Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Aurelia’s POV

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“I am your wife, Rieck,” I said, raising my chin. “I thought a wife could walk into her husband’s office without sending a note ahead.”

Rieck pushed back his chair and stood up. He was very tall behind that desk, very still.

“Sit down,” he ordered.

“I would rather stand.”

“Sit. Down.”

I sat, but he remained standing. His hands were flat on the wood, staring down at me the way he stared at men who had failed him on a job site.

“Listen to me carefully,” he started, “because I am only going to say this once. This office is mine. The men who walk through that door walk through it because I have called them in. You don’t walk through it on a whim. You don’t walk through it because you are bored. You don’t walk through it because you happen to share a last name with me. Are you following?”

My mouth was dry.

“Rieck, I’m your wife.”

“You are also under contract, and I don’t mix business with pleasure. I have never mixed the two and I will not start because you have decided you want to play office today.”

“I…”

“Our marriage is not a vague arrangement,” he went on. “It has a purpose. We both signed for that purpose. You didn’t marry me to redecorate a corner office. You married me to give the Valerius name a clean heir and to take Dawson apart from the inside. Stay focused on what we agreed on.”

I pressed my hands flat against my lap so he wouldn’t see them shake.

“Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Now you should leave.”

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The moment I got to my office, I sat behind the empty desk and just stared at the city through the window.

Two months ago I would have nodded. Two months ago I would have apologised. Two months ago I would have folded my hands in my lap and hoped he would soften.

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Chapter 24

But I wasn’t that woman anymore.

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Two men lived inside the same body. One of them I was beginning to want. The other one had just put me out of his office like a misfiled report. And the worst part, the part that sat in my throat like a stone, was that I couldn’t tell which one was real.

Suddenly I stood up because if I stayed in that empty office one more minute I was going to scream into the

carpet.

Taking the long way to the break room, I passed by the open floor where the analysts sat. That was when I saw

him.

Rieck was standing at the far end of the floor with three men in front of him and a woman holding a tablet to her chest. His back was turned towards me. I could see the cut of his shoulders under the shirt, the way one hand rested at his side and the other made a single small gesture as he spoke.

The man on the left had gone the colour of old paper. The woman with the tablet kept nodding without lifting her eyes off the floor. The man in the middle was sweating at the temples. A drop of it slid down toward his jaw and he didn’t dare reach up to wipe it.

Rieck spoke for maybe forty seconds. Then he stopped and waited.

“Yes, sir,” the middle man said quickly, and the other two echoed it half a beat later, like an answering call.

Rieck nodded and immediately turned.

So it wasn’t me. That was what I had been telling myself in the corner office for the last hour, and now I had my answer in front of my own eyes. He was like this with everyone. Cold. Sharp. Without a soft edge anywhere in him on company time.

It should have made me feel better. But it didn’t.

He was halfway across the floor when he saw me. His step slowed slightly as he looked at my mouth and then back up at me.

I stood still and waited until he was three steps away from me. Then I started walking, and I walked a line that put my shoulder squarely in his path.

And I brushed him purposely.

It wasn’t hard. The cotton of his sleeve grazed the bare skin of my arm and I felt his smell fold around me for a single breath. I kept walking and I didn’t look back.

The floor went quiet behind me. At least one tablet hit the carpet. Every set of eyes on that open floor swung onto my back like a spotlight, and I held my chin up and I walked.

As soon as I closed the break room door behind me, my hands were not shaking anymore. They were steady.

I had no idea what I had just done. Only that I had done it. And that it was the first thing in this building today that had felt like mine.

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Chapter 24

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The coffee machine made a hissing sound as I poured a cup with two sugars and brought it to my lips.

Just then the door opened behind me.

I didn’t turn around right away. I let the rim of the cup rest against my lower lip and inhaled slowly through my nose.

“Aurelia.”

Finally, I turned around.

He stood with one hand still on the door, not letting it close behind him. The break room was empty otherwise. Two round tables, a wall of cabinets, a kettle. White light. No witnesses.

“What was that?” he asked.

“What was what?”

“Out there.”

“I was walking to the break room.”

“Aurelia.”

“I had a coffee craving.”

He let the door fall shut. He didn’t move from in front of it. His eyes were fixed on me and they had that polished quality they got when he was deciding whether to be amused or angry.

I set the cup down on the counter behind me and crossed the small floor between us, slowly, one foot in front of the other.

Then I stopped a hand’s width from him and lifted both hands to his collar and slid the knot of his tie up to where it should have been.

And he let me.

His chin came down a little so I could reach him. That was the only sign he had moved at all.

“Are

you going to fire me?” I asked.

His pupils flickered.

“Too bad,” I said softly, smoothing his tie with my palm. “I am not your employee.”

There was a pause, very small, and then his mouth did something I had only seen it do once or twice before. The corner pulled. Not a smile. The shape a smile leaves behind.

“You are something else today, little wife.”

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Chapter 24

Just then his phone buzzed in his pocket.

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He looked down at it and his face changed in one beat from that almost-smile back to the office face, and the cold came back into the room like someone had opened a window.

“I don’t have time for your games,” he mumbled and stepped around me and was gone.

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He didn’t come home until after eight.

I was in the kitchen when the elevator buzzed. I had changed into a pair of pyjamas, and I was barefoot on the marble, peeling the foil off a yoghurt I wasn’t really hungry for.

The sound of the elevator and his keys clinking in the bowl caught my attention, but I didn’t turn around.

He came up behind me and stopped at the island.

“Aurelia.”

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