Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 162

Chp 162: The Bargain.

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Dawson Valerius kept him waiting eleven minutes in a private room above his own club, which told Kaelen everything he needed to know about the kind of man he was about to deal with.

“You said you know what I’m hiding,” Dawson said, dropping into the chair across the table, scotch already in hand. “I have very little patience for riddles. Say it plainly, or leave.”

“The will.” Kaelen set nothing down, brought no folder, no proof. He didn’t need one yet. “Derek’s will. Forty percent of the Valerius estate, left to his daughter, the day she turned twenty five or the day he was confirmed dead. Whichever came first.”

Dawson’s face didn’t move. His hand, wrapped around the glass, went very still.

“That document doesn’t exist.”

“It exists twice.” Kaelen let that sit. “You destroyed one copy. I have the other.”

Something cold moved behind Dawson’s eyes, and for one strange second Kaelen caught a scent under the scotch and cigarette smoke that didn’t belong to an ordinary man at all, faint and buried and long unused, the ghost of something wolfish sleeping deep in blood that had forgotten how to wake.

“What do you want?” Dawson asked. “Money?”

“No.”

“Then what? My company? My silence on something of yours?” Dawson leaned back, quickly recovering his composure, the way men only recover when they have spent a lifetime practicing. “Everyone wants something, Kaelen. Don’t waste my evening pretending you are the exception.”

“I want to know how to win her.”

Dawson stared at him. Then he laughed, short and genuinely surprised, the first real thing Kaelen had gotten out of him all evening.

“You are joking.”

“I’m not.”

“You are sitting across from me telling me about a document that could end my entire life, and the price of you not talking is romantic advice.” Dawson shook his head, still half laughing. “Unbelievable.”

“You knew her better than anyone alive, once. However badly it ended.” Kaelen kept his voice level. “I’m not asking you to love her. I’m asking you to tell me what works.”

Dawson considered him a long moment, and then something calculating slid in behind the amusement.

“Fine.” He swirled the scotch. “Aurelia falls easily, once a man shows her real confidence. She spent her whole life being handed to people, told what she should want. She doesn’t need you to ask permission. She needs you to just make up your mind, and let her catch up.” He took a slow sip. “Hesitation is what loses women like her. The moment a man starts asking whether he is allowed, he has already lost.”

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16:55 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

“That’s remarkably cynical advice for a man talking about his own ex wife.”

“It is remarkably accurate advice.” Dawson’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Do with it what you like.”

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He didn’t say the rest of it aloud, the small private hope curling under his ribs that if the wolf king across from him spent his energy chasing Aurelia’s heart, he would have far less left over to go digging for her inheritance.

Let the wolf king spend his nights chasing a woman’s heart instead of a lawyer’s filing cabinet. Every hour Kaelen spent charming her was an hour he wasn’t spending in a records office somewhere, turning over stones Dawson had spent years making sure no one thought to lift.

It was, he thought, an almost elegant use of another man’s obsession.

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Kaelen thought about that advice the whole drive home.

He found her on the terrace when he returned, curled into a chair with a book she wasn’t reading, and he didn’t hesitate at the door the way he had every other night since the fall.

“I’m done being slow,” he said.

She looked up. “Slow about what?”

“About this.” He immediately crossed the space between them and stopped in front of her chair, close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes. “About circling you for weeks like a man asking permission to breathe. I am done with it.”

“Kaelen…”

“I’m not asking anymore.” His voice had dropped low, rough at the edges. “Tell me to leave, Aurelia, right now, and I will. I swear I won’t ask again after tonight.”

To his surprise, she didn’t tell him to leave. Instead she set the book down with hands that weren’t quite steady, and that was answer enough.

At that very moment he kissed her the way he had wanted to since the very first night he carried her in from the cold, and this time she didn’t pull away, didn’t say I can’t, only reached up and pulled him down closer, her fingers curling into his shirt.

Whatever war was still raging in her over a husband and a name and a truth not yet spoken, it lost, that night, to something neither of them had the strength left to keep fighting.

He made sure to savour her. One hand sliding into her hair and the other spanning the small of her back like he meant to memorize the shape of her through his palm alone.

She answered him with a hunger that surprised them both, fingers working loose the buttons of his shirt, and he let her, let her hands map every scar and old story written into his skin, and didn’t once try to slow her down.

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16:55 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

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“Say it,” he mumbled against her jaw, her throat, the soft place under her ear. “Tell me you want this. I need to hear it from you.”

“I want this.” Her voice had gone weak. “I want you, Kaelen.”

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