Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 67

Chapter 67

Chapter 67

Rieck’s POV

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The drive had cost a woman three days of her blood and a guard his life, and it wouldn’t so much as wake up in my hand.

I sat at my desk with the thing on the blotter in front of me, and I turned it over for the hundredth time.

Black. Scratched along one edge where it had met something hard. Dead.

I had quietly given it to the best people I trusted, off the books, one at a time, and every last one of them had handed it back with the same useless answer.

The casing was cracked. The inside was worse. Whatever had happened to it in that building, between the vault and the dark, had broken the one thing that mattered and left the shell behind to mock me.

I had risked everything for it. I had lied to my own father and told him it was lost. I had hidden it in my pocket while he stood in my home and asked me for it to my face. And it was, for all the good it did any of us, a paperweight.

That was why my grip had slipped the night before. I, who didn’t slip. Aurelia had walked in on the wreck of it, glass scattered across the floor, and I had handed her some stupid lie about a soured deal.

I needed what was on this thing. Dawson’s whole life was inside it, the proof, the leverage, every dirty secret he had ever buried.

I needed to know what was in here. Even if learning it cost me the last of my patience.

After the tower emptied for the night, I drove myself to a part of the city my name didn’t reach, to a narrow shop behind a steel shutter where the only light came from a dozen glowing screens. The place smelled of hot solder and cold coffee, with not one camera on the door.

The man who ran it was young, with a wide soft halo of hair and quick clever hands, and he didn’t ask who I was, which was exactly why I had chosen him. He took the drive under his lamp and turned it the way a jeweler turns a stone, and his mouth pulled down at the corners.

“Oof.” He clicked his tongue. “Somebody wasn’t gentle with this. See here, the controller is cracked straight through. The memory underneath might be fine. It might be soup. I won’t know until I am inside, and getting inside without frying whatever is left is slow work.” He glanced up. “It is going to cost you. A lot. And I can’t promise you a single thing when it’s done.”

“Then it costs me,” I said. “Money has never been my problem. Speed and silence are. You speak of this to no one. You copy nothing for yourself. You work on nothing else until it is done.” I set a card on the bench beside his elbow. “Whatever your price is, double it. Then double it again for keeping your mouth shut.”

The young man looked at the card, then at me.

“Yes, sir.” he nodded. “I’ll call you the second I have anything.”

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16:16 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 67

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I left him bent over his lamp, and I told myself that this was control. That handing the problem to a professional and walking out was the act of a calm man.

Aurelia was curled into the corner of the white couch with a book when I came home, and the simple sight of her there, did the thing it always did now. The hard readiness I had carried all day went quiet for a moment, despite me.

1 sat down across from her and made my voice easy.

“Tell me about Ridgeline,” I said. “Your days there. Before the hall.”

She marked her place with one finger. “Why?”

“I would like to know what was done to my wife in another man’s house.”

It was true enough to pass for the whole truth. But it wasn’t why I asked.

“There is not much to tell,” she said. “I slept for three days. I woke up in a lab. He fed me, walked me through that ridiculous beautiful house, and asked me nothing I felt like answering.” A small shrug, “I was watched the entire time and I saw a great deal of hallway and very little else.”

“Did he ever show you a workshop? A bank of machines? Anyone bent over a screen?” I kept it light, the idle jealousy of a husband, while I listened for the one answer I needed. “Did he ever take a thing of yours away and bring it back to you later?”

She tilted her head, and I watched her notice the shape sitting under the question.

“No,” she said slowly. “He took nothing from me. He gave me back the only thing I had.” Her eyes didn’t leave mine. “The drive, Rieck. The one you have had for days now.” There was a small pause. “Have you opened it yet? Is it in there, the thing you needed, enough to finish Dawson for good?”

If I told her the drive was a dead ruin, I told her the whole night had been for nothing. Her blood, her three lost days, the man dead on the floor, all of it spent on a broken toy.

“I am handling Dawson,” I blurted. “Let me carry that part. You have carried enough already.”

“That is not an answer, Rieck.”

“It is the one you get tonight.” I softened it as far as I knew how, which wasn’t far. “Trust me a little longer.”

Just then my phone rang.

I almost let it go. Then I saw the screen, and I didn’t..

The tech. Barely two hours since I had walked out of his shop. Far too soon to be good news, and every nerve I owned knew it before I had the phone to my ear.

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