Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Rieck’s POV

The phone buzzed for the third time, but I ignored it.

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69

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55 vouchers

I had a contract on the screen. Twelve floors of Vance’s tower were behind schedule by six days, and a steel supplier in the south district had decided this morning that he wanted to renegotiate his margin on the back of the delay. I was reading the clause that would end his quarter for him.

The phone buzzed again.

It was Aurelia.

I rejected the call without looking at the picture and went back to the contract. The steel supplier had buried a get-out in subclause nine. I pulled a red line through it, made a note in the margin, and forwarded the file to legal.

A few minutes later, the phone buzzed with a text this time. Four words on the lock screen.

“Are you free now?”

I turned the phone face down on the desk.

Petra had brought coffee in twenty minutes ago, but I hadn’t touched it. The cup had gone cold. Outside the wall of glass behind the sky was the same flat grey it had been all afternoon.

The phone buzzed again.

“The black or the blue?”

I closed my eyes for one full second.

She had cornered me last night about this dinner. She had stood in the kitchen with her hair down her back and her arms crossed, and asked me, very calmly, when was the last time that we had eaten in a restaurant together as husband and wife. I had told her I didn’t have time for performances. She had told me I would make time for this one.

I had said no, but she was hellbent.

I said no again, more quietly, but she didn’t leave the room. She had picked up her glass of water and walked past me to the bedroom and called over her shoulder that she had booked the table for eight.

I hadn’t slept well after that.

The phone buzzed again.

“Rieck. Pick one. Or I am picking the red one and you can deal with whatever the room thinks.”

The corner of my mouth moved against my will, but I immediately flattened it.

1/5

17:03 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 25

I picked up the phone and typed one word, “Blue.”

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69

55 vouchers

Setting it back down, I stared at the contract on my screen and read the same paragraph three times and took in none of it. Two months ago a woman with a dress question would not have made it past Petra. Two months ago I would have had her number on silent by lunch.

But two months ago I had not yet married Aurelia.

The dinner was at eight. It was four-twelve. I had three hours and forty-eight minutes to decide whether one quiet meal in a restaurant where men with cameras didn’t eat was worth the cost it would put on me the rest of the month.

I thought about her hands on my tie in the break room.

I thought about her shoulder brushing mine on the open floor.

I thought about the way she had said “crystal” in the kitchen with her chin up and her eyes rolled and not one tremor in her voice.

“Worth it,” I thought before quickly closing my laptop.

00000000000

She came down the hallway at seven fifty-six and the air suddenly went out of the penthouse.

I was standing by the window with a glass of water in my hand, the city below me turning gold at the edges where the sun was setting. I turned at the sound of her heel on the marble.

The dress was blue.

Not a soft blue. A deep, dark, river-at-night blue, satin, cut narrow at the waist and falling clean to the floor. It left her shoulders bare. Her hair was up, with two pieces loose at the temples, and there was a thin gold line at her throat that I had not bought her and could not remember her owning. Her mouth was a quiet red.

I had told her blue.

I had not told her that blue.

She stopped steps away from me and waited. Not nervous. Not asking. Just waiting.

“Well?” she said.

I set the glass of water down on the side table without looking at it. I was aware that I hadn’t yet spoken. I was aware that this was now a longer pause than’ was useful.

“It is fine,” I shrugged.

Her mouth moved at one corner.

“Fine?” she repeated.

2/5

17:03 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 25

Yes

“You stared at me for nine seconds, Rieck

“I did not.”

‘I counted.

I picked up the glass again so my hand had something to do.

The car is downstairs. I said.

17.0

55 vouchers

She walked past me to the elevator. The vanilla and rain note that had wanted clinging to her in the last week trailed behind her in a thin warm thread, and I followed it the way a man follows a path he shouldn’t be on and I told myself. very firmly, that the heat in my chest was because of the room and not because of her.

Ronan held the door open for her. Her back disappeared into the leather. I got in beside her and shut the door myself.

As the car pulled out she kept her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t look at me.

‘Aurelia.

Hm

You look gorgeous.”

She didn’t turn her head. But the corner of her mouth moved again, very small and she didn’t say anything back, and somehow that was worse than if she had

The restaurant was one I had taken clients to twice and never anyone else. Low light. Heavy linen. A man at the door who knew my name and didn’t say it

They led us to a corner that was half hidden behind a velvet drape, and Aurelia walked through the room the way she had walked across my office floor that morning with her chin up and her eyes forward and the whole staff turning their heads as she passed.

The waiter poured water. Then he was gone

She rested her chin on her hand and looked at me across the candle

“This is nice” she said.

“It is a restaurant

“It is a nice restaurant.”

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