Semua Bab My Accidental Billionaire Husband : Bab 281 - Bab 290

~Katia~Jude drove us to the Kensington house himself, which felt like a small thing until I realized it was deliberate, a quiet signal he was sending without saying a word about it. A husband drove his wife to her parents' house. He did not have a driver do it for him.I had spent most of the ride looking out the window rather than at him.When we pulled up the long gravel drive, two black cars from his own fleet were already parked near the entrance, and a small group of his people were unloading something from the back of the second vehicle. Boxes, wrapped in heavy cream paper with a ribbon that matched too precisely to be anything but professionally arranged. I counted four of them before we even reached the door, each one large enough that it took two people to carry."What is all this?" I said."A gesture," Jude said. "Your parents have never properly received me as family. I intend to correct that tonight."Julian and Delia arrived almost directly behind us, their car pulling i

~Julian~Martha opened the first box like a woman unwrapping something she had been promised in a dream for years and had stopped believing would actually arrive.Inside sat a crystal decanter set, hand-cut, the kind of thing that belonged in a museum case more than a liquor cabinet, and she made a small, delighted sound that David echoed a moment later when his own box revealed a set of cufflinks I recognized immediately as a brand that did not produce anything under five figures.Delia's box held a bracelet.I watched her open it with the same careful expression she had been wearing all evening, turning the thin gold chain over in her fingers, murmuring something polite and entirely hollow in Jude's direction. She did not look at me while she said it. I did not need her to. I understood exactly what this gift was costing her, watching a man she had no real claim to perform generosity in a room where she had spent two years receiving nothing at all from the man whose name she actuall

~Jude~I stepped out of the Obsidian Lounge into the cold night air and walked half a block before I trusted my hands enough to pull out my phone.The street was mostly empty at this hour, just the occasional taxi sliding past and a doorman two buildings down stamping his feet against the cold. I leaned against the stone facade of a closed boutique and tried to slow my breathing before I dialed, because I did not want him to hear anything in my voice that he could use against me later.I dialed the number from memory. I had never saved it under a name, never trusted a phone enough to leave a trace of who he actually was, not after everything he had told me about the kind of people who might come looking if this arrangement ever unraveled in the wrong direction.It picked up on the second ring."Talk to me," the voice said."Windsor is not making this easy," I said, keeping my voice low, my eyes scanning the street out of habit more than necessity. "I think he might have a clue. About

DeliaThe invitation arrived on my phone while I was sitting across from my mother in her sunroom, the porcelain teacup balanced on its saucer the way she insisted it always be balanced, handle facing exactly the same direction as the spoon.I read it twice before I said anything."Katia is inviting everyone to dinner," I said, setting my phone face down on the table beside my own untouched tea. "Tonight. Her penthouse.""Oh?" Mama said, not looking up from whatever she was doing to her own cup, stirring sugar she did not need into tea she had been drinking the same way for thirty years."I wonder why she wants us all there," I said. "Whether she just wants to flaunt the fact that she has more money than me. Show off the view, the floors, whatever new piece of art she's bought since the last time any of us were allowed inside."Martha laughed, a small, dismissive sound that landed harder than she probably meant it to, or perhaps exactly as hard as she meant it to. With my mother it wa

KatiaI felt Julian's eyes on me long after I walked back to my mother, the weight of them settling somewhere between my shoulder blades the way they always did when he was watching me work a room he disapproved of, but I had a dinner to host and a family to manage, and there was no room tonight for whatever conversation his stare was trying to start.Martha had migrated toward the bar cart, a fresh glass of champagne already in her hand, watching Jude move through my living room with the kind of open fondness she had never once aimed in my direction for anything I had built on my own."He really is wonderful," she said, to no one in particular, though clearly meant for the whole room to hear. "I don't think I've ever met a son-in-law quite like him.""Mother.""I mean it," she continued, raising her glass slightly in Jude's direction as he laughed at something Dad had said near the window. "The gifts, the warmth, the way he simply walked into this family and made himself at home. Per