My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 336

Since Last Year

2

Katia POV ~

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Grandma Celeste and Gail were in the front room when I arrived, both of them looking like two women who had spent the past week sitting with a conversation they knew wasn’t finished yet and had been waiting for me to come back and finish it.

Good.

“I want to take Aiden with me,” I said, before either of them could speak first.

Grandma Celeste looked up at me. Gail’s hands stilled in her lap.

“I think it’s best he gets his mother and his father’s love at the same time,” I said. “In the same house. Under the same roof. He’s old enough to feel the difference between being passed between two separate lives and actually having one.”

Neither of them argued with that. I hadn’t expected them to.

“I want you both to know,” I said, looking at Grandma Celeste first, “that none of this changes what Aiden is to you. He is your great-grandson. He will always be your great-grandson. Whatever happens between me and Julian, that doesn’t move.”

Grandma Celeste’s chin lifted slightly, something that was not quite relief but was close to it moving behind her

eyes.

“And you,” I said, turning to Gail.

Gail looked up at me, and I let her look, let her sit with whatever she was feeling for a moment before I said the

next part.

“I am angry with you,” I said. “I want you to know that clearly, because I think you already know it and I think pretending otherwise would be an insult to both of us. You are my best friend, and you had information that belonged to me, and you chose to keep it, and I am going to be angry about that for a while.”

Gail nodded, her jaw tight, her eyes glistening.

“But Aiden is still your godson,” I said. “He is still your nephew. That does not change either. I am not going to punish him for what the adults in his life have done, and I am not going to take him away from people he loves because I am angry. I just need you to understand that you and I have some distance to cover before we get back to where we were.”

“I understand,” Gail said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Good,” I said.

I looked at Grandina Celeste one more time, this woman who had held the ring, held the secret, and held the entire shape of who I was to this family in her hands for years, and felt something complicated move through me that wasn’t quite forgiveness yet but wasn’t entirely anger either.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“His room,” Grandma Celeste said. “I’ll send Gail.”

Gail was already standing.

She came back ten minutes later with Aiden beside her, his school bag on his back and his favorite jacket half

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zipped, the one with the small patch on the elbow that he had refused to let anyone replace because he said the patch made it look like an explorer’s jacket and he intended to be an explorer. He looked between me and Grandma Celeste and Gail with the calm, assessing expression he sometimes wore when he sensed the adults around him had been having a conversation he wasn’t allowed to hear.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Come on.”

He crossed the room and took my hand without another question, the way he always did when he trusted that I had it handled, and I felt something tighten in my throat that I swallowed back down before it could become anything else.

I looked at Grandma Celeste one last time from the doorway.

She looked back at me, and in her eyes was everything she couldn’t say in front of Aiden, the apology, the relief, the complicated love of a woman who had spent years watching two people she cared about move through the same life in opposite directions and had not known how to turn them toward each other without losing something in the process.

I nodded once.

She nodded back.

And then Aiden and I walked out.

The mansion was lit up when we arrived, warm light bleeding through the tall windows onto the front steps, and Aiden let go of my hand the moment we were through the door, the way he always did when he came here, that immediate loosening of a child who knew exactly where he was and felt entirely at home in it.

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