My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 418

Family Sticks Together

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Family Sticks Together

~Katia~

I found Gail in the estate’s garden the next morning, sitting alone on one of the stone benches near the

fountain, a mug of tea untouched on the seat beside her.

She looked up when she heard me approaching, and something in her expression braced immediately, as though she had been expecting this conversation since the moment she walked away from that podium.

“You are angry with me,” she said, before I had even sat down.

“I am not angry,” I said, settling onto the bench beside her. “I am confused. And worried. That was not the plan, Gail. We had a real strategy, witnesses, and an explanation that did not require you to lie to the entire city about who you are.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

“Then why,” I said. “Why did you do it?”

Gail turned to look at me fully, her eyes calm despite the exhaustion clearly written across her face.

“You are my best friend,” she said. “My brother’s wife. My godson’s mother. I was not going to sit back and watch you walk into a press conference, pregnant, stressed, defending an identity that could put both you and the baby at risk the moment the wrong person decided to push too hard. I took the fall because you are family, Katia, and family sticks together. That is not complicated to me. It never has been.”

I felt something tighten in my throat.

“Gail, this is not a small thing you did,” I said. “You told the entire world you are Catwoman. Do you understand what that actually costs you? Your job. Your reputation. Every quiet, careful life you built for yourself outside of this family’s chaos.”

“I understand exactly what it costs,” Gail said. “I made the decision with my eyes open. Stress is not good for the baby, Katia. I was not going to let you carry both a pregnancy and a scandal at the same time when I had a way to take at least one of those burdens off your shoulders.”

“You should have talked to me first,” I said. “Julian too. We could have found another way.”

“Maybe,” Gail said. “But every hour we spent discussing it was another hour Tessa had to dig deeper, another hour reporters had to build a stronger case pointing directly at you instead of me. I did not have time to hold a family meeting about it, Katia. I had a window, and I used it.”

I looked at her, at the calm, unshaken conviction underneath everything she was saying, and understood, watching her, exactly how much of Grandma Celeste actually lived inside her.

“You will clear this,” I said. “Eventually. Once the baby is here, once things settle, we find a way to walk this back properly.”

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Farraly Sticks Together

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“I will,” Gail said. “When the time is right. Not before.”

“That could take months,” I said. “You will be living under an identity that is not yours for months, Gail. People will ask you to explain things you do not actually know how to explain. It is going to be exhausting.”

“I know,” Gail said simply.

“What happens when someone asks you a technical question about racing that you cannot possibly answer?” I asked. “What happens when they ask about circuits, past races, and things only I would actually know.”

“Then I will deflect,” Gail said, “the same way you have deflected for years. I watched you do it enough times to have learned the shape of it. Vague answers. Mysterious smiles. Letting people believe whatever version of the story serves the moment best.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It is not simple,” Gail said. “But neither is anything else this family has faced this year, and we have managed all of it anyway, one impossible thing at a time.”

I wanted to argue further, wanted to find some version of this conversation that convinced her to undo what she had already done, but the certainty in her voice left very little room for me to actually push

against.

“I do not know how to thank you for this,” I said finally.

“You do not have to,” Gail said. “That is not how family works. We do not keep score of who owes what to whom. We simply show up when it matters, and I showed up, the same way you would have shown up for me if the situation were reversed.”

I reached over and took her hand, the same gesture she had used to comfort me more times than I could

count over the past several months.

“Family protects each other,” Gail said quietly, squeezing my hand. “That is all this was, Katia. Nothing more complicated than that.”

I sat with her in the quiet of the garden for a long while after that, the morning sun warming the bench beneath us, and let myself simply be grateful, for once, without trying to immediately fix or undo the thing I was grateful for.

“How is Aiden handling all of this,” Gail asked eventually, breaking the comfortable silence that had

settled between us.

“He thinks it is fascinating,” I said, unable to hold back a small laugh. “He asked me this morning if that meant Aunt Gail was secretly a superhero and if superheroes got to skip school when they had important business to attend to.”

Gail smiled, the first real smile I had seen from her since I sat down.

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Family Sticks Together

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“I like his logic,” she said.

“I told him superheroes still had to do their homework,” I said. “He was very disappointed in that answer.”

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