Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Aurelia’s POV

I was going to scream.

70

55 vouchers

The sound caught in my throat when his hand closed around my elbow and stopped me from stumbling.

“Easy, Mrs. Valerius.” Kaelen’s voice slid down my neck like heat. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

I yanked my arm free and stepped back.

Then I looked up.

Razor-sharp jaw. Scarred cheek. Yellow eyes that didn’t belong in a place like this.

He was smiling. Not like a man in a ballroom.

Like a wolf deciding I wasn’t worth chasing yet.

“What are you doing here?” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “You’re not supposed to be in this city.”

Kaelen tilted his head. “Says who, little wife.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? Your husband does.” He tilted his head, his eyes moved over my face slowly like he was reading a letter. “It suits you. I like it.

“My husband will kill you if he finds out you are here.”

“Mm. Maybe.” He sounded bored. “But he won’t find out, because no one in here is going to tell him, and you won’t either.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

He took a slow step closer, and I immediately stepped back, my back hitting a glass display that made bottles rattle softly.

“Why are you here, Kaelen?”

“Because it gets boring sitting on my own land.” He shrugged. “A man needs hobbies. Mrs. Valerius. Borders. New faces. Pretty things in boutiques.”

“This is Rieck’s territory.”

“For now.”

Something cold slid through my chest. “What…what does that mean?”

1/5

16:58 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 8

He leaned against the display case beside me. Too close that I could feel the heat coming off.

55 vouchers

“It means your husband has held this city for a long time.” His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth. “And all things change hands eventually.”

“Like what?”

He smiled.

“Like wives, Mrs. Valerius, Territories, other things.”

My heart skipped a beat. I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought but that was immediately cut off the moment the bell over the boutique door rang behind me.

“Ma’am?”

Ronan’s voice.

“Ma’am, we’ve been waiting. I was asked to check on you.”

I turned my head toward his voice, it took maybe half a second. But when I looked back, the space beside the glass was empty.

Kaelen was gone.

Like he had never been there at all.

Ronan stepped into the aisle. “Mrs. Valerius… are you alright?”

“Yes.” My voice came too fast. “I’m fine. I just got distracted. I’m ready to leave now.”

His eyes scanned the shop once. Then he nodded.

He didn’t ask again.

The penthouse was quiet when I returned. The kind of quiet that belongs to expensive rooms and men who don’t come home on time.

I carried the bags into the bedroom and set them down. The bedroom was mine now. mine and Reick’s. The bed was too big. The windows were too wide. Everything smelled like him..

I started unpacking with unsteady hands.

“Like wives, Mrs. Valerius.”

The words wouldn’t stop replaying in my mind.”

It had to be a game. A tactic. Men like Kaelen said things to unsettle women. He had done the same thing at the gala. Big words in low voices. Theatre. Nothing more.

2/5

16:58 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 8

Except he had walked into Rieck’s territory without consequence.

Except he had looked at me like I was already claimed.

I pressed my palms into the bed until my breathing steadied.

I should tell Rieck. That was the new rule.

55 vouchers

But if I told him, he would lose his mind. And a man losing his mind over another man who already thinks he owns you doesn’t end with a quiet Tuesday afternoon. It ends with bodies in fields.

I shook the thought away and went back to the clothes.

“Still somewhere else.”

I froze.

Rieck was in the doorway.

I had not heard him come home. He was just there, leaning against the frame, watching me.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know you’re not here.”

“I’m unpacking.”

“Your hands have been on the shame shirt for two minutes, Aurelia.”

I swallowed. “I’m here.”

Silence stretched.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“In my head.”

“And what’s in your head?”

The truth pushed forward. But I forced it into something else.

“Your father,” I blurted.

That stopped him.

“What about him?”

I turned the wedding band on my finger. “He made it clear. The contract. The heir. Everything he said, like I’m just… a vase on a mantel and my job is to hold flowers he picks.”

“He says a lot of things.”

3/5

16:58 Fri, Jul 31

Chapter 8

“He isn’t wrong though.”

“Careful, Aurelia”

》70

55 vouchers

1 exhaled. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? The heir. That’s all this is.” And you haven’t, you won’t, you… keep acting like it’s going to happen on its own. Reick, but I think..

“You think what?”

“I think you’re avoiding it.”

He laughed.

Probably the first laugh I had heard out of his mouth since I had signed his father’s paper.

“You say what?”

“You heard me.”

He crossed the room slowly. Not rushing. Never rushing, then he was close, his fingers caught my chin and tilted my face up, thumb dragging slowly across the bottom of my lip.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify