My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 277

Mrs. Windsor

-Delia-

His car was not in the garage.

I knew before I even checked. I walked to my window in the early morning gray and looked down at the private garage and confirmed what I already felt–the estate had that stillness it only had when Julian was not in it. Not quiet exactly. Something emptier than quiet.

He had not come home again.

I turned from the window and sat on the edge of my bed and looked at my hands.

This had been happening for weeks. Months, if I counted properly, which I was choosing not to do because the number was no comfortable one. Julian left in the morning and did not come back at night, and I had no idea where he went. That was the trut of it. I did not know. I had tried to find out–I had asked the security team casually, had tried to read his schedule from the communications that passed through the estate, had listened for anything that would tell me where he spent his evenings.

Nothing.

The security team did not discuss Julian’s movements. His schedule was managed by a layer of people I had no access to. The estate staff was loyal in the way that staff who were paid extremely well tended to be loyal–completely and without exception

I had no idea where he went.

I had no idea who he was with.

I only knew that he was not here. That he walked past me in the corridors of his own house like the space I occupied was simply air. That we had never once had the kind of conversation that happened between two people who were supposed to be building something together. That every attempt I made to close the distance between us was met with the same cold, immovable wall.

He had told me before the arrangement began–I remembered the words precisely because I had replayed them enough times to have worn grooves in my memory. He had said he was married. He had said he could never touch me. He had said those things with the absolute clarity of a man who was not performing distance but living it.

I had not believed him.

I had told myself it was a defense mechanism. That no man truly meant those words. That proximity and time and the nigb

moment would shift things.

They had not shifted.

He had also said something else. Something I had been carrying since he said it, turning it over and over, looking for the shape

of it.

I sleep where she sleeps

His wife

Thad been trying to find out who she was since the day I moved into this house the straty was the key Iwanoramatic certain that whatever Jishan was protecting lived behind that biometric lock, but the lock had dere died me and the sex urity Grade had defeated me, and every channel I had tried had come back with nothing

Whoever she was, she was invisible in a way that took serious resontves to mamtat

I picked up my phone

I looked at Julian’s name in my contacts for a long moment

It was time to stop watting for something to shift on its own. It was time to force the conversation that we had never had thad

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been living in this house for almost two years, and I had a name that was supposed to mean something, and I had nothing to show for it, no real marriage, no real partnership, not even a real conversation.

That was going to change.

I typed a message.

I am preparing dinner tonight. There is something I need to tell you. Will you be home?

I watched the screen.

The reply came in four minutes.

Ok.

One word. No question mark. No punctuation at the end. The reply of a man who had read a message and responded with the minimum possible engagement. But it was a reply. That was more than I had received in weeks, and I was choosing to treat it

a yes.

I sent a follow–up.

Seven o’clock.

No reply.

I put the phone down and got out of bed.

I spent the afternoon preparing.

The dining room in my wing was smaller than the main dining room–intimate, with the round mahogany table that sat four and the good china I had arranged to be brought out of Windsor storage when I first arrived. I had the kitchen staff prepare a proper meal. Three courses. The kind of dinner that announced itself before anyone sat down.

I dressed carefully.

The dress was something I had bought in Queens six months ago and had never worn – a floor–length piece in deep midnight fabric that moved when I moved. Technically opaque. Constructed in a way that made opacity feel like a suggestion. I wore a black bra and matching underwear underneath. Everything was visible. Just like the see–through dress.

1 looked at myself in the mirror for a long time.

I looked like a woman who had run out of patience.

I picked up my wine glass and walked to the entrance of my wing and stood there and waited for the sought of his toorsteps

Seven o’clock came.

The candles burned

The house was quiet

Eight minutes past Fifteen minutes past

I took a slow sip and told myself he was on his way That “ok” had been a continuation that fullon Windset kept his word, and if he had said ok, he had meant i

Twenty minutes past sever

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