My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 376

“You,” I whispered. Then louder, raw and cracking, “You have to be joking.”

Julian’s hand left Aiden’s shoulder. He walked around the table, past the frozen guests, and stopped beside Katia. He did not take her hand. He simply stood next to her, close enough that the message was unmistakable/

“This is my wife,” he said. His voice carried to every corner of the room without effort. “Katia Windsor. The mother of my son. The only woman who has ever held that title for seven years now.”

Silence crushed the air out of the space. Seven years, which meatis Julian is the man Katia slept with in Vegas!

I stared at them. At the way Aiden had already slid out of his chair and moved to Katia’s other side. At the way Julian’s body angled slightly toward her, protective even in stillness. At the bruises on my own face, which suddenly felt like a costume that no longer fit.

The media storm I had built, the interviews, the tears, the carefully displayed handprints… all of it turned to ash in my mouth.

“You absolute bastard,” I said, and this time the words were meant for both of them. “You’re announcing my sister? You’re standing there calling her your wife while I still have your marks on my face?”

Julian’s gaze was arctic.

“You put those marks in motion the moment you laid a hand on our son,” he replied. “Everything that followed is a consequence you chose.”

Katia finally spoke, her voice quiet but steady.

“Delia. Stop.”

The sound of my name in her mouth snapped something clean through me. I laughed, high and unstable.

“Don’t you dare say my name. Don’t you dare stand there in my place and tell me to stop. You took everything. The house. The child. And now you take the name too?”

Julian’s expression did not change.

“Security will escort you out,” he said. “You are not welcome in this house. You are not welcome near my wife or my son. And if you ever put your hands on either of them again, the next headlines will be about the charges I file against you.”

Two large men in black suits were already moving toward me. The guests remained frozen, a sea of wide eyes and half-raised phones. Outside, the media vans were still waiting, hungry for whatever came through the doors next.

I looked at Katia one last time. At the sister who had somehow become the center of the life I thought was mine. Then I looked at Julian, at the man who had chosen her so completely that he was willing to burn every bridge and every headline to keep her.

“This isn’t over,” I said, voice shaking with everything I still refused to name. “You can announce her. You can put a ring on her. You can call that boy your son. But I will not disappear quietly.”

Julian’s answer was soft and final.

“You already have.”

The security men reached me. One of them touched my elbow. I jerked away, turned, and walked toward the doors

This isn’t over

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Outside, the night air hit my burning face. Flashbulbs exploded all over again. Voices shouted questions I no longer had answers for. I kept walking down the steps, past the cameras, past the microphones, toward the car that still waited at the bottom.

The media storm I had created was still raging. It just no longer belonged to me.

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Where was your marriage to Julian registered

Katia’s POV

The office was quiet for the first time all morning.

I sat behind my desk with a fresh cup of ginger tea cooling beside a stack of unsigned contracts, the city glittering. beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass. The announcement dinner had ended only hours ago, yet the fallout was already spreading like smoke. My phone had been vibrating nonstop since midnight-messages from Sam, from Julian, from numbers I didn’t recognize. I had silenced everything except the direct line to the house. Aiden was safe. That was the only thing that mattered right now.

I had just turned back to the first page of a contract summary that I was busy reviewing when the door to my office exploded open.

Delia stormed in like a hurricane in designer heels, three journalists and two cameramen trailing behind her as it she had personally invited the entire press corps to my private floor. Her face still carried the dark shadows of Julian’s handprints, carefully left uncovered so every lens could feast on them. She looked wrecked and radiant at the same time, the perfect wounded-wife performance she had been selling since yesterday.

Sam appeared in the doorway behind the chaos, eyes wide with apology. I lifted one hand. Leave it.

Delia stopped in the center of the rug, spun toward the cameras, and flung an arm in my direction.

“Everyone, this is my sister Katia,” she announced, her voice already trembling on cue. “She stole my husband. And she claims that Julian is the father of her bastard!”

The word “bastard” landed like a slap of its own. One of the cameramen actually stepped back. I set my pen down slowly, pushed the chair back, and stood.

