My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 291

The Maldives

~Katia~

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I called Julian before I left the office that evening, because what I needed to say to him was not something I wanted to say through a text message that he could read and reread and twist into something it was not.

“We need to stop,” I said the moment he answered

There was a pause on the other end. Not long, but long enough that I knew he had heard me clearly and was choosing how to respond rather than reacting on instinct.

“Stop what?” he said.

“This,” I said. “Whatever this is. What we have been doing.” I closed my office door so Sam would not hear the rest of this conversation through the gap. “It is not fair to Delia. She lives in your house. She thinks there is a version of this where you eventually choose her, and every night you spend with me is a night you are letting her believe in something that will never happen.” I took a breath. “And it is not fair to Jude either. He came here; he apologized. He is trying. Whatever he was before, he is trying now. I cannot keep doing this to him while he is trying.”

Julian did not answer right away.

“Where are you?” he said finally.

“At the office,” I said.

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” he said.

I looked at the window of my office, at the lights of Brooklyn starting to come on as the evening settled over the water. I thought about the easiest answer, the one that would end this conversation gleanly and let both of us walk away from it with the boundary intact.

“I will sleep where my husband sleeps,” I said.

Julian was quiet for a moment.

“Good answer,” he said.

He hung up.

I stood there holding the phone for a long moment after the call ended, staring at the blank screen, trying to decide a that hel gone the way I wanted it to go. It had not felt like a victory. It had felt like something closing, and closing things with Julian never felt clean. It always felt like a door that would find a way to open itself again whether either of us wanted it to or not

I drove to the Whitmore.

Jude opened the door himself, no staff hovering behind him this time, and the look on his tace when he saw me standing there alone was something close to relief. I had told myself on the drive over that I was doing the right thing Choosing the man whe had apologized, who was trying, over the one who had no claim to me.

We had barely settled into the sitting room, barely poured two glasses of water, when someone knocked on the doot

Jude frowned and went to answer it.

Julian stood there. He was wearing a pair of dark framed glasses I had never seen on him before, the kind of glasses a man wo when he wanted to look like he had just stepped out of a long day of paperwork rather than a long day of being the most Intimidating person in every room he entered He looked entirely composed the looked like he belonged exactly where he was standing

“Windsor,” Jude said, his voice carrying the same wary edge it always carried around fultan

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“Jude,” Jultan said, pleasant in a way that made the back of my neck ga cold. “I am sorry to interrupt. Katia and I have a work trap starting tonight. I need to collect her.”

I stood up from the sofa

“I do not remember having a work trip,” I said carefully, watching him.

Julian looked at me over the top of the glasses, his expression entirely unbothered, as though I had simply forgotten something obvious and he was being patient with me about it.

“The Maldives,” he said. “Remember? We are coming back Saturday morning,”

He said it with a small, satisfied curve at the corner of his mouth that I recognized immediately, because I had seen that exact expression on his face in board meetings right before he dismantled someone’s entire argument in front of their own investors

Jude looked between the two of us.

“The Maldives,” he repeated slowly. “Tonight.”

“It came together quickly,” Julian said. “These things often do.”

I looked at Julian and understood exactly what this was. There was no work trip. There never had been. He had not invented a business excuse to extract me from this suite politely. He had simply decided he was taking me to the Maldives, and the only question left was whether I was going to stand here and argue about it in front of Jude or whether I was going to walk out the door with him.

I knew which version of this evening ended quietly and which one did not

“Let me get my coat,” I said.

Jude’s eyes moved to me, surprised, something like betrayal flickering across his face before he caught himself and smoothed it back into the careful, contrite expression he had been wearing since he walked into my office with white roses.

“You are leaving,” he said. It was not quite a question.

“I have to,” I said.

I walked past him to retrieve my coat from the chair near the window, my back to both of them, my mind racing through every version of how this could go wrong if I said one more word in either direction. Julian stood in the doorway the entire time perfectly still, perfectly patient, watching me with an expression that told me he had already decided how the rest of tought was going to go regardless of anything either of us said in this room.

I walked back to the door.

“We should go,” I said to Julian. “We do not want to miss the flight”

“No,” Julian said, looking at Jude one more time with that same pleasant, unreadable expression. We certainly us

He stepped back to let me through the doorway first.

Behind us, I heard Jude say nothing at all, which somehow felt louder than anything he could have sand

Julian’s hand found the small of my back as we walked down the corridor toward the elevator, and I let him guide are there without a single word of protest because some part of me had already known, the moment I heard that knock on hade s door. exactly how this night was going to end

The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside. He pressed the button to the lobby, and the doors closed, sealing us into a small steel box that smelled faintly of his cologne and the cold winter air still clinging to his vat

I looked at him.

The Maldives

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