Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 124

Chapter 124

Chapter 124

Rieck’s POV

I had no room left to argue.

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Every version of an explanation I could offer sounded weak next to what she had already seen with her own

eyes.

She stood in front of my desk, arms crossed, waiting for my answer with a quiet patience that felt far more dangerous than any amount of shouting could have been.

“Fine,” I said. “Your position is restored. Today.”

Aurelia didn’t smile. She didn’t thank me. She just nodded once, her back straight, and walked out of my office, leaving the door open behind her like even that small gesture cost her nothing more to give.

I sat alone a long moment after that, my thoughts all over the place.

I had won nothing. I had only bought myself a little more time before the next storm.

Calling Elara in, I told her to send out the notice. By noon, every department would know Aurelia was back, fully, with no quiet exceptions this time.

“Right away, sir.” Elara paused at the door, glancing back at me with something in her expression she rarely showed. “Is everything alright, Rieck? You look tired.”

“Everything is completely fine.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she left without asking more questions, the way she always did when she knew better than to ask twice.

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She walked into the building the next morning like nothing had happened.

Head high. Shoulders back. Straight past the front desk and into her office, ignoring every odd glance from staff who had clearly heard some version of the story by now.

I stared at her from my office window as she crossed the floor below, calm and steady, every inch the woman who had built half this company from nothing, her scent of vanilla and rain somehow reaching me even through the glass, or maybe I just imagined it did.

For the first time in days, something in my chest loosened.

Maybe this would settle. Maybe the worst of it had already passed, and we could find our way back to something close to normal, back to late dinners and laughter and folders passed between us without any hidden burden.

But I should have known better.

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16:28 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 124

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Selene found me only an hour later, closing my office door behind her with a soft click that sounded far too final.

“She’s back.”

“Yes, she is.”

“You told me her position was gone.” Selene crossed her arms, her voice sharp. “You said things were handled, Rieck. Handled was the exact word you used.”

“She’s my wife, Selene. I can’t keep pushing her aside forever. People will start asking questions I can’t easily

answer.”

“People are already asking questions.” She stepped closer to my desk, her heels sharp against the floor. “About why the two of us spend so much time together. About why you fought so hard to keep me employed here in the first place. Marcus in accounting already asked me last week if we used to date.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“The truth, of course.” Selene smiled thinly. “Some version of it, anyway. Enough to keep him curious, not enough to give him the whole story. I’m generous like that, Rieck. Careful with the pieces I hand out.”

“That’s really not the point.”

“It is exactly the point.” Her eyes narrowed, cold and calculating in a way that made the room feel smaller. “You still have a secret worth protecting, Rieck. If Aurelia stays where she is, watching everything I do, maybe it’s time everyone learns what really happened between us. All of it.”

“Careful,” I said, my voice dropping into something colder than I intended.

“Or what?” She didn’t step back, entirely unafraid of whatever she saw in my eyes. “You will fire me again? We both know how that ended last time.”

I said nothing, because she was right, and we both knew it.

The whole room went cold at that moment.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Selene tilted her head. “Test me and find out, Rieck. I have very little left to lose these days. You, on the other hand, have a great deal.”

“Selene.”

“Think about it very carefully.” She smoothed the front of her blouse, already turning towards the door. “You know exactly where to find me when you decide how this ends, Rieck.”

She left without waiting for an answer, the door clicking shut behind her.

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16:28 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 124

53

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I sat behind my desk a long time after that, sweat gathering slowly at my temples despite the cool air moving steadily through the vents.

Every outcome ran through my head at once, over and over, and none of them offered a clean way out.

Tell Aurelia the truth myself, and risk losing her completely.

Say nothing, and risk Selene deciding to say it for me, on her own terms.

There was no safe path left. Not anymore.

Whatever choice I made now, someone was going to get hurt.

Selene, chasing something from years ago that could never be rebuilt the way she wanted, no matter how many demands she made.

Aurelia, deserving a truth I still couldn’t bring myself to say out loud, even now, even after everything.

Myself, caught between the two, running out of ways to keep both women in my life without losing something important in the process.

One wrong move. That was all it would take to lose everything I had built with her, everything that had somehow become more important to me than the company, the empire, any of it.

I thought back to the day I first told her the marriage was only a contract, a business arrangement dressed up as a wedding.

How far we had come since then, laughter over cold pasta, her hand steady against my chest when I couldn’t find words for my own fear. And how easily all of it could unravel because of a mistake made years before she ever walked into my life, a mistake I had never once found the courage to fully explain to her.

Suddenly the office door opened.

Aurelia stepped inside, a folder in her hand, her eyes finding my face immediately, reading something there I hadn’t managed to hide fast enough.

She had always been good at that, reading me, even when I tried hardest to give her nothing.

“What’s wrong, Rieck?”

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