Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 70

Chapter 70

Chapter 70

Aurelia’s POV

The bidding opened, and the numbers quickly went up.

“Two hundred thousand,” called a woman in red near the front.

“Three,” said a man across from her, barely raising his hand.

“Five,” called another, and a soft laugh went round at the speed of it.

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The price went up, higher and higher, past numbers that should have made people flinch and didn’t. This wasn’t a room that flinched at money. This was a room that wore it like perfume.

Charlotte waited. And I watched her wait, the way a woman waits when she means to win, letting the smaller people tire themselves out first.

Then, when the calling started to slow, she raised one manicured hand.

“One million,” Charlotte said, clear and sweet, and the room turned to her and made the impressed sound she had been starving for all night long.

It killed the bidding cold. No one followed a number like that. No one in the hall wanted the necklace badly enough to fight the pregnant golden woman in the front row for the right to it.

“One million,” the presenter said, delighted. “Going once. Going twice. Sold to Mrs. Charlotte.”

The applause was loud. Charlotte bowed her head like a woman accepting a crown she had always known was

hers.

“And as always,” the presenter went on, “we ask for immediate payment. If our generous winner would be so

kind.”

A bright screen above the platform came up, and across it, in letters tall enough for the whole hall to read, sat the number. One million. Waiting to be paid.

Charlotte turned, unhurried, to the attendant who had appeared at her side with the little card reader. She reached for her bag.

I held my breath.

She opened the gold clasp. She reached inside. I watched her fingers move through the small things in there, the lipstick, the tissue, and I watched the first thin thread of confusion cross her lovely face.

She looked again. She tipped the bag toward the light.

The card holder was gone.

She had nothing.

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“Whenever you are ready,” the presenter said, lighter now, a small uncertain laugh hiding under the words.

“I…” Charlotte’s voice had climbed half a step. “Give me one moment. I seem to have…”

She dug deeper. She pulled the bag fully open and stared into it the way you stare at a place where a thing should be and is not. She shook it. She ran her fingers along the silk lining as if the cards might be hiding from her.

The attendant waited beside her, a smile fixed in place, the little reader held out in one steady hand.

The warmth in the room started, very slowly, to turn.

And the cameras turned with it. She had come here to be filmed glowing in gold, and now every small bright phone in the room was lifting toward her, catching the one thing she had never meant anyone to see. A pretty woman, in front of everybody, who couldn’t pay.

I stood at the edge of it all, mask in place, and I let myself drink in every second of it.

This was better than I had dreamed it would be on the long quiet nights when I had planned the whole thing out in the dark. Not a slap. Not a shouted word in a grocery aisle. Just Charlotte, alone in the light she loved so much, in front of the entire city, holding an empty bag.

“Maybe another card,” the presenter offered.

“There is no other card.” Charlotte snapped, and the sweetness was gone now, all of it, and the people near her heard it go.

The presenter’s smile thinned. He let the silence go on for a beat too long, on purpose, the way a man does when a rich guest has turned into an embarrassment he can use.

“I’m afraid,” he said, and he said it to the room as much as to her, “that if the winning bidder can’t make payment, the piece must pass to the next name on my list.” A pause, perfectly judged. “We really can’t hold up the whole evening for a guest who, it would seem, just can’t pay.”

Dawson moved then.

He stepped to Charlotte’s side, smooth and sure, the man who fixed everything with money, already reaching into his jacket for the phone that would settle the whole thing in ten clean seconds.

But his hand came out empty.

I watched him pat the jacket again. The other side. His trouser pockets. I watched the confidence drain straight out of his handsome face as he remembered, far too late, exactly where he had left his phone. In her bag. To hide from the calls he had not wanted to take.

He turned to the gold purse and reached into it himself, and found what Charlotte had found.

Nothing.

“Where is it?” he said, low, to Charlotte. “Where is my phone?”

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Chapter 70

“I don’t know,” she hissed back at him. “Where are my cards, Dawson? Where is everything?”

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