Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 53

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

The video had three million views before noon.

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Dawson Valerius sat in the dark of his apartment with the blinds drawn and the wide screen muted on the far wall. On it, his own face moved sideways off a bright stage, over and over, caught in a loop the whole world couldn’t seem to get enough of.

THE DRUNK CEO.

His phone buzzed again on the glass table, but he didn’t look at it. It hadn’t stopped since dawn. Board members, reporters, men who had called themselves his friends a week ago, all of them circling the way people always circled when they smelled blood in the water.

He poured another scotch and hated that he wanted it. But he drank it anyway.

It made no sense. He never lost control. He measured every glass the way other men measured medicine. One drink at the gala, two at the most, and somewhere between the podium and the floor the room had turned to water under his feet.

Someone had done this to him. He was sure of it now.

Suddenly the door opened without a knock.

Dawson’s head came up, the curse already on his tongue, and then he saw the man he paid to guard that door steering a young woman into the apartment by her elbow.

He knew her face. The black catering uniform was gone, swapped for a cheap coat, but he knew her. She had been at the gala. One of the staff. The girl who had carried the trays.

“Found her clocking out at the catering company,” the guard said. “Thought you would want a word.”

Dawson set the glass down and stood. He smiled, the easy smile that had closed a hundred deals, and watched the girl go pale under it.

“You poured my drinks the other night,” he drawled. “So tell me… what did you put in them?”

“Nothing.” Her voice shook. “Sir, I swear, I don’t know anything about a spiked drink. I only carried what they handed me.”

“Don’t lie to me.” He didn’t raise his voice. “Do you know what I can do to a girl like you? To your name, your family, the little job you just clocked out of.” He let that sit in the air. “Try again.”

Her eyes filled. “I’m not lying, please. I never touched your bottle.” She swallowed hard. “But there was a

woman.”

Dawson went still. “A woman?”

“By the side table. Near your server, the one carrying your scotch. She didn’t move like a staff. And she wasn’t a guest. I saw her come through the line. Dark hair. A red dress. She stood too close to your bottle, and then she just melted back into the crowd. I only noticed her because she was so calm. Everyone else was watching

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Chapter 53

you.

At that moment, something cold slid down the back of Dawson’s neck.

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He picked up his phone, swiped through it, and turned the screen to face her. A picture. A woman in soft morning light, laughing at something off camera, back when she still laughed at things he said.

“This woman?”

The waitress looked. Her face crumpled with relief and fear at the same time. “Yes. That’s her. That’s the woman who stood by your drinks.”

Dawson stared at the picture of his ex-wife until the screen went dark in his hand.

Quiet, grateful, forgettable Aurelia, who had cried when he raised his voice and folded every time he turned cold. That Aurelia had walked into his gala, poured his ruin into his own private bottle, and walked back out, and he hadn’t felt so much as a draft when she passed.

“But how the fuck did she get in? I had a fucking list. I had men on that door.”

The guard shifted his weight. “She gave a name, sir. The door let her through on it.” There was a pause. “She told them she was Mrs. Valerius.”

The boardroom of Valerius Holdings was glass on three sides, and that morning every man around the long table seemed more interested in the view than the sight of him.

Dawson took his seat at the head and pretended not to notice.

“Let’s not waste the morning,” he started. “Say what you came to say.”

They did.

It was Pemberton who started, of course, the oldest man at the table and the one who had wanted the chair himself for years. “The footage is on every network in the country,” he said, sliding a tablet across the glass. “Eleven million views. Our share price is down nine percent since the open. Nine, Dawson. In two days.”

“Markets move,” Dawson shrugged.

“Markets don’t slide nine points because a quarterly missed by a hair. They moved because the chief executive fell off a stage in front of the city.” A younger man this time, Tommy, sharp and hungry. “Investors don’t put their money behind a man who can’t hold his own drink at his own party. It looks unstable. It makes the whole top of this company look unstable.

“I had one glass.”

“It doesn’t matter how many you had.” Pemberton again, gentle now, which was somehow worse. “It matters what the world saw. And the world saw a drunk.”

The table murmured. These were men Dawson had spent a fortune to keep close, men whose loyalty he had

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Chapter 53

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