Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 94

Chapter 94

Chapter 94

Rieck’s POV

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I turned to face him, my hand still curled at my side, Arnell standing quietly a few steps behind his shoulder.

“What now, father?” The word came out flat, almost bored, though nothing in me felt bored at all. “What else can you threaten me with, aside from losing my inheritance?”

Hebvron laughed, low and dry, the sound scraping against the marble hallway like something old dragged

over stone.

He leaned on his cane a little heavier than usual, staring at me with the patient amusement of a man who had already seen how this conversation would end.

“You are more foolish than I thought.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

“You think this is about inheritance.”

“Of course it is.” I held his gaze, steady, refusing to look away first the way I never had, not since I was a boy standing in this same building learning how to hold still under his stare. “But I don’t care anymore. Give it to Dawson if you wish. Give him the tower, the name, all of it. See how well he holds it together.”

Something flickered across his face at that, quick and unreadable, gone before I could name it.

He said nothing.

As I turned to leave, his hand shot out and closed around my wrist, faster than a man his age should have moved, his grip hard enough to bruise. “Don’t test my patience, boy. I am still your father, and I can still get your ass whipped.”

I looked down at his hand on my wrist, then back up at his face, at the scar cutting pale across his cheek, at the eyes that had never once, in thirty years, looked at me like I mattered more than a piece on his board.

“With what has happened,” I said, “I am beginning to doubt if you are really my father.”

His grip tightened for one furious second, his knuckles going white against my skin, before he let go all at once, like the words had burned him from the inside.

I pulled my wrist free and walked away, my footsteps echoing hard down the empty hallway, and I didn’t need to turn around to know the look on his face.

I could feel it burning into my back the whole way to the elevator, the kind of anger that took root and waited.

Ronan waited by the car outside, and he took one look at my face and said nothing the entire drive home, wise enough to know silence was the only thing I could stand right now.

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16:22 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 94

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Back at the penthouse, I stood at the window for a long while, my jaw still tight with everything I hadn’t said.

He had crossed a line tonight. Not the company. Not the title.

This was something older, something that went back further than any boardroom, and it sat in my chest like a stone I couldn’t swallow or spit out.

My wrist still ached faintly where his grip had landed, a small, stupid thing to notice, but I noticed it anyway.

It took me a full minute to realize that the apartment was too quiet.

No sound of Aurelia moving through the rooms, no buzz of the television, no soft clink of a cup being set down.

I checked the kitchen first, then the bedroom, before I found her tucked into the corner of my study, curled in the leather chair by the window with a book open on her lap that she didn’t seem to be reading.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked from the doorway.

“Thinking.” She closed the book and set it on the small table beside her, turning her body towards me in the chair. “About you, mostly. About your father.”

“There is nothing to think about there.”

“I think you should make peace with him.”

I stared at her, sure for a second that I had misheard. “What?”

“Your father, Rieck. I think you should try to make peace with him.” She held my gaze evenly, no trace of a joke in it, her hands folded quiet in her lap. “Whatever he has done, whatever he is doing now, he is still your father.”

“He grabbed my wrist tonight and threatened to have me beaten like a child. He stripped my company out from under me and sat in my chair like it always belonged to him.” My voice rose despite myself, sharper than I meant it to be. “He has crossed every line a father is supposed to respect, Aurelia. Don’t ask me to make peace with that.”

“I am not asking you to forgive him. I am asking you not to lose the only family you have left over pride.”

“This isn’t about pride.”

“Then what is it about?”

I didn’t answer that. I turned instead, my back to her, my hands on the edge of the desk, and let the quiet answer for me, because even I didn’t know the shape of the thing sitting in my chest well enough to give it a

name.

Behind me I heard the soft creak of the chair as she stood, the quiet pad of her footsteps crossing the room, though she stopped short of touching me, some small line neither of us had crossed since the fight started.

“I know he hurt you,” she said quietly. “I am not pretending he didn’t. I only think you will regret it more if

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16:22 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 94

you let this be the last thing between you.

You didn’t grow up with him.”

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“No. I didn’t.” Her voice softened further, almost sad. “But I grew up without a father at all, wondering every day what I would give to have even a bad one.”

That landed somewhere I wasn’t ready for.

I said nothing, the weight of her words settling over the room like a fog neither of us could see through clearly.

I thought of the years she had spent wondering, and the years I had spent wishing my father would just once look at me without calculating what I was worth to him.

“He isn’t a bad father.” I said finally, the words heavy and unwilling. “He is worse. He is a careful one.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means every cruelty has a purpose. Nothing he does is wasted, not even the parts that look like love.” I ran a hand through my hair. tired in a way sleep would not fix. “I don’t know how to make peace with a man like that. Aurelia. I am not sure peace is a language he speaks.”

Elara arrived less than an hour later, her heels clicking sharp against the hardwood the moment the front door closed behind her.

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