My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 241

The Along the weak

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The Alliance of the Weak

~Delia~

I had to bribe the receptionist at the Sterling Motorsports executive suite three thousand dollars just to get past the elevator bay.

My hands were shaking as I gripped the strap of my Chanel bag. I was a Kensington, but right now, I felt like a beggar I was practically a ghost in Julian’s mansion, locked in my own wing while my husband rived his life as if I didn’t exist. Julian wouldn’t look at me, let alone speak to me, Marcus Chen had blocked my legal access to our joint accounts, and my mother was too busy nursing her own social ruin to help me. I had nothing left except my rage, and the only person in this city who hated Katia as much as I did was currently sitting behind the double oak doors at the end of the hall.

Tessa Sterling was sitting at a glass desk, looking over telemetry charts. She didn’t look up when I pushed the doors open. She didn’t have her racing gear on today. She wore a tailored white suit that made her dark hair look even sharper, her lean, athletic posture radiating the kind of effortless dominance that I had spent my entire life trying to fake.

“I don’t remember scheduling a consultation with an ignored wife,” Tessa said.

Her voice was quiet, level, and completely devoid of warmth. She didn’t even lift her eyes from her tablet.

I swallowed the lump of humiliation in my throat and stepped into the room, closing the heavy doors behind me. “You lost the race, You got humiliated by a street racer on wet concrete. And you lost the WEG sponsorship. We have a common enemy, Tessa.

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Tessa slowly set her tablet down on the glass. She leaned back in her leather chair, her dark eyes locking onto me with the cold, assessing look of a predator deciding if a carcass was worth the effort of eating.

“A common enemy?” Tessa tilted her head. “Katia Kensington is a tech executive who got lucky on a board vote. I don’t have ‘ enemies‘ like that, Delia. I have minor inconveniences.”

“She’s not a minor inconvenience!” I snapped, my voice rising, my control slipping. “She’s a parasite. She’s been sleeping with my husband. She’s the reason Julian treats me like a stranger in my own home. She’s the reason you got publicly embarrassed at the board meeting. And I have the information you need to completely destroy her.”

Tessa didn’t move. But I saw the slight shift in her attention. The mention of Julian and Katia sleeping together made her pupils

dilate.

“Go on,” Tessa said quietly.

“She’s a criminal,” I said, leaning over her desk, my fingers pressing against the cold glass. “You think she’s some pristine, brilliant CEO? She’s currently facing active homicide charges. She pushed Victor Hale off the roof of her own building in Brooklyn. The police have the footage. She’s a murderer, Tessa. The only reason she’s not in an orange jumpsuit right now is because Julian used his personal connection and his lawyers to bail her out.”

Tessa’s lips touched a slow, highly amused smile. “A homicide charge. That is… dramatic. But Julian’s legal team can bury a homicide charge if the evidence is weak.”

“The evidence isn’t weak, but she’s hiding behind a massive lie,” I pushed, my venom pouring out now, hot and fast. “Katia claims she’s married. She’s been claiming it for seven years. She tells everyone she has a husband somewhere, but nobody kas ever seen his face. Not once. She doesn’t have a husband. It’s a pathetic, desperate lie she made up so society and our mother wouldn’t judge her for being an unmarried mother with Aiden. She got pregnant in Las Vegas like a cheap whore, came back with a ring she probably bought herself, and fabricated a husband to protect her pristine corporate reputation. She’s a liar, a fraud, and a murderer.”

I paused, breathing hard, waiting for Tessa to smile, waiting for her to grab my hand and tell me we were going to use this to destroy Katia together.

Tessa stared at me for three long, silent seconds.

Then, she let out a short, quiet laugh. It wasn’t a friendly laugh. It was the dry, mocking sound of someone who had just watched

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The Forensic Frame–up

-Julian-

Detective Reeves called my office at eight in the morning.

Not Katia’s lawyers. Me. Which told me everything I needed to know about how this conversation was going to go before it started.

“Mr. Windsor,” Reeves said. “I wanted to give you a courtesy heads–up. The DA’s office has received a request to expedite Ms. Kensington’s indictment. Someone with significant political pull has been applying pressure. We are looking at a preliminary hearing within the next ten days instead of the standard ninety.”

