My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 88

What Gail Knows

~Julian~

I told myself I was visiting Gail because I hadn’t seen her in three weeks.

That was true. It was also not the reason.

She was in her apartment in the West Village, which she had decorated with the specific, confident chaos of someone who had excellent taste and no interest in anyone else’s opinion of it, art everywhere, books in every available space, and the particular warmth of a home that was actually lived in rather than arranged to look like it was. She made tea without asking and handed it to me and sat across from me with the expression she wore when she knew I had come for a reason I wasn’t going to announce immediately.

Gail had always been good at waiting me out. She had been doing it since we were children.

We talked about her work for twenty minutes, a gallery collaboration she was developing, and a piece she was considering acquiring for her private collection. I listened properly. I asked the right questions. And then, in the natural pause between topics, I said it.

“Your friend Katia.”

Gail looked at me over her teacup. “What about her?”

“How is she?”

She looked at me. The particular kind Gail produced when she was deciding how much of what she was thinking to say. “She’s well. She’s always well. Katia runs at a different speed to most people; things that would flatten someone else just make her sharper.” She sipped her tea. “Why?”

“We work together. It’s useful to understand the people you work with.”

“Mm.” Gail set her cup down. “You understand most people by reading their financial reports, Julian. You’re asking me how she

is.”

I said nothing.

“She’s remarkable,” Gail said, after a moment. Not defensively, just truthfully, the way she said things she meant completely She built something extraordinary from nothing. She is one of the most complete people I’ve ever met.” A warmth entered her voice that was specific and total. “And she is my best friend. Has been since Harvard.”

“Tell me about Aiden,” I said.

Gail’s entire face changed.

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That was the only way to describe it, not a shift, not a recalibration, but a complete and immediate transformation into something unguarded and full. The warmth that had been in her voice when she talked about Katia doubled, tripled, and became something closer to the way people looked when they talked about the thing they loved most in the world.

“Aiden,” she said, and just his name in her mouth sounded like a whole sentence. “Julian, I helped raise that child. From three months old. I was there for his first steps, his first words, his first everything.” She shook her head slowly. “He is everything to me. Absolutely everything. He is the funniest, sharpest, most extraordinary little person I have ever encountered in my life, and I have encountered a great many people.” She looked at me. “You met him at the showcase. You saw it.”

“I did,” I said. “He’s unusual.”

“He is beyond unusual. He corrects adults, and he’s right every time, and he does it so gently that they don’t even feel embarrassed.” She laughed – the real laugh, sudden and warm. “He told me last week that octopuses have three hearts and that he found it relatable. He’s five years old, Julian.”

“Nearly six,” I said. Without thinking.

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Gall looked at me: Something in my expression had shifted slightly → I felt it before I could manage it. She filed it away without commenting.

“Nearly six,” she agreed. “And already more himself than most adults manage to be in a lifetime.” She picked up her tea. “Katia and I raised him together. It was never a question; when she came back to New York and started building I*, I was there. We built.it around him. Around keeping him safe and happy and knowing he was loved from every direction.”

“And his father?” I said. Carefully. The way you asked things you needed the answer to but couldn’t appear to need.

Gail’s expression shifted. “Katia’s never said. A one–night stand, something she doesn’t fully remember.” She paused. “She

doesn’t know who he is. She never found out.”

“She’s never tried to find him?”

“I don’t know.” Gail looked at her cup. “She doesn’t talk about it. I’ve never pushed.” She looked back up at me. “Why?”

“Curiosity,” I said.

“You don’t do curiosity. You do research.”

I let that sit.

Then Gail laughed again, softer this time, more private, the laugh of someone remembering something that had lived in the back of their mind for a long time. “You know the funny thing? The completely ridiculous thing that I’ve never told anyone?” She shook her head. “When Aiden was very small, two, three years old, I used to look at him sometimes and think he looked like he could be my nephew.” She said it lightly, almost dismissively, the way you said things you knew were absurd. “Isn’t that mad? I used to think that. Like, the jaw, the way he tilts his head.” She waved her hand. “But obviously that’s impossible. You

and Katia had never met before the WEG partnership. You didn’t even know each other existed until your grandmother approved the contract.” She shook her head again. “The mind plays strange tricks. Children can look like all sorts of people.”

She was still laughing softly when she picked up her tea.

I was not laughing.

I was sitting very still in the warm apartment with both hands around my cup and the specific, controlled blankness of a man who had just had something land in his chest like a stone dropped from a great height and who was using every resource he had to make sure his face showed none of it.

I used to think he looked like he could be my nephew.

But obviously that’s impossible. You and Katia had never met before.

She was laughing about it, this thing she had filed under the mind plays strange tricks — and she had no idea that she had just handed me the piece I had been missing. Not as evidence. Not as proof. As the final weight on a scale that had been building for months and had just, quietly, definitively, tipped. I now know Katia isn’t married. No more holding back. I will fuck her, claim her. I don’t care I was married to her sister.

We talked for another twenty minutes about nothing in particular. I contributed the right words at the right moments. I drank my tea. I was, to all appearances, completely present.

I was not present at all.

Gail walked me to the door at nine o’clock. She hugged me the way she always hugged me – briefly, completely, and with no performance. At the door she held onto my arm a second longer than usual and looked at me with an expression I couldn’t fully read.

“Julian,” she said.

“Goodnight, Gail.”

She let go. “Be careful,” she said quietly. Not a warning. The thing you said to someone when you could see they were standing

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What Gey

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at the edge of something and you wanted them to know you had noticed.

I went down to the car.

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