Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Aurelia’s POV

Rieck didn’t say a word.

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He walked past me to the bar cart against the wall and poured himself two fingers of something amber. He did it slowly. The crystal stopper went down on the marble with a small click, and without turning around, he took the first sip.

I just stood there, waiting in the tense silence, my fingers tensing at my sides.

“Rieck,” I finally spoke.

He set the glass down, turned around, and loosened his tie slightly. Then he looked at me the way a man looks at the front page of a newspaper he is not interested in finishing.

“That,” he said quietly, “is a very stupid question.”

“It’s not a stupid question.”

“You have already answered it. Or you wouldn’t be standing in my living room with that look on your face.”

I felt heat climb my throat. The sweater was suddenly too warm. The leather behind me was too cold. The whole apartment smelled of his sandalwood and a sharper antiseptic note he had brought in with him from wherever he had been an hour ago.

“I would have preferred,” I mumbled, “to handle that my own way.”

His gaze met mine.

The glass came back down on the marble. Hard, this time.

“Your own way?”

“Yes.”

“You. Would have preferred. To handle that. Your own way.”

He repeated it slowly as he walked towards me, not in a hurry. When he stopped a foot from me and looked down, I felt the pressure in the room shift the way it always shifted when the wolf in him stepped forward without permission.

“Aurelia.” His voice was very soft. “Just because I let you sit in a room with Kowalski. Just because I let you put your name on a forty-floor contract. Just because I have given you a desk and a budget and the back of my hand on your spine in front of my father. None of that gives you permission to walk into a man’s apartment and improvise.”

“I wasn’t going to improvise.”

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Chapter 23

“You were going to file a complaint.”

“Yes.”

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“On state board paper. With your name. The wife of Rieck Valerius. Putting her signature on a public document about contraceptives in supplements.” He let that sit. “You would have lit a fire I would have had to spend three months putting out. With my name on every newspaper in this city.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

“No.” He didn’t raise his voice. “You didn’t think.”

I opened my mouth.

“Listen to me.” He took a step closer. The pale of his eyes had not gone all the way to glow yet, but it was close. “You are still my property, Aurelia. By contract. By name. By bed. Until that paper is fulfilled, you don’t move on a man in this city without my say. Not Greene. Not Dawson. Not Kaelen if you trip over him in a hallway. You bring it to me first. We have had this conversation. I am not having it again.”

“I am not anyone’s…”

“You are causing too much trouble, little wife,” he interrupted. “I lied to my father in my own office yesterday. For you. I stripped a man of his living. For you. I will take the fire that comes out of all of this. For you. The least you can give me back is the line you don’t cross.”

I swallowed hard.

“What do you want from me, Rieck?”

“I want you to fall in line.”

With that, he picked up the glass again, drained it, and walked past me down the hallway to the bedroom without looking back.

I woke up the next morning to a cold half of the bed.

The duvet on his side was already smoothed. The pillow had been put back the way he liked it, the edge perfectly aligned with the headboard. He had slept beside me. I hadn’t heard him come in and I hadn’t heard him leave.

I sat up. The clock said seven twenty. I quickly pulled my nightie down over my thighs and padded barefoot down the hallway.

He was in the kitchen at the long marble island with a cup of coffee, a tablet open in front of him, his suit dark and his tie already done. The collarbone tattoo just barely visible at the V of the open button. He didn’t look up when I came in.

“Good morning.”

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Chapter 23

He scrolled.

“Rieck.”

“Mmm.”

“About last night.”

“Coffee on the counter, Aurelia.”

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I poured a cup and thankfully my hand was steadier than I expected. I sat at the corner of the island with two empty stools between us and tried to find something normal to say.

“Marta is on a Tuesday today, so the eggs were already…”

He glanced at his watch.

“We are running late,” he said. “I suggest you get dressed.”

I blinked. “We?”

“You and I.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You are coming to work with me today.”

“Rieck.”

“I will not repeat myself.”

I set the cup down. “I have things I was going to do. I had a list. I have a pharmacy board file to….”

“Aurelia.” He looked up for the first time. His eyes held mine and didn’t let go. “I told you last night I will not ignore you and I meant it. I am not going to ignore you. I am going to consume you. Starting now. Get dressed. The car leaves in twelve minutes.”

We arrived at Valerius Tower’s underground garage at two minutes past eight.

He walked half a step ahead of me through the marble lobby and the staff parted around him without being told. Elara was waiting at the executive elevator with a tablet against her chest. She didn’t blink at the sight of me. She just turned and walked us into the elevator and the three of us rode up to the thirty-second floor in

silence.

He left me at a corner office with a glass wall and a city view and a desk that was already set up with my name on a small brass plate.

‘Aurelia Valerius. Special Projects.’

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