My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 267

1blinked.

Of all the things I had expected to come out of Tessa Sterling’s mouth at a Tuesday dinner in Maison Noir, that was not on the

list.

“The underground racer?” I said.

“Yes,” Tessa said. “The one who beat me at the Brooklyn Grand Prix.” She said it flatly, without embarrassment, which I had to admit took real composure. “Eight seconds. On a wet circuit. In a car that should not have been able to do what it did in those conditions.” She paused. “Julian Windsor drove a matching McLaren into the service exit immediately after the race to block three cars that were trying to corner her. And then he sat in his suite and watched the victory replay with the expression of a man who was-” she paused, choosing the word carefully, “-proud.”

I stared at her.

“You think Julian knows who Catwoman is?” I said.

“I think,” Tessa said, “that Julian Windsor has been driving to underground racing circuits at midnight for fronths. I think his security team has been monitoring the Brooklyn circuit specifically. And I think the expression on his face at the Grand Prix was not the expression of a man watching a stranger race.” She picked up her fork. “He is obsessed with her. Not with Katia. With Catwoman.”

The information landed in my chest and rearranged something.

I thought about the nights Julian did not come home. The car returned at four in the morning, smelling of cold air and something I could not identify. The nights I had assumed he was with Katia-and maybe some of them he was, I was not naive— but some of them.

Some of them he had been at a circuit.

“He doesn’t know who she is, though,” I said, the words coming out before I had fully decided to say them. “He is obsessed with her, but I don’t think he knows who is under the helmet. Nobody does. Catwoman’s identity is the biggest secret on the underground circuit. People have been trying to unmask her for years.”

Tessa was quiet for a moment.

She cut a piece of duck with the precise, controlled movements of someone whose hands were trained for accuracy.

“Interesting,” she said.

“Why?” I said.

“Because I had assumed,” Tessa said carefully, “that Julian’s behavior at the committee luncheon the wrist, the comment about his wife–was about Katia. That she was the woman he was protecting.” She paused. “But if he is obsessed with a masked driver he has never seen the face of ” She stopped. Let the thought sit unfinished.

“You thought it was Katia,” I said.

“I thought he was being protective of your sister,” Tessa said simply. “A business partner A family connection through your marriage. It made a kind of sense.” She looked at me. “But a man does not drive to midnight circuits and block service exits by a business partner. That is something else.”

Something shifted in her face. A recalibration. The stillness of a woman who had been looking in one direction for a long time and had just been given a reason to look somewhere else entirely

She picked up her wine.

“Catwoman,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “Who are you?”

It was not a question directed at me. She had already torgotten I was there.

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I sat across from her with my own wine and watched Tessa Sterling’s obsession migrate in real time away from Katia, away from the cornmittee luncheon and the boardroom and the press stunts and settle with complete, total focus onto the masked driver who had beaten her by eight seconds on a wet Brooklyn circuit.

She was going to find out who Catwoman was.

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