Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 112

Chapter 112

Chapter 112

Rieck’s POV

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“The contract terms are non negotiable,” I said into the phone, my voice flat and final, my patience already thinning for a conversation that should have ended five minutes ago. “You either sign by Friday or we walk away from the deal entirely.”

The client on the other end stammered something about board approval, timelines, the usual excuses men used when they wanted more than they were willing to pay for.

I let him talk, half listening, my eyes drifting towards the window.

“Friday,” I said again, cutting through his rambling. “Not a day later.”

Suddenly the apartment door opened without a knock.

I already knew who it was before I turned because the scent reached me first.

“I’ll call you back,” I mumbled, and ended the call before the man could finish his sentence.

Hebvron stepped inside, cane tapping once on the marble floor, his scarred face unreadable.

“Father.”

“I hear you have been busy.” He moved further into the room, uninvited, the way he always entered every space he had ever occupied in my life. “A new building. New staff. All funded quietly, without a single word to

me.”

“I don’t need your permission anymore.”

“No.” Something flickered behind his eyes, almost amusement. “You don’t. Which is precisely why I am here. I want to know if you intend to keep walking this lane.” He tapped his cane once on the floor, the sound echoing sharp through the quiet room. “Independence is an expensive habit, Rieck. I want to see if you can afford it.”

“I intend to build something that’s mine. Something no one can strip away the way you stripped my title.”

“And your wife.” Hebvron’s gaze sharpened. “Does she factor into this new independence of yours?”

“I would do anything for it. That includes protecting her.”

“Protecting her?” He said the words slowly, savouring the way they landed. “A wife who has not yet performed her one essential duty. Tell me, Rieck, how long do you intend to play house before you remember why she is here at all?”

My jaw tightened. “She has proven herself useful in other ways.”

“Useful is not the same as necessary.” Hebvron turned towards the door, already finished with the conversation on his own terms, as he always was. “An heir was the point of the entire arrangement, Rieck.

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16:26 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 112

Don’t lose sight of that while you play architect with your new toy.”

“My building is not a toy.” My voice came out harder than I meant it to.

គ

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“Everything is a toy until it produces results.” He paused at the door, cane resting on the frame, his scarred face half turned back towards me. “The clock on that contract hasn’t stopped ticking, Rieck. I would think carefully about how you intend to spend what remains of it.”

He left without waiting for a response.

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I sat behind my desk at the office an hour later, my father’s words still circling, refusing to settle.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. Aurelia hadn’t given me an heir. The contract’s one true purpose still sat unmet between us, no matter how much of myself I had already given her in every other way that mattered.

Some nights I woke up wondering if that failure was mine as much as hers, a thought I had never once said out loud to anyone.

But she had built me something else entirely. A folder full of strategy. A hiring campaign that pulled talent straight out of Dawson’s own company. A steadiness I had never once expected from a woman I married for spite and leverage, a woman who had somehow become the one steady thing in a life built entirely on shifting ground.

And still, something about my father’s hatred for Dawson never sat right in my chest. Too personal. Too old. A grudge sharpened over decades that had nothing to do with business rivalry at all, though he had never once explained where it came from.

Men like Hebvron didn’t waste this much energy on ordinary enemies. Whatever was between him and Dawson ran deeper than boardrooms and stock prices, deeper than anything he had ever bothered to tell me.

Just then the office door opened.

Aurelia stepped inside, a folder tucked under her arm, her hair pulled back neat and professional, a small confident smile already in place. “The team is ready for you. Whenever you want to start.”

“Now is fine.”

“You look tired.” She studied me a beat, sharper than I wanted her to be, her eyes narrowing slightly the way they always did when she sensed something I hadn’t said. “Everything alright?”

“My father visited.”

“Ah.” She said it like that single word explained everything. “That would do it.”

She fell into step beside me as we walked towards the conference room, and somehow the tension from Hebyron’s visit loosened its grip with every step she took beside me.

Inside, a dozen construction experts were waiting, notebooks open, eyes sharp with the kind of hunger only a new opportunity could put in a person.

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16:26 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 112

GE

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