Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 120

Chapter 120

Chapter 120

Rieck’s POV

Selene stayed forty minutes after the meeting ended.

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The other department heads had walked out one by one, folders tucked under their arms, until it was just the two of us left in the conference room.

“I think the fourth quarter numbers still need work,” she said, though the numbers had been finalized twenty minutes earlier, every figure already signed off on by three separate department heads, the meeting itself already effectively over.

“They are fine, Selene.”

“Are you sure?” She leaned closer over the table, close enough that her perfume reached me, close enough that her hand brushed mine reaching for the same page. “I could stay later. Go through it properly with you. Just the two of us.”

“That won’t be necessary.” I pulled my hand back, putting distance between us that she immediately tried to close again.

“You used to enjoy working late with me.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” Her eyes held mine a beat too long. “It doesn’t feel that long ago to me. Not when I am standing here with you like this.”

“Selene.”

“I am just making an observation.” She finally straightened, gathering her folder, unhurried. “You don’t have to be so defensive about it.”

She smiled, unbothered by the rejection, and slowly started gathering her things like she really didn’t want to leave.

This had become a pattern. Lingering after meetings. Standing too close. Comments dressed up as professional concern that carried something else underneath entirely.

Once, weeks ago, I might have called it harmless, chalked it up to old habits neither of us had fully let go of.

But not anymore. Not after the dinner, and the way Aurelia’s eyes had started tracking every interaction between us with quiet suspicion.

Whatever we once were was in the past, and I had no intention of letting it crawl back into my present, into the life I had built with Aurelia.

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16:28 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 120

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I called her into my office the next morning, a resignation letter already drafted and waiting on my desk.

“Sit.”

She sat, studying the folder in front of her with mild curiosity, entirely unbothered by the formal tone of my voice.

“Your services are no longer needed here.” I slid the letter across the desk. “Effective immediately. Security will help you collect your belongings from your office.”

Selene didn’t reach for it. She just studied me, something cool and knowing settling behind her expression, patient in a way that immediately unsettled me more than anger ever could have.

“You should think very carefully before doing this, Rieck.”

“I have thought about it plenty.”

“Have you?” Her voice dropped, quieter now. “Do you remember what happened after you paid me to leave town all those years ago?”

My jaw tightened. “Selene.”

“I lost the baby, Rieck.” The words landed flat. “Alone. In some rented apartment two cities away, because you needed me gone before anyone asked questions about what we were to each other.”

“That is not what happened.” My voice came out rougher than I intended.

“It is exactly what happened.” Her eyes stayed steady. “You paid for my silence, and I gave it to you, for years. I buried a child alone because you couldn’t risk your father learning the truth. Do you have any idea what that does to a person, Rieck? Grieving in secret, unable to even say what I had lost out loud to a single soul?”

I said nothing because I suddenly felt overwhelmed with guilt.

“And if Aurelia ever learns any of it,” Selene continued, quieter now, almost gentle in her cruelty, “I don’t think your marriage survives the weight of it.”

At that moment, the room went cold. My hands were flat against the desk to keep them from shaking.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.” Selene folded her hands calmly in her lap, utterly composed. “Or tear up the letter, and we forget this conversation ever happened. Your choice, Rieck.”

I stared at her for a long moment, every instinct screaming to fire her regardless, to deal with the consequences however they came.

But Aurelia’s face flashed through my mind, the trust she had slowly, carefully placed in me, built brick by brick out of a marriage that started as nothing but a contract.

I tore the letter in half.

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16:28 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 120

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55 vouchers

Selene collected the pieces from the desk without a word, tucking them neatly into her folder like trophies she intended to keep, and left the office without looking back once, the door clicking shut softly behind her.

I sat alone a long time after she was gone, staring at the empty space where the letter used to sit.

I had told myself the money had settled the secret. That distance and silence and enough time had closed the wound completely.

But clearly I had been wrong about all of it.

Aurelia deserved the truth. I knew that, even as every instinct in me twisted from the thought of telling her, from seeing her face change once she understood exactly what kind of man she had married. But the truth, delivered on my own terms, felt different from the truth as a weapon in Selene’s hands, and I wasn’t yet sure which version I could survive giving her.

Selene returned to my office three days later, closing the door behind her with a soft click, the sound somehow louder than it should have been in the quiet room.

“I have a request.”

“I’m listening.” My voice came out flat, guarded, every muscle in my body already twisted tight for whatever

came next.

“I want Aurelia removed from her position.” She said it simply, like she was requesting a change to the coffee order, settling into the chair across from my desk without waiting for permission. “I need unrestricted access to you, Rieck. Her presence complicates things. Every conversation we have, she is somewhere nearby, watching, asking questions she has no right to ask.”

“Absolutely not.” The growl in my chest came up sharper this time, harder to swallow back down. “She built half of this company. She stays exactly where she is.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“Then why ask.”

“Because I like watching you refuse things you will eventually give me anyway.” Selene’s smile stayed calm, unhurried, terrifyingly patient. “You didn’t fight very hard to keep me from getting hired here in the first place.”

“I didn’t know you had applied until you were already standing in my building.”

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