Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Aurelia’s POV

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Hebvron didn’t wait for an answer. He ended the call and set the phone face down on the bedside table, and he turned his back on me and started to walk.

The bedroom was wide. He used the width of it. He went the length of the rug and stopped at the window and turned and came back. He went the length of the rug a second time. The silver tip of the cane struck the marble at the edge of every turn, and the sound of it was small and dry as it filled the room.

I lay very still against the pillow and just watched him. My right hand was inside the blanket. My left hand was on top of it, on the cotton, and I was twisting the band on my finger with my thumb again, and I made myself

stop.

He wasn’t looking at me. He was thinking. His pacing had the rhythm of a man working a problem he had already started to solve, and the problem he was solving was me.

“You fell,” he said, without turning around.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the hallway. At the apartment.”

“Which apartment?”

“This one.”

“Show me the staircase, Aurelia.”

He turned on the last word. I had forgotten that there was no staircase. The penthouse had an elevator. There was no staircase. There was a half flight up to the rooftop terrace and a wider flight down to the gym below, but neither of those were a staircase a woman fell off and ended up with a bandage across half her chest.

I immediately felt my heart skip a beat.

“The gym stairs,” I mumbled. “The lower flight. I was… I went down to bring the laundry from the dryer, and I missed a step, and I went sideways into the railing.”

“With your shoulder?”

“Yes.”

“Your shoulder, Aurelia.”

“Yes.”

“And the bruise on the side of your face?”

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Chapter 36

“The railing.”

“The railing?”

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“Yes, Father.”

He looked at me for a long moment. His scarred eye didn’t move. The cane shifted in his hand a little bit, the way a pen shifted in the hand of a man who was about to underline a word.

I had spent five years in an orphanage learning how to lie to a woman who didn’t love me. I had spent two years in a marriage learning how to lie to a man who didn’t love me. I had learned, somewhere between those two trainings, that the only way to lie to a wolf was to lie small and lie boring and lie about a thing he wouldn’t bother to check.

A staircase was a boring thing.

He held my eye.

“You will be more careful in your husband’s house,” he said. “You will not be carrying laundry down stairs. You will not be going to a gym in a robe. There are people in this house for those things. You will use them.”

“Yes.”

“My son will be told.”

“Yes, Father.”

“I would have words for him if I thought he was the reason for any of this.”

The cigar-and-leather thickened as the air in the room went down a degree.

“He isn’t,” I said.

“He isn’t?”

“No.”

“You are sure?”

“I am sure.”

He didn’t believe me. But he didn’t push the wedge in, because pushing a wedge into a daughter-in-law who could still produce his grandson wasn’t the move a chess player made in the middle of a game he was already winning. He filed it and let his face soften by half a millimetre, and he came to stand at the foot of the bed.

“You are thinner,” he said.

“I haven’t had an appetite.”

“You will eat tonight.”

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Chapter 36

“I’ll try.”

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“I will send my own woman to the kitchen tomorrow. She will cook what you ate at your mother’s house. What did you eat at your mother’s house, daughter?”

He knew there was no mother. He knew there was no mother’s house. He was placing the silver tip of the cane on the soft place under my ribs and he was pressing, gently, just to see what came out.

I held my voice level.

“Bread,” I said. “And soup.”

“Bread and soup?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Then bread and soup it will be.”

With that, he turned away from the bed and walked to the window again.

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After about thirty minutes, the elevator buzzed. I heard the doors slide. I heard Marta’s voice in the hallway. I heard a second voice, low, terse, two words long, and the bedroom door opened.

Rieck filled the doorway.

He had not changed his shirt. The stain on the cuff was still there. His tie was loose at the throat in a way his tie was never loose, and his hair was the kind of mess that came from one hand having gone through it twice in a car, and his pale icy-blue eyes went to me on the pillow first and to his father at the window second.

“Father,” he greeted.

“Son.”

“You called.”

“I called.”

Hebvron didn’t turn around at the window. He let Rieck stand in the middle of the room and he let the silence settle and he let the silver tip of the cane tap the floor, lightly.

“Your wife,” he said, “has had an unfortunate evening.”

Rieck didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on the line of his father’s back.

“I am told there was a staircase,” Hebvron added.

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