My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 403

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Noah’s Offer

Noah’s POV

I found her in the guest room just after nine.

The door was half open. Delia sat on the edge of the bed with her phone face-down beside her and her shoulders curved forward like she was still bracing for the next hit. She had changed into something plain and dark. No makeup. Hair pulled back. The version of her that existed when there was no audience left to perform for.

I knocked once on the frame.

“Can I come in?”

She looked up. For a second I thought she might tell me to leave. Then she just nodded and turned her eyes back toward the window.

I stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind me. The room still smelled faintly of the perfume she had worn the day before, now mixed with the stale quiet of a space that had been occupied by someone trying not to be

seen.

“I owe you an apology,” I said.

Delia didn’t look at me.

“For which part?”

“For what my father did to you. For the messages. The voice notes. All of it ending up in public. I didn’t know he was going to do that. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. And I’m sorry.”

She gave a small, tired laugh.

“You’re sorry.”

“Yes.”

“Your father took the worst pieces of my private life and handed them to the entire city like entertainment. And you’re sorry.”

“I know it doesn’t fix anything,” I said. “I’m still saying it.”

Silence settled between us. Delia finally turned her head and studied me.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “The press conference. Giving up the vice CEO position. Walking away from everything. Over what-some misunderstanding with your father?”

I shook my head.

“It wasn’t a misunderstanding.”

“Then what was it?”

“We can fight each other as adults,” I said. “Business. Power Old history. All of it. I don’t care how ugly that gets But when someone goes after a child, that’s where I draw the line. He sent a man to Aiden’s school. He used you as a public weapon on the same day. I couldn’t stay under the same roof as that and keep calling myself anything decent.”

Delia watched me for a long moment. Something complicated moved behind her eyes.

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“You’re too sweet,” she said eventually. “That’s not how things work. Not in families like yours. Not in families like mine. People use whatever leverage they have. Children. Marriages. Old messages. It’s all the same currency.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“It is.”

I stepped closer and, for the first time since the night we signed the papers, I reached for her hand. Her fingers were cold. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t lace them with mine either. She just let me hold them.

“I know this marriage was rushed,” I said. “I know my father forced it. I know I walked into it treating you like an assignment. I never planned to get married just to turn around and get divorced the second it became inconvenient. That was never the point for me, even when the whole thing was still a transaction.”

Delia’s brow furrowed slightly.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m asking if you want to try and make it a real one.

The words hung in the air between us. Delia stared at me like she was waiting for the second half of a joke that wasn’t coming.

“A real marriage,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“You don’t even like me.”

“I didn’t know you,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

She pulled her hand back slowly and folded her arms.

“And what exactly does a real marriage look like to you in this situation? Shared calendars? Joint statements? Sleeping in the same room so the press can stop calling it a sham?”

“It looks like trying,” I said. “It looks like not treating each other like temporary solutions. It looks like seeing if there’s something here that isn’t just damage control and old orders.”

Delia let out a breath and glanced toward the window again.

“What are we going to eat?” she asked,

The question was so abrupt and so ordinary that it almost knocked the tension out of the room.

“What?”

“If we’re suddenly trying to have a real marriage,” she said, still not looking at me, “what are we going to eat? Do

I have to start cooking for you? Do we sit at the same table every night and pretend this is normal? You don’t even have a job.”

“You’ll eat what I eat,” I said.

That got her eyes back on me. There was a flicker of something almost like dark humor in them.

“You’ll eat what I eat,” she repeated. “That’s your big vision ”

“It’s a start.”

NOO

Offer

She shook her head slowly.

“You don’t love me.”

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“No,” I said. “I still don’t.” The honesty landed cleanly. I didn’t try to soften it. “But I’m willing to try, I continued. “And if it doesn’t work, we go our separate ways without dragging each other through more public mud than we’ve already had. No strategies. No using the marriage as a shield or a weapon. Just two people seeing – if they can build something that isn’t rotten from the first day.”

Delia sat with that for a long time. Her thumb moved back and forth across her opposite wrist, a small restless motion. I could almost see her turning the offer over from every angle, looking for the trap, the angle, the part that would cost her more than she still had left to give.

“You’re serious,” she said finally.

“Yes.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then we keep the legal arrangement until it makes sense to end it cleanly. I won’t force this.”

She looked down at her hands, then back up at me.

“Alright,” she said.

“Alright?”

“I’ll try.” The words came out quiet but clear. “I don’t know how to do a real marriage. I don’t even know if I believe in them anymore. But I’ll try. On the condition that you don’t suddenly start expecting me to become someone soft and grateful. I am still the same person who walked into this. That doesn’t disappear because you gave a press conference.”

“I didn’t ask you to become anyone else.”

“Good.”

We sat in the quiet for a while after that. It wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it wasn’t empty either. Something had shifted. Not into love. Not even into trust. Just into a fragile agreement to stop treating the space between us like a battlefield by default.

“I’m going to make coffee,” I said eventually. “Do you want some?”

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