Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 134

Chapter 134

Chapter 134

Rieck’s POV

A

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I had learned to read my wife’s stare the way other men read contracts. And this morning hers told me she didn’t not believe a single word I was about to say, and the worst part of it was that every word was true.

She sat on the edge of our bed and stared at me, knotting my tie in the mirror, her coffee going cold in her hands, saying nothing at all.

She hadn’t asked where I was going. And that was the new thing.

A month ago she would have asked. Now she only stared, and let the not-asking do all the accusing for her.

“It’s a client meeting,” I said. I don’t usually explain myself. But I had found, lately, that I couldn’t not seem to stop. “Two men from a development group out east. They want a builder they can trust with something large, and I intend to be that builder.” I turned from the mirror to face her. “It has nothing to do with Selene. Nothing this morning has anything to do with Selene.”

She looked at me for a long moment, and I saw her make up her mind, one more time, not to say the thing she was thinking.

“Have a good meeting,” she said.

It was the flattest thing she had ever said to me, and it landed harder than any of her shouting ever had.

I wanted to cross that room and put my hands on her and give her all of it.

The warehouse. The film. The years old thing on it. The reason I couldn’t do the one small act she had begged me to do.

The truth sat behind my teeth, too dangerous to speak and impossible to be rid of.

If I told her. I lost her within the hour. If I didn’t. I lost her slower.

So I said nothing, because nothing was the only move that didn’t cost me her today.

I picked up my coat and left my wife sitting on our bed, believing the truth was a lie.

The meeting was on the fortieth floor of a tower across the river. A private room with a long table.

I arrived early, the way I always do. I was going over the site figures one last time when the door opened behind me and a scent reached me before the footsteps did.

Not the client. Her.

I turned, and there she was, walking into my meeting on the arm of the very man I had come to win, smiling at me as though the two of us had arranged it together over breakfast.

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16:30 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 134

And I understood, in that first cold second, exactly what she had done.

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This morning I had stood in my own bedroom and sworn to Aurelia that this meeting had nothing to do with Selene. And I had meant it. It had been true. And Selene had reached across the entire city and made a liar of me before I ever sat down.

Every honest word I gave my wife, this woman found a way to turn false by nightfall. That was the whole

game.

She didn’t want me. She wanted Aurelia to stop believing a single thing I said.

“Mr. Valerius.” The client, a heavyset man named Prentice, took my hand in a warm grip. “I believe you already know Miss Selene. She speaks very highly of you.”

“We work together.” Selene said smoothly, before I could get a single word out. “I told Mr. Prentice he would be a fool to build with anyone but you. Your professionalism. Your reputation.” She lowered herself into the chair beside his, close and comfortable, as though the seat had been set there with her name on it. “I only want what is best for him.”

The cold quickly rose up in me, but I pushed it back down, because Prentice was watching, and Prentice had eight figures to spend, and a man doesn’t let a client feel the frost come off him.

So I did the thing I know how to do.

I sat down across from them and I opened the figures and I built, one clean point at a time, the case for why my compo was the only firm in this city that could give him what he wanted on the timeline he needed.

I’m good at this. I have always been good at this.

Prentice leaned in, and nodded, and before the hour was out he was reaching across the table to shake my hand on a contract worth more than my last three combined.

Selene sat through all of it with a small pleased smile, saying almost nothing, taking silent credit for a victory she had no part in building.

Prentice left happy, already talking about how he wanted to announce it. And then it was only the two of us in that quiet glass room.

Selene stood and crossed to the window and looked out at the city.

“You were magnificent,” she said. “I forget sometimes how good you are, when you stop sulking and just do the thing.” She turned to face me. “We make a good team, Rieck. You and I. Imagine what we could close together if we did this more often. If you would only stop fighting it.”

“We are not a team.” I gathered my papers. “You forced your way into my meeting. That’s not the same thing, and you know it.”

“Semantics” She smiled and came closer, slow and sure. “You can’t even be angry with me. I just handed you the biggest client of your year. Admit it. It felt good, standing beside me again. It felt like it used to feel.”

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16:30 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 134

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