My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 33

The Paper Bride

Delia’s POV

The dining room of the Windsor estate was large enough to host a gala, yet it felt like a tomb. I had spent the last three hours ensuring the table was perfect. The silver was polished to a mirror finish, the candles were flickering with a soft, romantic glow, and the scent of the roasted duck, Julian’s favorite, or so the staff told me, filled the air.

I was wearing a dress that cost more than most people’s cars, my hair swept into a perfect, effortless chignon. I looked exactly like a Windsor wife should. I looked like a woman who had won.

Then I heard the heavy thud of the front door, followed by the measured, rhythmic footsteps of a man who didn’t care who was waiting for him.

Julian walked into the dining room, his presence immediately sucking the warmth out of the air. He looked tired, but it wasn’t the exhaustion of a groom returning to his bride; it was the weariness of a king returning from a conquest. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at the table. He simply unbuttoned his suit jacket, draped it over the back of a chair, and sat down at the head of

the table.

“Sit,” he commanded, his voice as sharp as a blade.

I sat, my heart hammering against my ribs. I tried to maintain the smile I had practiced in the mirror, but it felt brittle. “I made dinner, Julian. I thought, since we haven’t really had a chance to

“What did I say about playing wife to me?” He interrupted. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as if the very sight of me bored him to his core.

The silence that followed was suffocating. I gripped my linen napkin under the table, my knuckles turning white. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

“Am I talking to myself?” he asked, his gaze finally dropping to mine. There was no fire in his eyes, only a cold detachment.

“I just wanted to do something nice,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “We just got married, Julian. 3 days ago was our wedding. I thought we could at least share a meal.”

Julian let out a short, dark chuckle that made my skin crawl. “Married?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, invading my space without a single touch. “Are you sure we are married, Delia? If we walked into the bureau tomorrow and pulled the records, do you truly believe they would find me married to you? Or do you think they would find me married to someone else?”

a private ceremony

I felt the blood drain from my face. I knew about the “ghost.” I knew there was a reason he had insisted with no public record. I knew I was a placeholder, a strategic move to satisfy his grandmother, but hearing him say it, hearing him suggest that I didn’t even exist in the eyes of the law, felt like a physical blow.

“You don’t have to be an ass, Julian,” I snapped, the frustration finally boiling over. I stood up, my chair scraping harshly against the marble floor. “I am your wife. I was here, in this house, waiting for you, while you were out there in France fucking your whore!”

The words had barely left my mouth when Julian moved. He didn’t rush; he simply stood up with a predatory grace that made me stumble back. He pointed a long, steady finger at me, his face a mask of terrifying stillness.

“Never,” he said, his voice a low, vibrating growl. “And I mean,

never,

life raise your voice at me again.”

you signed that contract,” he said, stepping around the table until “I told you exactly what you were getting yourself into when he was inches from me. “You are not my type, Delia. You never were. Did you truly think that by putting on a white dress and standing at an altar, I would somehow change my mind? Did you think I would suddenly find the urge to fuck you or whisk you away on a honeymoon?”

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