Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 90

Chapter 90

Chapter 90

Aurelia’s POV

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“Get dressed,” Rieck said, standing in the doorway of our room with his sleeves already rolled to the elbow. “We are going out.”

I blinked at him. “Out where?”

“Does it matter?”

It did, but the look on his face told me arguing would waste both our time. He had that stillness again, the one that meant his mind was somewhere I couldn’t follow.

I dressed in the green silk dress he liked, the one that made his eyes stay on me a beat too long before he looked away. When I came out of the closet he was already waiting by the door, jaw tight, one hand pushed deep in his pocket like he was holding something back with it.

“You look nice,” he said, but it came out clipped, almost automatic, like a line he had said a hundred times and stopped feeling.

“Thank you,” I said carefully. “Are you going to tell me where we are going?”

“No.”

We left the penthouse without another word about it.

In the elevator his shoulder brushed mine, and for one second his hand twitched at his side like he wanted to reach for me and thought better of it.

I said nothing. I was starting to learn that the things Rieck didn’t do told me more than the things he did.

The restaurant was on the top floor of a building I had never seen before, all gold light and white tablecloths and a wall of glass looking out over the city.

A waiter pulled out my chair like I was something breakable. Rieck ordered wine without looking at the menu, the way a man does when he has been here more times than he wants to admit.

“You come here a lot,” I said.

“I used to.”

“With who?”

“Does it matter?” A small, tired smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, softening the words.

“This is a lot for just spending time together,” I said once the waiter left.

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16:21 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 90

“You deserve a lot.”

“That is not an answer.”

:

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He looked at me over the rim of his glass, that pale blue stare that always made my skin feel weird and too aware of itself at once. “What do you want me to say, Aurelia?”

“The truth. You haven’t gone to work in days. You check locks you never used to check. You disappear onto calls you end the second I walk in the room.” I kept my voice light, but my hands weren’t light at all, twisting the napkin in my lap under the table where he couldn’t see. “I am not stupid, Rieck.”

“I never said you were.”

“Then tell me what is going on.”

For one long second something moved behind his eyes, something heavy.

His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass, just barely, just enough that I noticed. Then it was gone, folded back under that flat, controlled stillness he wore like armour.

“I am spending time with my wife,” he said. “That is all this is.”

“You keep saying that like it will stop me from asking again.”

“Maybe it will.”

“It won’t.”

Something almost like a laugh moved through his chest, quiet, gone before it fully arrived. “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t think it would.”

I let it go there. Not because I believed him, but because I knew pushing harder would only make the door

shut faster.

So I smiled instead.

Back home, alone in our room while Rieck took a call somewhere down the hallway, my mind went where it always went when the noise died down. Dawson.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my palms flat against my knees, willing them to stop shaking.

Two years I had given that man. Two years of learning which silences meant he was tired and which meant he was already thinking of someone else. I hadn’t known, back then, that the someone else had a name and a face and slept two floors above the guest room where Charlotte used to stay whenever she visited.

I picked up my phone before I had fully decided to. My thumb found his number in three taps, a number I had deleted the week I signed Hebvron’s contract and somehow still remembered like a scar remembers the

knife.

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16:21 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 90

I typed the words fast, before I could think too hard about them. You will pay for this.

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My thumb hovered over send. My heart beat once, twice, loud enough that I could feel it in my throat.

No.

If I sent it now, he would know I knew. He would run, hide behind lawyers and closed doors and men paid to make problems disappear before they ever reached him.

I wanted him blind when it came. I wanted him standing in the open, certain he was safe, right up until the moment he understood he never had been.

I deleted the message letter by letter and set the phone face down on the nightstand, my hand lingering on the cold glass a second longer than it needed to.

I heard Rieck’s voice from the hallway a few minutes later, low, clipped, the same tone he had used at the

restaurant.

I stepped closer to the door without meaning to, the way you lean toward a sound you aren’t sure you are

allowed to hear.

“I can cope with anything,” he was saying. “Don’t worry about me.”

There was a pause. Whoever was on the other end said something I couldn’t make out, and Rieck’s voice dropped even lower, almost gentle, almost tired.

“I said don’t worry about me. I mean it.”

I stood very still just inside the door, listening. Cope with what? Worry about him how?

The words sat strange in my chest, too heavy for a man who never once, in all the weeks I had known him, admitted to needing anything from anyone.

Rieck didn’t comfort people. He gave orders and expected them followed. Hearing him soften his voice for someone else, even for a moment, felt like watching a stranger wear his face.

I stepped into the hallway. He ended the call the moment he saw me, the way he always did now, like closing a book before I could read the page.

“Who was that?”

“No one important.”

“You said you could cope with anything. Cope with what, Rieck?”

“It’s nothing.” His voice was flat again, that door shutting in my face for the third time that day.

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