Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 64

Chapter 64

Chapter 64

56

55 vouchers

Dawson’s phone hadn’t stopped ringing in twenty minutes, and he hadn’t answered it once.

He started at it buzzing on the leather seat of the car, the screen blinking over and over with the same handful of names. The board. The board again. His head of security. The board a third time. An emergency meeting, they were calling it, as though slapping the word emergency on a thing made a man come running for it.

Looking out the tinted window, he turned the problem over the way he turned over everything, by what it cost him and what it earned.

A break-in. Three nights ago, in his own building, on his own floor. Someone had come in through the back, slipped past every camera, and gone again. And after three days of his people tearing through the footage and the access logs, they still couldn’t hand him one useful thing about who it had been. No face. No name.

He didn’t know why his mind kept reaching for the word she, but he pushed it away every time it came.

What really bothered him wasn’t the ghost. It was the quiet question of who had sent one. There was only one family in this country with the reach and the patience to send a thief to his floor, and the cold to leave a dead man behind and not lose a wink of sleep over him. His uncle’s people. The northern branch. The ones his own father had only ever spoken of in a lowered voice, the ones with too many teeth behind their smiles.

If Hebvron Valerius had reached a hand into his building, then this was no robbery. It was the opening move of something a great deal worse.

And he was in no shape to fight something worse. Three weeks ago he could have crushed a thing like this before lunch, called in old debts, buried the story, made a whole problem vanish with one phone call and the right number.

But three weeks ago the city hadn’t yet watched him slide off a stage with a glass in his hand. He was wounded now, and wounded men drew exactly this kind of attention. Someone had waited until he was bleeding before they put a hand through his window. That wasn’t chance. That was patience, and patience was the one thing that had ever frightened him.

His assistant met him at the private lift, pale and tight around the eyes.

“They are all in the boardroom, sir. They have been waiting the better part of an hour. They are…” the young man hunted for a word that wouldn’t get him fired, “they are not in a generous mood.”

“They never are.”

Dawson buttoned his jacket, set his face to the smooth and pleasant mask that had carried him through worse rooms than this one, and walked in.

The coldness of the room overwhelmed him before the door had finished swinging open. A dozen faces turned, and not one of them was friendly. They sat around the long glass table like a jury that had already settled on its verdict and was only waiting for the pleasure of reading it aloud.

It was Tommy who spoke first, of course. The oldest man at the table, and the hungriest for the chair Dawson

113

16:15 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 64

sat in.

:

56

55 vouchers

“Sit down, Dawson. We will keep this short.” He folded his spotted hands on the glass. “Three nights ago a man broke into this building. He reached the executive floor, which every one of us was promised couldn’t be done. And on his way out, a member of our own security staff was killed. A man with a wife and two children. Killed, in our house.” His old eyes were flat and hard. “So we will ask you plainly, and you will answer us plainly. Who was it? And what did they come for?”

“We don’t know yet,” Dawson shrugged.

A low sound of disgust traveled around the table.

He kept his expression unreadable and let them grumble.

“We are looking into it,” he went on, smooth as poured glass. “But let me tell you what I do know, gentlemen, so that none of us lose our heads tonight. Nothing was taken. Not a file. Not a cent. Not a single paperclip. Whoever it was got inside, panicked at the noise, and got out again with empty hands. A tragedy for the guard, yes. But in plain business terms, a failed burglary and nothing more. I see no sense in spending a fortune to hunt a thief who left with nothing.”

“A man is dead,” Tommy said.

“And the police are paid to handle dead men. That is what they are for.”

“That is not good enough.” A younger voice this time, sharper, leaning in. “First the entire city watches you fall down drunk at your own party. Now there is a body in our lobby and a chief executive who shrugs at it. How do you imagine that looks, Dawson? How do you think it reads to the people whose money sits in this company?”

“It reads however we decide to tell them it reads.” Dawson stood up, slowly, and let a thread of iron into his voice. “So we will tell them it is handled. Because it is.”

Back in his own office, with the door shut, Dawson allowed himself, for one moment only, to stop pretending.

The board was slipping through his fingers. He could feel it.

Just then his assistant came in and shut the door softly behind him.

“Sir.” The young man kept his voice very low. “How long do you mean to keep this going? The story. That nothing was taken.”

Dawson didn’t turn from the window. “As long as it needs to go.”

“But if they were to find out about the…”

“They will not find out because you and I are the only two people in this building who know what was really in that vault. And one of us has a great deal more to lose by saying it out loud.”

The assistant said nothing more.

2/3

16:15 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 64

56

55 vouchers

Because the truth was the single thing Dawson could never let walk out of that room. The intruder had not left empty-handed. The intruder had taken the one thing on that floor that actually mattered, the only thing he couldn’t afford to lose.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify