Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 92

Chapter 92

Chapter 92

Aurelia’s POV

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I stood in the corridor for a long time before I found the strength to open the door.

Hebvron’s unfinished sentence kept circling back through my mind.

Pressing a hand to my chest, right over the place where the words seemed to land hardest, I stared at the dark wood of the door without really seeing it.

“If I had given him a child, none of this would be happening. His company. His name in the papers. All of it, because of me.”

The night air had gone cold around me, the kind of cold that crept in slowly and settled into the bones before you even noticed it.

I thought of the fertility pills Marta still brought me every morning, small and white and useless so far, month after month of hoping for a line on a test that never came.

I thought of Rieck’s face the day the doctor confirmed what the contraceptive had done, how careful he had been not to let his disappointment show, how much worse it somehow was that he tried to hide it at all.

At that moment my eyes burned before I could stop them. I blinked hard, once, twice, willing the tears back where they belonged, and finally pushed the door open.

on

I didn’t expect to find Rieck standing in the living room.

He was still in his coat, like he had only just walked in himself, a glass of something clear and cold caught halfway to his lips.

Our eyes met across the room, and for a moment neither of us said anything at all.

“You are back early,” I said.

“So are you.” His gaze moved over my face, slow and searching, the way it always did when he thought I was hiding something. “Where were you?”

I could have lied. It would have been easy, a small soft excuse about errands or fresh air. But I was tired of doors closing in my face, tired of secrets sitting heavy between us like furniture neither of us wanted to move.

“I went to see Hebvron,” I spat. “I wanted to know the truth.”

Something flickered behind his eyes, quick and unreadable. He set the glass down slowly, like the movement cost him something. “And you found the truth?”

“Some of it” I twisted the ring on my finger, the way I always did when the words felt too big for my mouth.

He said the company was suffering because of me. Because of everything that has happened. The

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16:22 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 92

kidnapping, the days you wouldn’t leave my side.”

“He said that?”

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“Not in those words. But close enough.” My voice cracked on the last part. “If I had given you a child, none of this would have happened.”

Rieck said nothing at first. He raised the glass again and drank before he set it down on the counter, harder than he needed to, the sound sharp in the quiet room.

“I’m sorry.” I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “Everything that is happening to you, all of it, it feels like it is because of me.”

“Don’t be.” His voice was low, flat, but something underneath it had gone rough at the edges. “My father always has a way of doing things his own way. This was never about an heir. It was never about you either. It was about him wanting control, and finding a reason to take it.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“It wasn’t meant to. It was meant to be true.”

I wanted to reach for him then, to close the space between us the way I sometimes did without thinking, but something in the set of his shoulders told me he wasn’t ready for that yet.

For the next few days, Rieck became someone I barely recognized.

He stopped speaking unless spoken to. He sat by the window for long stretches doing nothing at all, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on some point far past the glass where I couldn’t follow.

The company had meant everything to him. I had seen it in the way he used to talk about it, quick and proud, the one subject that ever made his voice lift out of its usual flatness. But now it was gone, and some part of him seemed to have gone with it.

He barely ate. He barely slept, I noticed, catching him some nights standing in the dark kitchen at hours when the rest of the world was still asleep, a glass of water untouched in his hand, staring at nothing.

Even his scent seemed to change those days, the sandalwood gone thin and cool.

I tried to pull him back the only way I knew how.

“Did you know,” I said one evening, setting a plate in front of him, “that Ronan tried to parallel park the car three times this morning before giving up and just walking the rest of the way?”

The corner of his mouth twitched, barely, but it was something. “He didn’t.”

“He absolutely did. I saw the whole thing from the window. I think the car won.”

“The car didn’t win. Ronan just surrendered early.”

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16:22 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 92

“That’s worse.”

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A small sound escaped him, not quite a laugh, but close enough that my chest warmed at the sound of it.

Encouraged, I kept going, telling him about the maid’s ongoing war with a stubborn houseplant that refused to bloom, about Elara’s face the one time a client called her by the wrong name and how she hadn’t blinked even once, about the time I nearly walked into the glass wall in the hallway because I was too busy staring at the view.

“You walked into the wall?” Rieck repeated, something almost like disbelief in his voice.

“I didn’t walk into it. I grazed it. There is a difference.”

“There isn’t.”

“There absolutely is.” I bumped his shoulder gently with mine, and for one bright moment he let me, his body loosening just slightly against the couch cushions instead of holding itself rigid the way it had for days.

Some nights it worked. He would almost smile, almost relax, almost look like the man who used to stare at me across a dinner table like I was the only interesting thing in the room.

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