Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 110

Chapter 110

Chapter 110

Rieck’s POV

“One of what?”

Her voice was steady, but her eyes were not.

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“One of the applicants,” I said, stepping fully into the study, my voice even, unhurried. “Marcus flagged a resume that looked fabricated. Someone trying to slip a fake background past us before the hiring even starts. I told him to check every applicant twice before we invite anyone in for an interview. You are clean of it. Nothing to worry about.”

She studied me for a long moment, her laptop still closed in her lap, with something in her expression that made my chest tighten. “That is oddly specific for a resume check, Rieck.”

“Marcus is thorough. It’s why I pay him.” I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk, close enough to see the tension still sitting in her shoulders. “Is that what kept you up this late? Eavesdropping on hiring calls?”

“I was working.” She raised the laptop slightly. “The advert is ready. I want you to see it before it goes live.”

I studied the words on her screen, and it was exactly the kind of copy that would pull serious talent through our doors. “This is good.”

“I know.” A small, tired smile. “Put it out there tomorrow?”

“Put it out there tonight.” I closed the laptop gently under her hands. “You did well. Go to bed.”

She went, finally, though the suspicion never fully left her eyes.

The building was quiet around me the next morning as I stood alone in the space that was meant to be my office, turning the same question over and over until it wore a groove into my skull.

Aurelia wasn’t a wolf. I had told myself that a hundred times since Marcus first called, and I still didn’t fully believe it.

I would have known. I would have smelled it the first night I pulled her into my bed.

There were no claws hiding under her skin. No growl buried under her voice. Nothing about her carried the weight an Alpha’s senses were meant to catch.

And yet Marcus had called twice now, insisting that there was something buried in her blood that wasn’t human.

He wasn’t a man who chased shadows. In six years working for me, he had never once brought me a theory he couldn’t defend with evidence.

I thought of the gunshot in the rain, two men dead from a single custom bullet, and a shooter who left

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16:25 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 110

nothing behind.

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I thought of the abnormal placement of her heart, the doctor’s confusion the night she was shot in the chest, a detail he had called unusual even by the standards of the old families.

I thought of her father, vanished without a body, an elite cop who left a five year old at an orphanage and never came back, no trace of him left behind anywhere I had searched.

None of it added up to wolf. All of it added up to something.

I didn’t know how to hold both truths at once.

Marcus arrived an hour later, a folder tucked under one arm, his face carrying the same rattled look it had carried on the phone.

“Tell me what you found,” I said, not bothering with pleasantries.

He set the folder on the bare concrete between us, opening it to a single marked page. “Green eyes, Rieck. A flash of green under stress, under pain, under intense emotion. It isn’t random. It is a marker.”

“A marker for what?”

“An old bloodline. Rare enough that most wolves alive have never seen it themselves, only heard the stories passed down from grandparents who barely believed them either.” He tapped the page. “The old texts call it the green eyed strain. Speed beyond anything a normal wolf carries. Healing fast enough to close a bullet wound before the pain even registers.”

I almost laughed. “That bloodline is extinct, Marcus. Wiped out generations ago. Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone believed that.” He held my gaze, unflinching. “Beliefs are not facts.”

“Aurelia has no claws. No fangs. No shift. I would know if she carried anything like what you are describing.”

“Maybe the bloodline sleeps until it is needed.” Marcus closed the folder, sliding it across to me anyway. “Or maybe you haven’t been looking closely enough.”

“I know every inch of my own wife, Marcus. I would have caught it. I catch everything.”

“With respect, boss, you know every inch of her skin. That isn’t the same thing as knowing what runs under it.” He held my gaze, steady, unwilling to back down the way most men did when I used that tone on them, six years of working for me having taught him exactly how far he was allowed to push. “The old families hunted this bloodline for a reason. Speed like that, healing like that, in the wrong hands it could unmake every hierarchy this city runs on. If she carries even a trace of it, people will come looking. Some already may have.”

At that moment the gunshot in the rain flashed through my mind again. Two dead men, one custom bullet, a shooter who wanted her alive for reasons of his own.

I took the file without answering and he left.

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16:25 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 110

GGORA PRUNDOSE

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