Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 86

Chapter 86

Chapter 86

Rieck’s POV

She looked so small in the white hospital bed.

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That was the thought I couldn’t get past. Aurelia, who had grown so strong these last months, who had brought a whole city to its knees with one quiet smile, lay there under the thin blanket looking small and pale and breakable, and I couldn’t stop looking at her.

She was asleep. The machine beside her beeped, slow and steady, and her chest rose and fell, and she was alive. I held on to that. She was alive, and she was here, and she was mine again.

The bruises were not bad. That was what the doctor kept telling me, in the voice they use on men like me. Some marks on her wrists where the ropes had been. A few more that would fade. Nothing broken. Nothing that wouldn’t heal.

“She is going to be fine, Mr. Valerius.” The doctor stood at the foot of the bed with the chart in her hands, and she said it again, gently, as if she could see I didn’t believe it. “She is worn out. Dehydrated. In shock, most likely. But there is no lasting harm. Truly. She was lucky.”

Lucky. I thought of the warehouse. Of what I had found in it, and what I had done about it. There had been no luck in that room. Only me, and a debt paid in full.

“You should go home and rest,” the doctor said. “Get some real sleep. We will call you the moment anything changes.”

“No.”

She blinked.

“I am staying.” I didn’t look away from Aurelia’s face. “I will be here when she wakes up. Bring another chair or don’t. I am not leaving this room.”

The doctor was wise enough not to argue with me. She left.

I pulled the hard chair close to the bed and I took Aurelia’s hand, the one without the bruises, and I sat, and I waited, and I didn’t let go.

I had not been there when they took her, but I would be here when she came back.

The whole drive to the docks, I had told myself she would be alive when I found her. I had not let myself think anything else. And she had been.

Bound to a chair, worn thin, but breathing, and the sight of her face in that room had done something to me I didn’t have words for and didn’t want to.

My phone buzzed an hour later. The tech. The man behind the steel shutter, who found the things other men buried

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16:21 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 86

I stepped just outside the door to take it, close enough to still see her through the glass.

“Tell me you have something,” I said.

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“I tried. Mr. Valerius. I really did.” He sounded tired. “The phone your men pulled out of that warehouse. I got into it. There is barely anything on it, they were careful, but there was one number it called, again and again. The boss. The one giving the orders.”

“Give it to me.”

“I can’t. That is the whole problem.” There was a pause. “The number is a ghost. A burner, run through three dead ends and a wall I can’t get over. Whoever was on the other end knew exactly how to hide. I chased it as far as it goes, and it goes nowhere. I can’t tell you who they were reporting to. I can’t give you a name. The man behind this is a blank.”

A blank. All that work, and the man who had taken my wife was a blank.

I knew who it was. In my gut, I knew. I had heard it in the drive, in the drugged vitamins, in a hand on my wife’s arm in a cold alley. Dawson. It was Dawson.

But knowing a thing wasn’t the same as holding the proof of it. And you can’t tear a man apart in front of the whole world for something you only know.

The anger came up quickly, and I didn’t fight it.

I kicked the door at the end of the hallway, hard, and the sound of it cracked down the quiet corridor like a

shot.

Behind me, in the room, Aurelia’s eyes flew open.

I forgot the phone. I forgot the tech, the burner, the blank. I was back through the door and at her side before she had even finished sitting up.

“Rieck.” Her voice was a dry whisper. Her eyes found mine, wide and lost for a second, and then they cleared, and she knew me. “You are here.”

“I am here.” I took her face in my hands, careful, so careful, and I let myself breathe for what felt like the first time in days. “I am here. You are safe. I have you.”

“What was that noise?”

“Nothing.” I smoothed the hair back off her face. “I lost my temper with a door. That is all. Don’t think about it.” I pressed my mouth to her forehead and held it there. “Don’t think about any of it. Just rest. I am not going anywhere.”

“You look terrible,” she whispered, and the corner of her mouth moved, almost a smile, even now. “Have you slept at all?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Somebody has to.” Her hand found mine and held it, weak but sure. “That was our deal, remember.”

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16:21 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 86

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She was too tired to push about the door. She let me hold her, and her eyes drifted shut again, and I stayed bent over her, breathing her in. Alive. Warm. Here.

I would end anyone who came near her again. Anyone. I made that promise to her sleeping face, and I meant every word of it

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