The room waited.

I walked around the desk without hurry, heels clicking against the polished floor, and stopped a few feet from her. Close enough for the microphones. Far enough that she could not touch me first.

“Delia,” I said, voice calm and carrying, “you seem to have nothing else to do. Why don’t you look for a job or go do your manicure? Was Julian Windsor ever your husband? Since when? You keep running to the media-will the media help you become the Windsor wife?”

A journalist near the door, a sharp-eyed woman with a recorder already raised, turned straight to Delia.

“Delia, is Mr. Windsor your husband?”

Delia’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. The cameras kept rolling. Her eyes flicked from the journalist to me and back again, the first real crack appearing in the performance.

I tilted my head.

“Why are you not answering the question?” I asked softly. “Or should we visit the registry office together and check who truly is Mrs. Windsor between me and you?”

Silence stretched. One of the cameramen shifted his weight. Delia’s throat worked, but no sound followed. I watched the exact moment she realized the room had turned. The same journalists who had eaten her victim story for breakfast were now staring at her with open skepticism. The narrative she had built so carefully was slipping through her fingers in real time.

Hor over filled. The tears came fast and were photogenic.

Where was your marriage to Julian registerect

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“You and Julian played me,” she choked out. “You pretended in frout of the. You were his wife and made me marry him.”

I almost laughed. Almost.

“Made you itiarry him?” I repeated, letting every syllable drip with disbelief. “Delia, which marriage are you talking about? And who made you marry Julian? Where was your marriage to Julian registered?”

She had no answer. Of course she had no answer. There had never been a marriage. There had only been a long expensive performance she had convinced herself was real.

The tears turned messy. Her shoulders shook. She looked at the cameras as if they might still save her, but the lenses stayed cold and impartial.

I took one step closer.

“You walked into my son’s school,” I said, voice dropping into something far less polite. “You put your hands on him. You called him a bastard in front of his classmates and teachers. And then you ran to every camera in this city crying about how you were the victim.”

Delia’s head snapped up.

“He is not-”

I moved before she finished the sentence. My open palm connected with her cheek in a clean, sharp crack that echoed off the glass walls. Her head turned with the force of it. The journalists gasped as one. A camera flash went off like a gunshot.

Delia staggered back, one hand flying to the fresh red mark blooming over the older bruises.

I did not raise my voice. I did not need to.

“That,” I said, “was for my son. Touch him again and the next one will not be nearly so gentle. You do not get to hit my child and then stand in my office playing the wounded wife for an audience. You do not get to call him a bastard while the entire city watches. And you certainly do not get to claim a marriage that never existed.”

Delia’s eyes were wide, shining with tears and pure disbelief. The perfect victim mask had cracked completely. What remained was raw, ugly panic.

“You hit me,” she whispered.

“Yes,” I answered. “And I will do it again if you ever lay a finger on Aiden. Leave. Now. Before security arrives and the footage of you being escorted out of my building becomes the next headline you so desperately love.”

She stared at me for three full seconds, chest heaving. Then she looked at the journalists, at the cameras still rolling, at the way every person in the room had shifted just slightly away from her. The support she had counted on was gone. The story had flipped in the space of a single slap and a handful of questions she could not answer.

Delia spun on her heel and stormed out the same way she had entered, heels slamming against the floor, tears streaming, the media scrambling after her like dogs that had lost the scent. One journalist lingered long enough to glance at me with somethi.

Where was your mariage to Julian registare

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Sam appeared and said, “Do you want me to call Julian?”

“No,” I said. “He’ll see the footage soon enough. Everyone will.”

I walked back to my desk, sat down, and picked up the pen I had set aside. The tea had gone cold. I didn’t care. Outside the glass, the city kept moving, unaware that one more public scene had just rewritten the narrative again.

Delia had come here looking for an audience and a new headline.

She left with neither. And for the first time since this entire mess began, I felt no need to explain myself to anyone. I turned the page of the contract and kept working.

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