Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 127

Chapter 127

Chapter 127

Rieck’s POV

:

I had killed men for less than what Selene held over me and that was the trouble with her.

A bullet solves a body. It doesn’t solve a secret.

I sat alone in my office long after the floor emptied.

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The lights were off. But I didn’t need them to see the two roads in front of me, and I didn’t like where either one ended.

Fire her, and she opens her mouth. She tells Aurelia the thing I paid a great deal of money to bury years before I ever heard my wife’s name.

Aurelia might forgive the secret. But she would never forgive the lie under it. I would lose her in an afternoon.

Keep her, and I lose Aurelia slower. One morning at a time. And I had already seen it start.

Both roads led to the same room. And in that room, my wife was gone.

My wolf had a simpler answer. It always did.

Teeth had settled most of what the animal ever worried about. But Selene wasn’t a throat I could tear out.

She was a voice, and a voice carries even after the throat is gone. Especially then.

So I sat in the dark and let the colder part of me work.

Not the animal. The man. The one who built a company out of nothing by learning that most problems are just a person standing in the wrong place.

Move the person.

Not into the ground. I’m not my grandfather. I don’t put people in the ground and call it business.

Selene didn’t need to die. She needed to be somewhere the truth couldn’t travel.

A secret only has power where a mouth can reach an ear. So move the mouth far enough, and the secret

starves.

But out of the city. Out of reach of my wife, out of reach of a phone, somewhere quiet where a woman with a secret couldn’t send a letter or a message or knock on Aurelia’s door.

It wasn’t kind. But it was the only door left that didn’t have Aurelia’s absence waiting behind it.

With that, I picked up the phone and called the one man who never asked why.

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Chapter 127

Tobias came within the hour.

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He stood in front of my desk in the dark and waited, because he knew better than to fill a quiet I hadn’t finished using.

“There’s a woman,” I started. “Selene. She works two floors down. Marketing”

“I know the one.”

“She’s going to take a trip. It starts tonight, and it lasts as long as I say.”

Tobias didn’t ask where, or why, or for how long. He waited for me to be done.

“Somewhere far,” I continued. “Somewhere with no easy way to reach a city and no reason for anyone to look. She keeps her comfort. A good place, a warm bed, food, whatever she wants inside the walls. What she doesn’t keep is a phone, a car, or a single way to send word to anyone in this city. Especially not to my wife.”

“Understood.”

I stood then, and came around the desk, and I stopped close enough that he could feel the drop in the air I didn’t bother to hide.

His shoulders held, because he was mine and he was made of stronger stuff than most, but even he lowered his eyes.

“Hear the next part clearly,” I said, low. “She is not to be touched. Not a bruise. Not a mark. If she’s frightened, you gentle her. If she trips getting into the car, you catch her before she lands. She goes there whole, she stays there whole, and she comes back to me whole when this is finished. If one hair on her head is harmed, I won’t ask who did it. I’ll just assume it was you.”

“It won’t be me.”

“No,” I said. “It won’t.”

He nodded.

“Do it soft, Tobias,” I whispered. “Do it tonight. And when it is done, you call me. Three words. Nothing more, in case a phone is not as private as I would like.”

Tobias nodded again. Then he turned and walked out without another sound, and the door settled shut behind him, and it was done the moment he crossed it.

I had never known him to fail.

Aurelia had made dinner.

I smelled it before I saw her, and I smelled her before the food, the way I always did.

The moment her scent reached me in the elevator, something in my chest that had been clenched all evening

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Chapter 127

loosened, just a little, against my will.

She looked up when I came in.

“You’re home early,” she said.

“The work was finished.”

A

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We ate across from each other at the long table. She talked about the new hires, the eastern floor, a supplier who had tried to cheat us on tile.

I watched her mouth move and I answered in the right places and I let my hand rest near hers on the wood, close, not touching, because touching was the only language I had ever been good at and tonight I didn’t trust it.

She was happy. That was the thing I couldn’t forgive myself for. She thought I had listened. She thought I was going to fix it the honest way.

“Thank you,” she said, out of nowhere, and set down her fork. “For hearing me. About Selene. I know I pushed hard, and I know letting someone go with the board watching isn’t simple. But it mattered that you listened.” She looked almost shy. “That you chose me over the easy thing.”

I made myself hold her eyes. “You’re my wife.” I said. And that much was true. I could give her that and keep it honest.

“I know.” Her smile went soft, the guard gone out of it. “I forget sometimes that you are on my side because you make it hard to remember. But I do know it.”

Just then my phone buzzed against my thigh.

I didn’t immediately reach for it. I finished my sentence. I set down my glass. Only then did I slide it out, glance at the dark screen, and stand.

“One moment,” I said.

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