Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 167

Chp 167; The Clause.

Rieck’s POV

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I froze in my own study doorway, and for one full second the whole world narrowed down to the fact that she was standing there at all.

Aurelia. Alive. Whole. Real, not some cruel trick of a mind that had spent weeks refusing to believe she was gone for good.

The relief lasted exactly as long as it took her to turn around.

Her eyes weren’t the eyes of a woman glad to see her husband. They were cold and angry, and before I could open my mouth to ask where she had been, whether she was hurt, whether she was even real, she crossed the room and threw a folder on the desk hard enough to send papers sliding across the wood.

“Explain this.”

“Aurelia, where have you…”

“Explain this, Rieck.” Her voice interrupted mine, and I let the question about her whereabouts die, because whatever rage was moving through her tonight had nothing to do with reunion and everything to do with the paper on my desk.

I looked down and my chest went tight the second I recognized the header.

“Aurelia…”

“Explain it, Rieck.” Her voice shook. “Once you have an heir, I am released. That’s what it says. Released, like a debt. Like a lease. Did you know that before you married me? Did you already know exactly how you would be rid of me when I stopped being useful?”

“I didn’t draft that clause.”

“That’s not a no. I asked if you knew, Rieck. Answer the question I actually asked.”

“Yes.” The word hurt me, and I let her see that it did. “Yes, I knew. But I never intended to honour it.”

“You knew it existed.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could see her hands were shaking too, close enough that her scent reached me, vanilla and rain on cedar, and under it, faint, something wrong, something that didn’t belong to her at all. “You knew, and you let me sign a contract built on my own disposal, and you called every one of your silences protection.”

“Aurelia, listen to me…”

“No I am done listening.” Her voice cracked. “I am done being the last person told the truth about my own life. Do you have any idea what it is to find out, alone, in a cold study, that the marriage you fought so hard to save has an expiration date written into it by someone else’s hand?”

“Aurelia, I would have fought that clause the moment I had power enough to win against my father.”

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16:56 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

“You didn’t tell me it existed. That’s the part I can’t forgive tonight, Rieck. Not the clause itself. It’s you not telling me.”

Just then the air between us went cold and sharp, and something in my chest wanted to close the distance, wanted to pull her into me and just hold her still until the rage wore itself down.

But I didn’t move. I had learned, the hard way, exactly how badly that move could go wrong.

“The clause was my father’s design,” I said. “Drafted before I ever laid eyes on you. I have hated it since the day I found it. I intended to strip it the moment I had the leverage to move against him.”

“How convenient. A promise I only get to hear once I catch you at it.”

Whatever I meant to say next never made it out of my mouth.

Her face went suddenly grey, her hand flying to her mouth, and she turned and ran from the room without another word, leaving me standing alone with the clause still open on my desk and my heart slamming against my ribs for an entirely different reason.

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She came back ten minutes later, pale, composed, and utterly unwilling to explain a single thing.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. My stomach.”

“That’s the second time in as many minutes you have said nothing while looking like you might be sick again.” I crossed towards her, and she stiffened, and I stopped where I was, forcing myself to give her the space she was clearly asking for without saying so. “You have been gone for weeks, Aurelia. You come back grey and shaking and running for the nearest bathroom. Whatever this is, I’m not blind to it, whatever else you think of

me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Aurelia. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me.”

“You vanish for weeks. You come home carrying a document that should never have left a locked drawer. You go grey and run from the room mid argument.” I kept my voice level, though it cost me. “Something is happening to you, and I would very much like to know what it is before I have to guess.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation for every part of my body, Rieck.”

“No. You don’t.” Something in her voice made me go still. “But you used to tell me things. Before all of it.”

“Before you lied to me for a year, you mean.”

16:56 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

The days that followed left me more unsettled, not less.

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She looked exhausted, dark circles she tried to cover, a new slowness in the mornings that hadn’t been there before.

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