My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 31

Forgering en host whe

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Forgetting the ghost wife

Julian’s POV

The check was paid before she could even reach for her purse. I didn’t do it out of a sense of archaic chivalry; I did it because, in my world, the one who pays controls the pace. Information is currency, but timing is power, and I wasn’t ready for this night to end. Not yet. I had spent my life/moving from one objective to the next, but for the first time in years, the “machine” was idling.

As we stepped out of the restaurant and into the cool, salt–heavy air of the French Riviera, the town of Antibes was glowing like a string of amber pearls against the velvet throat of the Mediterranean. The tourists were thinning out, leaving the cobblestone streets to the ghosts of old poets and the quiet hum of high–end security details.

“I heard that a boat sailing at night is much nicer,” I said, glancing toward the marina where the superyachts bobbed like sleeping giants. “The water is calmer. The stars don’t have to compete with the city lights or the noise of people trying too hard to be seen.”

Katia looked at me, her eyes reflecting the silver moonlight with a clarity that made my pulse skip a beat. “Is that a request or a command, Mr. Windsor? Because I’ve found that with you, the line is often blurred.”

“An observation,” I replied, though the lie was thin. I had already sent a single–word text to Marcus. By the time we reached the dock, a vintage Riva Aquarama was already prepped, its mahogany hull gleaming like a polished gemstone under the dock lights.

She didn’t argue. That was the thing about Katia; she did.

t play the coy, fluttering games Delia utilized like a blunt instrument If she wanted to go, she went. If she wanted to stay, she stayed. She moved with the confidence of a woman who owned her own

air.

The next few hours were a blur of adrenaline and racteristic spontaneity. We didn’t talk about the Windsor Empire Group

or the specific deliverables of the AI logistics contract. We didn’t talk about the Kensingtons or the wreckage they called a family. For the first time in six years, I wasn’t a CEO, a “paper husband,” or a strategic asset. I was simply a man on the Mediterranean.

I took the helm, the Riva slicing through the black glass of the sea. I pushed the engine, feeling the raw vibration of the motor through the soles of my shoes, the salt spray hitting my face like a wake–up call. Katia sat at the stern, her head tilted back, her laughter lost to the roar of the wind. She looked utterly untethered. It was a sight that should have irritated me. I preferred things under my control, but instead, it fascinated me.

After an hour on the water, we docked at a smaller, quieter pier and wandered through a late–night flower market in a nearby square. Most of the vendors were closing up, the scent of crushed lavender, jasmine, and lilies thick and heavy in the cooling air. On a whim, I stopped at a stall where a man was packing away deep, blood red roses. I bought a single dark Baccara rose, so red it was almost black, and handed it to her. I didn’t say any word to her.

She didn’t thank me with a staged smile. She simply took it, ran a finger over the velvet petals, and tucked it behind her ear. The dark bloom was stark against her skin, a mark of the night we were stealing.

By midnight, the air had grown heavy with the promise of a storm that would never break. We found ourselves in a small, hole- in–the–wall jazz club tucked beneath a limestone archway. The air inside was blue with smoke, and the piano was slightly out of tune, but the music was soulful, raw, and real. We sat in a dark corner, drinking vintage Bordeaux that tasted of earth and ancient fruit, until the edges of the world began to soften into a hazy, golden blur.

She reached across the table to emphasize a point about the thrust–to–weight ratio, her hand landing firmly over mine. Her skin was warm, a searing contrast to the cool condensation on my wine glass.

I didn’t pull away. I didn’t even stiffen. Instead, I felt a strange, blurred sense of contentment wash over me, a feeling so foreign

I snapped a picture. It was a “stolen” shot, her hand draped over mine, our fingers not quite intertwined but making undeniable, heavy contact. The background was the blurred, dark mahogany of the jazz bar, shadows dancing over our skin. I posted it instantly to my main account with no caption or explanation. Just the image of a Windsor being touched by a woman who wasn’t the one he’d stood at the altar with forty–eight hours ago.

“You’re going to break the internet, Julian,” she whispered, her voice husky and low, vibrating through the small space between

1. us.

As we finally left the club and walked back toward the villa where she was staying, the heavy silence of the French night settled between us. There was no intimacy, no lingering touches, no whispered promises of what would happen behind closed doors. We walked with a respectful distance, the sound of our footsteps echoing off the stone walls.

But as I watched her silhouette move ahead of me, the way she carried herself with such unapologetic grace, a cold, sharp realization began to pierce through my drunken haze. It was a sobering thought that no amount of Bordeaux could drown.

My mind should have been on “Kat.” For six years, the ghost of that girl in Las Vegas had been my North Star, the only thing that kept me human in a world of numbers. I had kept her marriage certificate in my private safe like a holy relic. I had spent millions on private investigators, trying to find the woman who owned my legal heart, the woman I had promised myself to in a fever dream of neon lights and cheap whiskey.

Yet, standing here under the French stars, watching Katia Kensington reach for the gate of her villa, I realized with a jolt of terror that I hadn’t thought about the Vegas girl once tonight.

Why?

I questioned myself, the “machine” in my head struggling to compute the logic. Why was Katia Kensington, my sister–in–law, the supposed “disgrace” of her family, the woman I had originally looked at with nothing but professional curiosity, making me forget the only woman I ever claimed to love?

She was a Kensington. She was a liability. She was a mother to a child that belonged to a “stranger.” Everything about her screamed danger to my reputation and my empire.

And yet, as she turned to wave a final, silent goodnight before disappearing into the shadows of the villa, I knew I was in deep. The girl from Vegas was a memory, a fading photograph in the back of my mind. But Katia Kensington was a fire, bright and burning right in front of me. And for the first time in my life, I realized I would rather burn with the fire than continue to live with the ghost.

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