I set my coffee down.

“Who filed the request?” I said.

Reeves paused. The pause of a man who was giving me more than he was supposed to give me and was choosing his words accordingly. “I can’t share that. But I would suggest your legal team moves quickly. The DA is under a lot of pressure right now.”

He hung up.

I looked at my phone for a long moment.

Then I called Marcus.

“The indictment is being expedited,” I said. “Ten days. Someone with political connections pressured the DA’s office. I want to

know who made that call before noon.”

“I’ll find it,” Marcus said.

He found it in four hours.

Sterling Motorsports had a forty–year relationship with the district attorney’s office through a political action committee that Tessa’s father had co–founded in 1987. Three phone calls from that network in the last forty–eight hours. The DA’s office had a fundraising dinner with the Sterling family next month. The expedite request had come through an informal channel – not filed, not documented, the kind of influence that existed in the space between legality and corruption where old money had always operated.

I read Marcus’s report twice.

Tessa Sterling had lost the race. She had lost the board meeting. She had lost the WEG sponsorship. And she had walked away from all of it and immediately started using her family’s political machinery to bury Katia in the criminal justice system.

This was not about the board anymore or the race because Tessa didn’t know Katia was Catwoman.

This was about me. It had always been about me. And Katia was the target because Katia was what Tessa had decided stood between her and what she wanted.

I closed the report.

I had a dinner that evening at a restaurant in Manhattan that had been arranged three weeks ago – a standard industry event, the kind I attended four times a year. I was already dressed when my phone showed a text from an unknown number.

The charges against your business partner can disappear. All it takes is one conversation. I’ll be at Nobu at nine.

I knew the number belonged to. I did not respond.

I went to the dinner.

At nine fifteen I left the event early. I had no intention of going to Nobu. I was going home.

The Forest frame up

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I was almost at the car wheft I heard the heels.

Tessa had not texted from an unknown number by accident. She had known I was at the dinner, which meant she had resources watching my movements, which was a level of effort that should have surprised me and did not.

She fell into step beside me on the pavement.

“Julian,” she said.

“Tessa,” I said. I did not slow down.

“The charges against Katia Kensington are going to become very serious very quickly,” she said. “The DA is motivated. The political pressure is real. Her lawyers are good, but they are fighting a current that I helped create.” She paused. “I can make it stop.”

“Can you?” I said.

“One phone call,” she said. “The pressure disappears. The expedite request gets quietly withdrawn. The DA loses motivation. Katia’s legal team gets the time they need to dismantle the forensic evidence properly.” She was keeping pace with me easily, the heels not slowing her at all. “All I am asking for is that you stop pretending this thing with her is something it is not. Walk away from it. Align yourself with someone who is actually in your world.”

I reached the car.

I stopped.

I turned and looked at her for the first time since she had started talking.

She was standing on the pavement in a dark coat, the city moving behind her, her expression carrying the certainty of a worian who believed she had constructed an offer that could not be refused. She had his political connections. She had the race. She had her family’s money and her father’s network and a file of information she had clearly been building since the Brooklyn Grand

Prix.

She believed she had leverage.

“Tessa,” I said. My voice was quiet. The quiet I used when something had been decided and I was communicating the decision rather than debating it. “I am going to say this once.”

She waited.

“The political connections you used to pressure the DA’s office,” I said. “The PAC your father co–founded in 1987, The informal channel through which the expedite request was filed.” I held her gaze. “I have documentation of all of it. Marcus filed it with the state ethics commission forty minutes ago. The DA’s office is going to receive a copy of that filing by hine AM tomorrow. Whoever your family’s contact is in that office – they are going to have a very uncomfortable inorning.”

Something moved in her face.

“Furthermore,” I said, “Sterling Motorsports currently holds three government–adjacent contracts that were issued under procurement processes I have reason to believe were influenced by the same PAC network. I have already instructed my legal team to file requests for audit.” I paused. “Your father built something over forty years that I can make significantly smaller forty days. That is not a threat, That is information.”

Tessa’s expression had gone very still.

“You would not,” she said.

“I am telling you what I have already done,” I said. “Not what I intend to do.”

She looked at me.

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