and she said it with the particular awareness of a woman who had heard a man’s voice in the background of her granddaughter–in–law’s phone call and had decided not to mention it. “I wanted to ask you something. A favour, really.”

“Of course,” Katia said.

“Would you allow Aiden to stay with us for a few days?” Grandma said. “Gail tells me your company is under some difficulty at the moment. You need to focus. And I-” she looked at Aiden across the room. “I find I very much enjoy paving him here. We will take him to school in the mornings. He will want for nothing.”

A pause on Katia’s end. Not hesitation

consideration.

“That’s very generous,” Katia said. “If it’s truly not too much trouble-”

“Trouble,” Grandma said, as if the word were mildly offensive. “This house has been too quiet for too long. It does need young blood. Something to make me run from room to room.” She looked at Aiden. “We are going shopping tomorrow. He needs more clothes here.”

“Grandma Celeste, you really don’t have to-

”

“I want to,” she said simply. “Take care of your company. We have Aiden.”

Another pause. Then Katia said quietly: “Thank you. Really.”

“Go,” Grandma said. “And Katia “she paused. “Whatever is happening with the company, you will handle it. I have no doubt.”

She hung up.

Gig

+25 BONUS

She looked at the phone for a moment before handing it back to me. Said nothing about the voice she had heard in the background. Said nothing at all. Just handed me the phone and turned back to Aiden.

Aiden looked up from the chess piece he had been examining.

“Am I staying?” he said.

“You are staying,” Grandma said.

He thought about this. “For how long?”

“A few days,” Grandma said. “Is that alright with you?”

He considered it with the seriousness he brought to all decisions. “Yes,” he said. “I like it here. It’s like a castle but with better furniture.”

Grandina laughed. A real laugh the kind I had not heard from her in years.

“What should I call you?” Aiden asked. He was looking at her directly, the way he looked at everything he genuinely wanted to understand. “You’re not my grandmother. But you feel like a grandmother.”

The room was very quiet.

Grandma looked at him for a long moment.

“Call me Gigi,” she said.

Aiden tried it. “Gigi.” He nodded slowly. “I like Gigi.

“Good,” she said. “I like it too.”

He smiled at her, the full, unguarded smile, the one that arrived without calculation her face was so open and so undefended that I had to look at the window again.

“Gigi,” Aiden said. “What is your favourite meal?”

“That depends on the day,” she said. “What is yours?”

–

and she smiled back, and something in

He told her. In detail. With enthusiasm. Including his precise opinions on the correct way to prepare it and the ways in which was most frequently done incorrectly by people who should know better.

Grandma listened to all of it without interrupting.

“Aunty Gail makes it sometimes,” Aiden added. Then, with the devastating honesty that was entirely his own: “She is a terrible cook.”

He said it with complete love. No malice. Just a fact.

I opened my mouth.

Grandma laughed again. The real one.

“She really is,” Grandma agreed.

“Hey,” I said.

“I eat it because I love her,” Aiden said earnestly, looking at me. “Even when it tastes wrong, I eat it because she made it.” He paused. “I just make sure to drink a lot of water.”

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