My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 40

Julian’s POV

I checked the time the moment the service door sealed Delia back into her wing, and I did it not because I cared where she went after humiliating herself in my suite, but because I needed to confirm that Martha Kensington had finally left my house and taken her perfume, her entitlement, and her constant hunger for leverage with her, because there are only so many hours in a day and I refuse to waste any more of them playing husband for a woman t never wanted while her mother watches like she’s supervising livestock.

The estate had gone quiet in that way only old money houses know how to go quict, where silence is not peace but a controlled environment, curated by staff who understand which doors to close and which corridors to clear when the head of the family is done performing, and I stood for a moment in my study, the same study with the mahogany shelves and the weight of Windsor history pressing in from every angle, and I let the stillness settle into my bones long enough to hear the thing I didn’t want to admit out loud, which was that I didn’t feel relieved after pushing Delia out of my suite, I felt irritated, as though the entire evening had been a distraction from something else that kept pulling at the corner of my attention like a hand I couldn’t shake

off.

The whiskey in my glass tasted like nothing, the kind of nothing that happens when your mind has already moved on, so I set it aside and reached for my phone, and I stared at Zane’s name for half a second because I knew exactly what he was going to say before he said it, and I called anyway because the one thing Zane has always been good for is showing up when my restlessness turns sharp enough to become dangerous.

He answered with a lazy voice that suggested he was already smiling. “You survived another performance?”

“I’m done for the night,” I said, because if I started listing everything I was done with, I’d be on that call until sunrise.

Zane exhaled like he was leaning back somewhere expensive. “So what’s the actual reason you’re calling me, me by pretending it’s to talk about your feelings.

and don’t insult

I looked out at the dark garden beyond the windows, the lanterns still glowing among trimmed hedges, and I realized the moment had arrived, the moment my body always reaches when it’s been forced into too many suits and too many rooms and too many conversations that don’t mean anything.

“I want to go racing,” I said, and even as the words left my mouth, I felt my shoulders loosen by a fraction, because there are very few things in this world that make sense without people complicating them, and speed is one of them.

Zane laughed, the sound bright and mocking. “Vegas?”

“There’s another race,” I said, and I didn’t have to explain how I knew because he knew how I knew, because the underground

r circuit doesn’t run on flyers and advertisements; it runs on whispered dates and private channels and money that moves like

water.

His amusement deepened. “Well,” he said, “just don’t get married again.”

That pulled an actual laugh from me, short and sharp, the kind that tastes like relief. “It would be a pity to get married for the third time,” I answered, and the joke landed between us with a weight neither of us acknowledged, because even jokes have shadows when they come too close to the truth.

“I’m coming,” Zane said, and his tone shifted into the version of him that becomes all business when he needs to, the version that knows how to disappear into logistics and make things happen quickly without leaving a trail.

I ended the call and moved through my home like I wasn’t walking through a mansion but through a corridor of decisions already made, because I didn’t need to pack much, and I didn’t need to explain myself to anyone, not to Delia, not to my grandmother, not to the staff who would notice my absence and file it away quietly the way they file away everything in a family

like miné.

The chopper was ready within the hour, blades carving the night air into something loud and alive, and when I stepped onto the helipad, I felt my blood wake up, because helicopters do something to a man’s sense of gravity; they remind you that the ground

1/2

was waiting exactly where it should be le a piece of metal, because it wasn’t b me that sounded like a promise you c

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify