Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 170

Chp 170: A Son.

Aurelia’s POV

:

53 vouchers

The house grew quieter with every hour Rieck stayed away, and the quiet had a weight to it now that it had never carried before.

I sat by the tall glass windows most of that first day, turning over choices that all felt equally impossible.

Tell him and risk everything the clause had already promised me. Say nothing and let the lie grow alongside the child, until there was no honest version of my life left to return to.

I thought of Kaelen in that mall doorway. Then I thought of Rieck’s hand once resting over my own, loving in a way I had once believed meant something.

Two men, two claims, and only one small, unknowing life caught in the middle of both of them.

Marta found me there in the late afternoon, a tea tray balanced on one hip.

“You haven’t eaten today, Mrs. Valerius.” She set the tray down gently. “You have that look again. The one you wore before everything went wrong the last time.”

“There’s nothing wrong, Marta.”

“I have worked in this house for nine years, child. I know what a woman looks like when there’s nothing wrong, and I know what she looks like when she has decided to tell everyone that, and they aren’t the same face.” She poured the tea anyway, unhurried, giving me the chance to fill the quiet if I wanted it. “You don’t have to tell me what it is. I just want you to know that I noticed.”

“I’m just tired, Marta.”

“You keep telling everyone that.” Her eyes, kind and much too sharp, moved over my face. “Whatever it is, child, you don’t have to carry it alone in this house.”

“I know.” I made myself smile, and it cost more than it should have. “Really. I am fine.”

She didn’t believe me. But I saw her make up her mind not to press, the way everyone in this house seemed to be learning to do lately.

Every conversation had started to feel dangerous. A single wrong word to the wrong person and the whole fragile architecture I was holding together could come apart at once, taking down more than just me.

Marta, who had kept every one of my secrets for a year without once being asked to.

Rieck, still circling a truth he hadn’t yet found the shape to name aloud.

And somewhere far away, a man in a mountain kingdom who believed, with his whole chest, that he already knew the ending to a story I hadn’t yet finished writing.

COEGERUD500000

1/4

16:57 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

55 vouchers

I went to the hospital alone the next morning, telling the driver only that I needed a few hours to myself, because some decisions needed to be made without an audience.

I lay back on the exam table and let the cool gel spread across my skin, and for a moment, alone in that quiet white room with no husband and no king and no legal document waiting to be read, I let myself just breathe.

“Everything looks exactly as it should,” the doctor said, moving the wand slowly over my stomach, the small fast heartbeat filling the quiet room. “Strong heart rate. Good growth. Whatever stress you have been under, this little one seems entirely unbothered by it.”

“That’s good to hear.” I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, tension I had carried in my shoulders for days finally loosening. “I was so afraid something would be wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong, Mrs. Valerius. This baby is thriving.” The doctor smiled. “Would you like to know what you are having? Some mothers prefer to wait.”

I hesitated for only a moment. “I want to know.”

She checked the screen once more, unhurried, then looked back up at me and smiled warmly, entirely unaware of the storm she was about to hand me the eye of.

“A boy.”

I smiled as I let myself picture him. Small and real, a stubborn chin and someone’s eyes I couldn’t yet name, running through the yard at Ridgeline or the halls of a glass tower, laughing at something neither of the men in my life had ever quite managed to make me laugh at in the exact same way.

I didn’t know yet which face he would grow into. But then for one whole, undivided minute, lying on that table with my hand pressed flat over my own skin, I found I didn’t need to know.

He was mine first. Whoever else laid claim to him after, he was mine before either of them.

So for the whole drive home I let myself hold that feeling close, the first true peace I had felt since Ridgeline.

I watched the city slide by through the window and thought, foolishly, that maybe the worst of it had already happened. Maybe a woman was allowed one clean, unhaunted afternoon after everything I had survived.

But I should have known better by now than to believe that.

It lasted exactly as long as it took me to walk through my own front door.

Rieck was standing in the entryway when I came in, still in his coat, the front door swinging shut hard behind him as though he hadn’t fully decided whether to slam it or just let it fall, and every bit of peace I had carried home with me died on sight of him.

He was a wreck. His shirt torn at the shoulder, dark stains soaked through the fabric, a cut along his jaw still bleeding sluggishly, his knuckles split and raw, his whole body giving out a cold so sharp I felt it from six feet

away.

“Rieck.” My hand flew to my mouth, my whole body going cold at the sight of him. “What happened to you?”

2/4

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify