My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 213

The Photograph She Wasn’t Supposed to Swe

The Photograph She Wasn’t Supposed to See

~Delia

I was scrolling through

when I saw it.

+25 BONUS

Julian’s account. He posted rarely–maybe once a month, sometimes less, always something curated and controlled and giving nothing away. A view from an office window. A car The Windsor estate gardens in a particular light. The kind of posts that said I exist publicly but on my own terms.

This one was different.

It was taken from inside what looked like a cockpit. The angle was from the right seat looking left the instrument panel in the foreground, the sky beyond the windshield, and in the left seat a woman. Her face was not visible. The photo had been taken carefully, or perhaps carelessly, in a way that caught her profile but not enough to identify het. Dark hair. The confident posture of someone completely at home in the seat.

The caption was two words.

New hobby.

I stared at the photograph.

I knew that posture. I knew the way a woman sat when she owned a space. I had been watching women own spaces my entire life, and I knew what it looked like, and whoever was in that cockpit was not a passenger.

She was flying the jet.

I put the phone face down on the bed.

I picked it up again.

I looked at the photograph again.

I threw the phone.

It hit the floor and skidded under the dressing table, and I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the wall and felt the particular fury of a woman who had been patient for a very long time and had just run out of patience entirely.

Why?

That was the question I kept coming back to. Why would he not look at me the way he looked at whoever was in that cockpit? Why would he not look at me the way he had looked at Katia across the dinner table? Why must he fuck Choe, the tall model? Why had Seraphina been able to walk into his house and wear his robe and collect a breakfast tray with a smile while I had been living under the same roof for almost a year and some months and had been told from day one that he would never touch me?

I was a Kensington.

I was not some model; he had called at tive in the morning. I was not some woman he had met at a race or a corporate function. I was Delia Kensington; I had been educated at the right schools, I had been in the right rooms, and I had worn the right things and said the right things and positioned myself correctly my entire life.

And he looked through me like I was not there.

Chloe. Seraphina. Katia. And now, whoever was in that cockpit flying his jet while he sat in the right seat watching her like she was extraordinary.

What did they have that I did not have?

What was the thing that made Julian Windsor look at a woman and actually see her? Because I had been in his house for a year, and I had worn beautiful clothes, and I had been present, and I had been patient, and I had done everything short of standing in

The Photograph She Wasn’t Supposed to see

+25 BONUS

the middle of his study and demanding his attention, and he had never once-

Not once.

I got up.

I retrieved my phone from under the dressing table. The screen had a hairline crack in the corner. I looked at it for a moment and then put it in my bag.

I picked up my bag.

I left the house.

The Windsor family estate was less than 20 minutes from the mansion. I drove it in 25 minutes.

Gail was in the garden when I arrived. She was sitting on the bench near the rose beds with a book on her lap and the particular contentment of someone who had nowhere to be and was thoroughly enjoying ft. She looked up when I came through the gate, and something moved in her expression–surprise, then the careful neutral face she wore when she was deciding how much to

give away.

“Fancy seeing you here, Delia,” she said.

I sat down on the bench across from her.

I was not here for pleasantries. I was not here for the complicated dynamic that existed between me and Gail Windsor, who knew things she was not saying and smiled with the satisfaction of someone holding cards she had not yet played.

I was here for information.

“Gail,” I said. “How many jets does Julian own?”

Gail looked at me.

She closed her book.

“Personally?” she said. “He has four hangars and four private airstrips in the country. The closest one has three jets.” She paused. “If you add the Windsor family hangars and airstrips, that comes to around twenty–four total. He has more overseas–I do not know the exact number.” She tilted her head slightly. “Why are you asking?”

I said nothing.

I stood up.

I picked up my bag.

“Delia,” Gail said.

I was already walking back toward the gate.

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