Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Aurelia’s POV

“Rieck, I… you…”

“Get ready.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Coat. Shoes. Five minutes.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the hospital.”

:

I immediately straightened. My head was spinning, so I had to hold the counter.

“I’m fine.”

“Look at yourself, Aurelia.”

I didn’t turn to the mirror.

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“You are pale. You are shaking. You threw up a piece of toast and your skin is the colour of paper. I don’t keep dying women in my house. Move.”

“Rieck, I really don’t…”

“I’m not asking, Aurelia.”

He was already on the phone, walking out of the kitchen, barking instructions at Ronan. I, on the other hand, stood baffled, with many scenes playing in my head, feeling the floor of my life tilt a little bit.

If they run tests they will find I am not pregnant. They will find what is wrong with me. And they will tell him.

Slowly, I followed him into the living room. He was tying his tie at the hall mirror without looking at it.

“Rieck.”

“Mm.”

“Can I just go with the maid?”

He stopped. The knot in his tie went still under his fingers.

“Why.”

“Because I am a woman and these are women’s things. A doctor will speak to me more easily if there is no man in the room. The maid can come. Ronan can drive us. You can go to work.”

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17:00 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 14

He watched me in the mirror. His jaw worked once.

“Fine.”

I exhaled.

:

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“But Ronan stays at the curb. Tobias is on call. You are home in this building before noon. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

He turned and came across the room. Then he took my chin in his hand the way he always took it, and he tilted my face up to his.

“I am not losing my heir because you decided to ignore your own body.”

My heart stuttered.

His heir? Does he think I am pregnant?

“Do you understand me.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good.”

He let go of my chin and picked up his briefcase. And he was gone before I could say another word.

вескасо

At the hospital, Marta sat beside me in the waiting room with her knitting in her lap and her quiet country eyes fixed on the wall in front of us. She had been Rieck’s housekeeper for nine years. She had not asked me one question in the car, and I loved her for it.

When a nurse called my name, I stood up, feeling like my legs were made of paper.

The doctor was a soft-spoken woman with grey at her temples and a wedding ring she didn’t fidget with. She drew blood. She asked how often I had been throwing up. She asked when my last cycle was. She asked if I was sexually active and I almost laughed at the gentleness of the word.

“Wait outside, Mrs. Valerius. We will be quick.”

I sat back down beside Marta and folded my hands in my lap, twisting my wedding band.

I didn’t think. I wouldn’t let myself think. Thinking was a knife I had run my fingers down too many times this week.

After about thirty minutes, the door opened.

The doctor’s face was not the face you wanted. It was the face of a woman walking very carefully across a room where a glass had broken.

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17:00 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 14

“Mrs. Valerius. Would you come back in, please?”

Marta squeezed my hand and I went.

:

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I sat in the chair across from her desk. She closed the door behind me but she did not sit. She stood with her hand resting on the back of her own chair as if she needed it to hold her up, and I knew, then, what she was going to say.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “The test result was negative.”

In that moment, the room went very far away.

I had thought I had cried this out in the bathroom yesterday, but I was wrong. There was more. There was always more. A second drawer of grief I hadn’t noticed I owned.

I nodded.

“It is alright, doctor.”

“Mrs. Valerius.”

“It’s fine.”

She stared at me, clearly skeptical of my words.

Then she did something I did not expect. She came around the desk and she sat on the edge of it, close to me, the way a friend sits.

“Mrs. Valerius. There is something else.”

I looked up.

“Your blood test showed something I do not see often.”

“What is it?”

“You have a chemical in your system that shouldn’t be there. A compound. It is consistent with a class of synthetic hormone disruptor. It interferes with ovulation. In sustained doses, it can prevent conception entirely.”

I stopped breathing.

“You said,” I tried, “you said synthetic. You mean someone, you mean it is in something I am taking.”

“I can’t say for sure yet. But I would like to know what you have been swallowing daily. Vitamins. Supplements. Herbal teas. Anything you have been told to take consistently for a long period.”

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