My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 363

Perhaps, Julian Is the Father

~Delia~

I drove home from Katia’s office with my hands too tight on the wheel, replaying the conversation in my head until the word stopped making sense in any order.

Martha was in the kitchen when I walked in, and she looked up from whatever she was chopping the moment she saw my fac

“What happened?” she asked.

“Katia is pregnant again,” I said.

Mama set the knife down.

“Again,” she repeated.

“Apparently,” I said, dropping my bag onto a chair harder than I meant to. “I caught her getting sick in the office bathroom. When I asked her who the father was this time, she told me it was Julian.” I let out a short, humorless laugh. “As if I would believe that. As if she thinks I do not know exactly what she is trying to do.”

“What is she trying to do?” Mama asked carefully.

“Hurt me,” I said. “Obviously. She knows I live in his house. She knows how badly I have wanted something real with him, an

she said his name just to watch my face when I heard it. That is what my sister does, Mother. She takes whatever she can find and uses it as a weapon.”

Mama was quiet for a moment, studying me in the careful way she did when she was deciding how much to actually say and he much to simply let pass.

“And if it is true,” she said finally.

“It is not true,” I said. “Julian has never once touched me in two years. Do you really believe he suddenly decided my sister was worth breaking his own rule for?”

“I did not say I believed it,” Mama said. “I asked what you would do if it turned out to be true.”

I did not have an answer for that, so I ignored the question entirely and reached for the kettle instead, filing it with one more than the task actually required.

Mama watched me for a moment, then set her knife down again, wiping he hands on the towel hanging at hec Hugo

“Sit down, Delia,” she said.

“I do not want to sit down,” I said. “I want to make tea”

“Sit down anyway”

I sat, mostly because arguing with my mother when she used that tone had never one worked in day event

“Tell me what she actually salt, Mama said “Word for word. Not what you think it cam what he and

I closed my eyes for a moment, Turing myself back tisto the offer, by th retching, and the way she had looked at nur allerwand pale tout concy canopied were simply one more the onveniend Hem her hushe

“Lasked her who the father was. I said She looked at the and cant and too que ade your husband She told me to stop prefending I did mut how she and fullen haft

Malia’s expression did not change but something in her posture skullest ex

“She used that word. Mama asked

die baths the real

14

“Yes,” I said.

“Not the man you married. Not your husband. Claim.”

I stared at her.

“You are reading too much into one word,” I said, though even as I said it, I heard how uncertain the sentence came out, confidence I had walked in with already starting to crack around the edges I had spent the whole drive home reinforcing

“Perhaps,” Martha said. “Or perhaps your sister chooses her words more carefully than either of us gives her credit for.”

“You do not know Julian the way I do,” I said. “I have lived in his house for two years. I know exactly what he is capable of exactly what he is not.”

“Two years in the same house is not the same as two years in the same bed,” Martha said, her voice quiet but unflinching have told me yourself, more than once, that he barely looks at you. That he keeps to his own wing. That you have never on shared a night together in all that time. If that is true, then you know considerably less about what Julian Windsor is capat than you believe you do.”

The words landed somewhere I did not want them to land, and I felt my jaw tighten before I could stop it.

“That does not mean he is sleeping with my sister,” I said.

“No,” Mama agreed. “It does not mean that on its own. But it does mean you are not in a position to speak with certainty al what he wants or who he wants it with, because he has made very sure you would never have that information in the first p

I stood up from the table, needing the movement more than I needed anywhere to actually go.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you sitting here building a case for a truth you cannot possibly know is real, in of simply supporting me the way a mother is supposed to?”

Mama set the knife down again, and for the first time since I had walked into the kitchen, something softened in her face, th sharp, careful composure giving way to something closer to genuine sadness.

“Because I love you,” she said. “And because I watched you build two years of your life around a man who told you play. 279 the very beginning, exactly what this was and was not going to be. I supported that decision when you made it, because good things for you and I believed the Windsor name would bring them. I am not certain anymore that support looks het suall as agreement. Sometimes love means telling you the truth even when the truth is not what you want standing beside vo fight.”

I did not have an answer for that.

I turned toward the kettle again, needing something to occupy zay hands while the rest of me tried No casćts up with att vi just said.

“We are no closer to finding out who fathered her inst child either,” I said, my voice quieber how Auten out her co able to confirm who that man actually was and now there is apparetuly a second one, and she wants us that end it my homet of all people”

“The two questions may be copsested,” Mama sand

I turned to look at her

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