Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 141

Chp 141; The Fall.

Rieck’s POV

She was gone.

:

Not sulking in the bedroom, not sitting in the dark waiting to make me pay. Gone.

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Her side of the closet half empty, her phone going straight to nothing, no note, no scent past the front door because she had taken the elevator like an ordinary person and left me with nothing to follow.

I called her name into the empty rooms once, like a fool, like she might answer. But the penthouse gave me back nothing but my own voice off the glass.

Standing in the middle of my own home, I felt something in me start to come apart.

Three days. She had been fading in front of me for three days and I had let her, because looking at her hurt, because every time she looked back at me I saw the exact moment I had hurt her over a child she couldn’t give me.

So I had buried myself in work and told myself she would get over it.

“You look like a man who has lost something.”

I turned.

Selene was on my couch, one leg folded under her, wine in her hand like she owned the glass and the couch. and the view behind it.

She had let herself in. Of course she had. She had a key to every door in my life these days, and I had handed

them to her one at a time.

“Get out,” I said.

“Is that any way to greet the only person who stayed?”

“You are not a person who stayed. You are a person who wouldn’t leave.”

“She left you.” She didn’t move. “I felt it the moment I walked in. The place has that smell. Abandonment. It clings.”

“Get out of my apartment, Selene. I won’t say it again.”

She uncoiled off the couch instead, slowly, and set the wine down.

“You have spent months tearing yourself in half over that girl,” she said, coming towards me. “And where is she now, Rieck? She ran. At the first hard season, she ran. That’s who she is.” A step closer. “Maybe she was never meant to be. Maybe you have been fighting so hard for the wrong thing that you forgot the right one was standing here the entire time.”

16:50 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

“You are the reason she ran.”

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“I’m the reason you are finally free.” She stopped in front of me. Very close, the way she always got. “Some things don’t end when people want them to. You told me that once. You were young, and you meant it.”

“Don’t.”

“You still smell like the boy I knew.” Her hand came up and flattened on my chest, and I let it, which was the first mistake, the way it is always the first small mistake that opens the door to the rest. “Under all that cold. He’s still in there. I would know him anywhere.”

“Stop talking,” I said. But I still didn’t move her hand.

“Make me.” Her mouth was very close now. “That’s what you want, is it not? For someone else to make the choice, so you never have to carry it. You have carried everything alone your whole life, Rieck.” Her voice dropped. “Put it down. Just once. Put it down.”

At that moment the cold I kept between myself and the world thinned, and I felt it thinning, and I did nothing at all to stop it.

I should have stepped back. I know exactly the size of the step I didn’t take.

Her fingers went to the buttons of her own dress, not mine, and she held my eyes the whole time, and the silk slid off her shoulders and pooled at her feet, and she stood there in my living room with nothing between us and the whole ruined night, and every reason I had to send her out of that door was still true but none of them were loud enough over the roaring in my own head.

I was angry. I was gutted. I was a man whose wife had walked out the door, and here was a hot sexy thing offering to make the world quiet for an hour.

That’s not an excuse. I have never once believed in excuses.

She reached for me, and this time I didn’t push her away.

I’m not going to dress it up. I fell. Cold and angry and hating myself the entire way down, I fell, and it was quick and it was ugly and it had nothing in it that resembled love.

It was two people using each other in the dark, and I knew it, and I did it anyway.

And at the very end, some last stubborn piece of me that still belonged to my wife refused her the one thing she wanted most.

I didn’t cum in her. I wouldn’t give her that.

Selene made a sound of pure rage.

“You couldn’t even give me that,” she hissed, shoving off me. “After everything. You would deny me even that.”

“Get dressed.”

“You are unbelievable…”

16:50 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

“Get dressed,” I said, and my voice came out of the coldest place I own, “and get out of my home, and don’t ever let yourself in again. We are done. Whatever you think tonight bought you, it bought you nothing.”

She laughed, sharp and shaking, snatching her dress off the floor.

“You will regret speaking to me like that,” she said. “You always do.”

I sat alone in the dark for a long time after the door closed.

I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t pour a drink.

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