Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Aurelia’s POV

I sat at the edge of the bed long after Rieck had gone.

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His phone call had ended three minutes ago. He had picked up his coat and had told me he would explain when he got home and not before, and he had walked out without looking back. The words he left behind sat in the room with me. “One more lie and the contract is null.”

That was what kept me still on the edge of the mattress with my hands flat on my knees and the cream sweater I had cooked dinner in still smelling faintly of garlic. He had not said it as a threat. He had said it as a deal. The same voice he had used to tell Dawson he would not warn him a third time. He was ready to walk.

I twisted the band on my finger once, then stopped. I had told myself I was past that.

Standing up, I crossed the bedroom to the desk by the window where I had been keeping my laptop the last few weeks.

The browser still had the tabs open from last night. The state pharmacy board. The wellness practitioner registry. The civil court records. A small archived picture of a smiling man in a white linen shirt holding up a bottle of supplements at a charity health fair four years ago.

The man in the picture was Mr. Greene.

Carlton Greene. Licensed Wellness Practitioner. Registration number 4471-W. Six years in good standing. Three published articles on adaptogenic supplements. One charity board. One quiet civil settlement, sealed, two years ago, plaintiff name redacted.

I copied the registration number into the small black notebook beside the laptop. I copied the license expiry. I copied the registry of complaints where his name appeared for an unrelated billing dispute, dismissed. I copied the address of the apartment building eighteen blocks south.

I would not be Aurelia who waited. I would be Aurelia who built a file.

He had handed me a bottle of pills with a warm smile every Friday afternoon for two and a half years. I would hand him back the only thing he loved, his license, on a piece of paper signed by the state board. Slowly and publicly. With my name on the complaint.

Closing the laptop, I looked at the time.

Rieck had left forty minutes ago.

I went to the closet and changed into a dark coat and black flats, and put the notebook in my inside pocket. Then I took the back stairs down to the garage the way Marta had taught me.

Ronan was leaning on the side of the SUV in the garage when the elevator opened.

He straightened when he saw me. Not surprised. Not asking. Just there.

“Mrs. Valerius. Where can I take you?”

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17:02 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 22

“Nowhere, Ronan. I am taking a cab.”

“The Alpha left instructions, ma’am.”

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“And I am giving you new ones. I would like a cab. I don’t want a Valerius car at the address I am going to. I would like to be invisible for an hour. Can you give me that?”

He looked at me for a long moment. The kind of look a man gives when he is weighing his job against his judgement. Then he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone and tapped it twice.

“There will be one in three minutes,” he said. “I will be at this number the whole time. If you don’t answer a call from me by the second ring, the Alpha hears about this within five minutes. Are we clear, ma’am?”

“We are clear.”

“And ma’am?”

“Hm.”

“Wherever you are going. Please be quick.”

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The cab dropped me half a block from Greene’s building.

I walked the last forty yards on the opposite side of the street. The white lobby behind the glass doors looked colder than I remembered. I crossed at the corner and slipped into the small service alley that ran along the side of the building, the one the delivery vans used. I had been here a hundred times. I knew which window belonged to apartment 14B. I knew the angle from the alley you could see his living room through if you stood close to the dumpster and tilted your chin up.

So, I tilted my chin up.

The blinds were half drawn, and through the strip of glass I could see the long pale sofa where he always took his clients. He was sitting on the edge of it now, in jeans and a t-shirt. Three men in dark suits with broad shoulders were standing in the room with him, while he remained seated.

Without thinking, I pressed myself flat against the brick.

The window was slightly ajar at the top so the voices came down to me in pieces.

“You knew the conditions when you took the money.”

“I never said a word, I never told her, I swear to you on my children, I…”

“She was in your home, Greene. She had the bottle in her hand. That is on you.”

“She had the bottle from her own bathroom. I did not… I could not have known, please.”

“My boss is not interested in what you could and could not have known.”

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17:02 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 22

Then there was a small wet sound that I didn’t want to identify.

“Please.”

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“Since you have caused my boss so much pain, Mr. Greene, you can kiss your license goodbye.”

“What. No, no, I have a daughter, I, please, I will refund every cent, I will tell her anything she wants to hear, I will sign a, please, don’t take my license.”

“The complaint was filed twenty minutes ago. Three patients, signed statements, everything dated and witnessed. By Friday you will not be allowed to sell a vitamin to a stranger on the street. You should have considered that before you took the work. Sit down.”

Suddenly I heard the soft thump of a man sitting back hard.

“My boss says he is being merciful. The license was the price. The next time he hears your name in a sentence, the price changes. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have a good morning, Mr. Greene.”

I pressed deeper into the brick as the footsteps moved out of the apartment. I heard the soft buzz of the lobby door from the front of the building, and the heavier sound of three men crossing the pavement. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just watched them through the gap between the dumpster and the wall.

A black SUV. Not ours. Tinted windows. New plates.

The lead man stopped at the rear door before he opened it. He pulled out a phone and held it to his ear for one beat. Then he said, easy as a weather report, “Boss. It is done. He will not be able to practice for life.”

He listened attentively before nodding. “Yes, sir.”

With that, he put the phone away, got into the SUV, and it pulled away from the curb, turned left at the light and was gone.

I stayed against the brick a long minute after.

When I finally tilted my head up to the window again, Mr. Greene was on the sofa with his face in his hands and his shoulders shaking.

I didn’t feel sorry for him. And that surprised me. I had thought I would.

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The penthouse was quiet when I got home.

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