Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 109

Chapter 109

Chapter 109

Aurelia’s POV

54

55 vouchers

I walked the length of the third floor slowly, picturing desks where there was only bare floor, picturing voices where there was only echo, already half in love with a version of this place that didn’t exist yet.

Then Rieck’s phone rang behind me, and I felt it before I saw it. The exact second his voice on the phone dropped from business calm into something tighter and colder.

I kept walking the empty floor, running my palm along the concrete wall, pretending I hadn’t noticed. Pretending the small gasp in his breathing hadn’t reached me clearly across the lobby.

“Understood,” Rieck said, low, final. “Keep digging.”

He put the phone into his pocket and crossed back towards me, his step steady, his face arranged into something calm.

But I had learned his calm the way I had learned everything else about him, the shape of his jaw when he was really relaxed, the shape of it now, tighter, closer to a mask than an expression, and this one didn’t reach his eyes at all.

“Everything okay?” I asked, keeping my voice light.

“Fine.” He didn’t slow down, already turning to study the far wall like the conversation had never happened. “Business call.”

“You looked tense.”

“I always look tense.” A faint smile, the kind he used when he wanted a conversation closed. “It’s part of the job.”

I studied him a moment longer, the tightness still sitting behind his eyes even as he smiled.

Whatever had rattled him, it had come from that call, and calls that left Rieck Valerius rattled were never small things.

But I didn’t push. Not yet. Whatever had rattled him would come up eventually. It always did.

Back home, dinner was mostly untouched between us, and I felt his eyes on me the entire meal.

Not the usual look. This was quick and possessive. This was longer. Steadier. Like he was memorizing something, cataloguing every inch of my face for a reason I couldn’t guess.

“What?” I finally asked, setting down my fork.

“Nothing” He didn’t look away.

1/4

16:25 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 109

“You are staring, Rieck.”

:

55 vouchers

There was a pause, and then something almost like a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you are more beautiful than I first thought.”

Heat crawled up my neck before I could stop it, my fork forgotten on the plate. “That’s a strange thing to notice over cold pasta.”

“I notice a great many things.” His eyes dropped, just for a while, to the curve of my throat, lingering there in a way that made my heart skip a beat. “Some more than others.”

I touched my own neck without meaning to, self conscious under the sudden attention. “Is something wrong with my neck?”

“No.” He looked away first this time, something unreadable crossing his face before he reached for his wine. “Nothing at all.”

“You have been odd since the building,” I said, staring at him carefully now. “Quiet. Somewhere else.”

“I’m right here.” He reached across the table and his fingers closed around mine, a gesture so unlike him that it startled me more than any words could have. His grip was grounding, the kind of touch that asked me to stop asking questions without ever saying it out loud. “Finish your dinner. It’s getting cold.”

“You are avoiding the question.”

“I am choosing not to answer it. There’s a difference.” Something flickered behind his pale eyes, gone before I could name it. “Trust me a little longer, Aurelia.”

I let it go, though the worry stayed somewhere under my ribs.

But later that evening, in the quiet dark of our room, I felt his fingers on me, tilting my head to the side like he was searching for something specific. Checking. Confirming.

“Rieck?”

His thumb pressed lightly against a spot just below my ear, the way someone touches a wound to check if it still hurts. Then his hand quickly dropped, like he had caught himself doing something he had no right to do.

“Just tired,” he mumbled against my hair, pulling me closer instead of answering. “Go to sleep.”

I didn’t believe him. But sleep pulled me under before I could ask again, his hand still resting on the curve of my throat long after my eyes had closed.

I stayed up long after he had gone to bed in the dark study, three different versions of the job advert open in front of me.

Rooffe Construction is hiring. Architects. Project managers. Site supervisors. Join a company being rebuilt from the ground up.

2/4

16:25 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 109

:

54

55 vouchers

I tried a second version that was more personal. We are not just hiring staff. We are building something new, together, from the ground floor up.’ I read it back twice, decided it sounded too much like a greeting card, and deleted the whole line.

I rewrote the line four times before I liked it, adding a small note about growth opportunities, another about competitive pay, trimming the whole thing until it read clean and sharp, the kind of advert that would actually pull in serious talent instead of scaring them off with corporate nonsense.

It felt good, useful, a small piece of the company that would carry my fingerprints even if my name never appeared on the letterhead.

I was reading it back for the fifth time when I heard his voice through the cracked study door, low, clearly meant for no one but the person on the other end of the line.

I froze, my hands going still over the keyboard, the cursor blinking uselessly in the middle of an unfinished

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify