Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 60

Chapter 60

Chapter 60

Aurelia’s POV

2)

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The room they gave me was finer than any room I had ever slept in, and that frightened me more than a cell would have.

A cell I would have understood. A cell had walls and a lock and an honest reason. But this… this was something

else.

A wide room high in the house, with a bed so big I could have laid across it sideways and not touched either edge, dressed in grey bedsheets and a blanket the colour of woodsmoke.

Crossing to the glass wall. I looked down. We were high up, higher than I had understood, the courtyards small and far below. There would be no easy way down even if I found a way out.

A young maid moved around the room, turning down the bed, laying out folded clothes that weren’t mine but looked like my size. She kept her eyes down, the way servants do in houses where mistakes come dear.

“Can I ask you something I suddenly asked.

She glanced up, surprised. ‘Of course, miss

This morning, in the east hallway, I crossed paths with a woman. Tall. Dark hair, very finely dressed. She looked at me as though I had killed her dog. I kept my voice light. “Who is she?”

The change in the girl was quick. Her hands went still on the bed. The colour dropped out of her face, and her eyes immediately flicked to the door, as if the woman herself might be standing behind it.

I couldn’t say, miss,” she mumbled.

“You could. You would just rather not.

“Please” She lowered her voice to almost nothing. It is not my place to speak of her. I will only say this much, because someone ought to. Stay clear of that one. Whatever she says to you, whatever she does, you keep your distance and you keep your head down. She is not a person you want noticing you.” She gathered the spare linen to her chest like a shield. “That is all. I am sorry”

And she was gone before I could ask another thing, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving me alone in my beautiful cage with one more question and no answer for it.

Kaelen came for me himself the next morning.

He filled the whole doorway when he knocked, dressed down in dark clothes that did nothing at all to hide what he was.

You have slept,” he said, looking me over with those gold eyes. “Good. You had the look of a ghost yesterday. Come Walk with me. A guest should see where she is staying.”

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16:15 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 60

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I didn’t want to walk anywhere with him. But I went anyway, because a closed door tells you nothing, and an open one sometimes tells you a great deal.

He showed me Ridgeline. And I hated, with every step, how much there was to show. It went on without end, hall after hall, courtyards thrown open to the mountain air, wide rooms, and people everywhere who went quiet and bowed their heads as he passed.

They were like him, most of them. I had learned enough by now to know the signs, the stillness, the way a room leaned towards the strongest thing in it. Wolves. A whole house of them, and me the one human thing walking through it on borrowed legs.

He led me through a library two floors tall, past a long hallway hung with old weapons gone dark with age, out across a bridge of pale glass that crossed open air between two wings of the house.

It was vaster than anything Rieck owned. Grander. Older. Every corner of it had been made by someone who loved it, whereas Rieck’s tower had only ever been raised by someone who needed to win.

I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t want to admire the house of the man who had stolen me out of the dark. But I

did.

We came out to a high terrace, white and quiet and lovely, and for a moment neither of us said a word. It was so quiet I could hear the wind move through the pines far below. I had never stood anywhere so still in all my life.

“You are far away,” Kaelen said. He was watching me, not the view. “Your body stands on my terrace, but the rest of you is somewhere else entirely. Where?”

With Rieck.

The thought came whole and sure. Somewhere across those mountains, in a city of grey glass, my husband was pulling the world apart to find me. I knew it the way I knew my own name. He wouldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t stop. He would tear down everything he owned before he let me stay lost.

But I wouldn’t give that to Kaelen. I wouldn’t hand him the one warm thing I had left to hold.

“Nowhere,” I said. “I’m right here.”

He smiled, slow and knowing, as though he had heard the lie and decided to let me keep it.

“Of course you are,” he nodded.

I tried to find my own way back, and the house being what it was, I got lost twice before a long hallway finally started to look like one I knew.

I was almost to my door when she stepped out of a side passage straight into my path.

I had no time to stop. We hit shoulder to shoulder, and the breath went out of me as I stumbled backward.

At that moment, my hand shot out and found a side table, and I immediately caught myself before I fell, my

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16:15 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 60

heart slamming against my ribs.

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