Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Rieck’s POV

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My father’s office still smelled the same as it had when I was a boy. Cigar smoke buried in the wood and old leather.

The chair I sat in faced the window, and the city lay out there in a grey wash, the kind of morning that didn’t believe in itself.

My phone rang again for the fourth time, but I just let it ring.

“Answer it or silence it,” Hebvron said from his desk. “I can’t think with that sound.”

Looking at the screen, I muted the call and placed the phone face down on the arm of the chair.

“I have to leave for the office,” I shrugged. “I have a tower topping out, a south district project under review, and a wife I haven’t seen since Tuesday night.”

“You are not going anywhere,” he spat.

“Father.”

“Sit down, Rieck.”

I hadn’t stood up, but I understood the order. So I leaned back in the chair and let the silence settle the way it used to when I was nineteen and was being corrected for a thing I had done in the territory line. He still had that quality in his voice. The quality of a man who didn’t have to raise it.

“You have one task,” he continued. “One. A son. An heir. A claim that puts Dawson’s bastard in the ground before it is even born, legally speaking.”

“I am aware of the task.”

“Are you,” he said, and it was not a question.

I didn’t answer him. I looked at the cane.

“My sources tell me Charlotte is carrying a boy,” he mumbled, and his voice went quiet the way it went quiet when he was past anger. “A boy, Rieck. A male heir to Dawson’s line. If he files that paternity claim and walks it through the family court the way I think he will walk it through, then the inheritance question reopens. My brother’s bloodline becomes the active claim. And mine becomes the side branch.”

“I understand the structure of the claim.”

“Then explain to me why my daughter-in-law is not yet round.”

These…. things take time,” I whispered.

“Time,” he said. He smiled without his eyes. “Time is what Dawson is spending right now while you sit in my

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chair and stare at the ground.”

Just then a knock at the door interrupted us.

ཁ

Arsell opened it without asking and stepped aside, and a man walked in whose face I had seen in twenty board pictures and three private dinners. Senior board seat. One of the oldest allies my father had. The grey of his hair was the kind of grey men paid for, and the suit was the kind of suit a man wore when he was about to deliver bad news politely.

He saw me and paused half a step into the room and his eyes went to Hebron.

“Speak freely, my father said. “My son is in this room. My son is always in this room

The man bowed and immediately crossed to the desk.

“It’s not good.” he started. “Dawson has been busy”

“Tell us.”

“He has used the last six weeks to consolidate quietly. Three board members who used to vote with the northern interest have been moved off their committees. Two of them are now sitting on advisory seats with no vote. The third resigned two days ago, citing health. But his health is fine. Dawson bought him out.”

“Go on my father pressed.

“He has shifted the centre. the man continued. “Anyone who could have challenged him on a paternity ruling has been put in a chair where they cannot reach the floor. He has lined up the family court chair too, through a private donation routed through a foundation. It will not show on paper for two more quarters. By then it will not need to.”

“And the auditor seat? my father asked.

“His man.

“And the trust counsel?”

“His man.”

I suddenly felt my jaw set. But I kept my hands still on the arms of the chair.

He hadn’t been idle. He had been working. While I had been pinning my wife against penthouse glass and standing at a velvet drape pretending the city didn’t see us. Dawson had been pulling every floor out from ander the inheritance one quarter at a time.

When the man finished his report, he bowed slightly and waited.

Thank you,” my father said. “Wait outside. I am not finished with you today.”

The moment the door clicked shut behind him, my father turned his head to me.

The stakes have moved he whispered. “What are you going to do about it?”

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I looked at the window. Then I looked at the phone face-down on the arm of the chair.

“I… I will handle it.”

“You will handle it how?”

“I will handle it the way I handle everything.”

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“Rieck.” His voice dropped. “I have been patient with you. I have been more patient with you than I have been with any man in my life, and you are my son, so don’t mistake the patience for permission. If you can’t produce an heir, then tell me, and we will produce one another way.”

“There will be no other way.”

“There is always another way.”

Without thinking, I stood up.

“I will handle it,” I repeated. “Today.”

He didn’t stand. He looked up at me from the desk and the lamp moved across the scar on his cheek and for the first time in a long time he looked tired.

“Go home to your wife,” he advised. “And get her pregnant.”

The drive to the penthouse took twenty-two minutes in mid-morning traffic, and I didn’t turn the radio on for any of it. Ronan kept his eyes on the road. He knew the silence. He had been in it before.

I went through the list in my head as the city rolled past the window. The committees Dawson had hollowed out. The chair he had bought. The two quarters that were not actually two quarters because a clean filing could collapse the timeline to weeks. The boy in Charlotte’s belly. The boy that didn’t yet exist in mine.

My phone sat on the seat beside me. I had silenced it since morning and unsilenced it twice an hour, and the only voice that had reached me through it had been my father’s, asking me to come back. Aurelia had not called.

That hadn’t bothered me in the afternoon. But by evening the not-calling sat under my ribs the way a small stone sits under a shoe.

As soon as the elevator opened directly into the penthouse, the air was wrong before I had stepped out of it.

Not wrong like an intruder. Wrong like an absence. The kitchen was clean. The white sofa was untouched. The blue throw she had folded over the arm two nights ago was still folded over the arm. No coffee cup on the counter. No second pair of shoes by the door.

“Marta,” I called out.

She came from the hallway in her grey uniform with her hands clasped low the way she clasped them when she didn’t want to be the one to say the thing.

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