Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 101

Chapter 101

Chapter 101

Rieck’s POV

54

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The box had been buried at the back of my study closet for years, untouched until tonight, when some restless feeling sent me digging through old files I no longer needed.

I found the pictures near the bottom, curling at the edges.

Me, seventeen and lean, standing beside a girl with dark hair and a wide, knowing smile.

Selene.

More pictures followed, more than I had told Aurelia existed.

Us at a school dance, my arm wrapped around her waist. Us at graduation, her lips pressed to my cheek. Us in a car somewhere, laughing at something the camera never caught.

In one, we sat pressed together on some rooftop I no longer remembered climbing.

We had been more than three casual months. I had loved her, or believed I did, in the clumsy, desperate way seventeen year olds loved anything that made them feel less alone.

The ending had gutted me at the time, though I had spent years since burying that wound under enough indifference that I nearly forgot it existed.

I remembered the fights near the end, the way her family’s money had made her cruel in ways I hadn’t understood until much later, the slow realization that she loved the idea of me far more than she ever loved the actual man standing in front of her.

I had learned something from her, in the end, even if the lesson had cost more than it should have.

I learned that love given too easily could be spent just as easily by the person receiving it, and I had spent every relationship since guarding against that kind of ruin, right up until Aurelia walked into my life wrapped in a contract instead of a confession, and somehow undid every wall I had built since Selene without even trying.

I sat there a long while, turning the pictures over in my hands, feeling something old and unwelcome in my chest.

It had not been nothing. I had lied to Aurelia, not outright, but enough.

Just then footsteps sounded in the hallway outside.

I immediately pushed the box back into the closet, closing the door just as Marta appeared in the doorway.

“Sir. You have a call.”

“Who is it?”

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16:24 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 101

“They didn’t say. Only that it was urgent, whoever they were.”

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I found Aurelia in the kitchen the next morning, quiet in a way that had settled over her since the night of that strange phone call.

She kept to herself more than usual, her eyes distant, her smile slower to arrive, spending long stretches just staring out the window like her mind had wandered somewhere I couldn’t follow.

I had noticed the change the very night it happened, though I hadn’t pressed her on it, too caught up in my own tangled thoughts about the box in my closet and the ghost I had let back into the house without meaning

Lo.

Maybe that had been a mistake. Maybe whatever weighed on her deserved more of my attention than I had given it.

Or maybe she had learned more about Selene than I intended her to know.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked, watching her from across the counter.

“Nothing.” She didn’t look up from her tea.

“You have said that a great deal lately.”

“Maybe it’s just true a great deal lately.” She finally met my eyes, something guarded and far away behind them, a distance I hadn’t seen in her since the early days of our marriage, before either of us had learned to trust the other even a little. Then, abruptly, she said, “You have always asked me about my father.”

I frowned, caught off guard by the sudden question. “You said you knew nothing about him.”

“Well.” Her fingers tightened slightly around her cup. “That was before.”

“Before what?”

I studied her expression, the blankness she wore whenever a subject grew too heavy to hold, and wondered, not for the first time, what exactly had happened during that midnight phone call she still refused to name.

My phone rang before she could answer, buzzing sharp against the counter. I looked at the screen, an unknown number, and answered it out of habit more than curiosity.

“Yes.”

The voice on the other end delivered an urgent update about the eastern territory, some dispute among the younger wolves that Tobias wanted my judgement on before it escalated into something bloodier.

I gave short, quick answers, my eyes never leaving Aurelia the entire time.

After about a few minutes, I ended the call and set the phone down. “You were saying. About your father.”

“It’s nothing important.” She rose from her chair, carrying her cup to the sink, her back to me now, the

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16:24 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 101

នយ 54

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conversation closing the same way mine always did when I decided it was finished. “I should get dressed.”

“Aurelia.”

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