CHAPTER 55AureliaLevi
Aurelia
“I’d like to formally submit a request to the lady of the house to reconsider the terms of my atonement,” Levi pleaded, panic lacing his voice as he stood behind the kitchen island like a man facing execution.
They’d slept in late after returning from the hospital, and though it was well past lunchtime, it was still too early for dinner.
Aurelia had agreed to let him start making amends. She had just told him what that entailed…and Levi was horrified.
“You’re the one who begged for the chance to earn my forgiveness,” Aurelia reminded him sweetly, barely holding back her laughter. “This happens to feel like a perfect first step. Request denied.”
Levi looked absolutely betrayed.
“But…we talked about this…” he tried again, his eyes darting from her to the recipe lying on the counter like it was a death sentence.
“We did,” Aurelia agreed, all innocent mischief as she tapped the recipe Levi now glared at like it had personally offended him.
“And it would make me feel so much better if you made this for us to enjoy together tonight. I’ll walk you through every detail—each ingredient, every step—so we can enjoy it together . ”
For one dramatic second, Levi gazed longingly at the trash can, clearly weighing his options.
Aurelia arched an eyebrow, her expression saying exactly what she didn’t need to voice: Are you serious right now? Stop being a baby.
With a deep, soul-weary sigh, Levi dragged his eyes back to the recipe, shoulders slumping in defeat.
“I guess we’re having Braised Pea and Chourico Soup for dinner,” he muttered under his breath, as if announcing the end of the world.
Aurelia burst out laughing.
For the next couple of hours, true to his word, but with the dramatic air of a man on death row, Levi prepared the soup as she read off the ingredients and instructions.
Aurelia sat propped up against the back of a nearby stool, her injured foot resting on the stool beside her, swaddled in blankets and surrounded by pillows like a queen overseeing her reluctant servant.
From the moment the ingredients hit the simmering pot, Levi eyed the concoction with blatant repulsion and suspicion, shooting it wary glances like it might leap out and attack him.
But the true betrayal came when Aurelia instructed him to add whole, cracked eggs into the broth.
His face went ashen.
In a cruel but completely fitting twist of fate, she had completely forgotten he also hated eggs.
Aurelia covered her mouth, trying not to laugh, as Levi stood there with the eggs in his hands like they were live grenades. She totally lost her composure when Levi gagged as he cracked the eggs into the pot.
In between his culinary suffering, their conversation became more serious. They talked more about everything that happened over the last several days.
“I’ve been thinking…” Levi began darkly, glaring at the package of chourico as if it had personally wronged him.
“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to finish the second floor.
There’s more than enough space above the garage for three, maybe four small bedrooms and a full bath.
Possibly use some of the space for that office you’ve been dreaming about… maybe even a drum set.”
His mood visibly darkened as he tore into the chourico with far more aggression than the task required.
“I’ve got a lot of time on my hands now,” he muttered. “Might as well do something productive.”
The mention of time—and what it had cost him—hit Aurelia like a punch to the chest, bringing back everything that had happened at Neuronix.
For days, everyone had been focused on her. On what had happened with Selene. On what she had survived. She hadn’t even thought about what he and his friends had lost. Guilt twisted through her.
Quietly, carefully, she asked, “I saw what happened with Neuronix. How’s everyone handling it? How…how are you handling it?”
Levi’s mood darkened enough to cause the temperature in the room to drop. The knife in his hand turned into a weapon of vengeance as he hacked mercilessly through the sausage.
“I haven’t had time to think about it,” he said, his voice low. “Didn’t have the chance before…” He hesitated. “Before you served me those papers.”
Aurelia flushed with shame and winced, but Levi kept going, his tone distant, haunted.
“I sat on Isaac’s couch for hours. Didn’t move. Didn’t see anyone.”
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the knife.
“The only thing that snapped me out of it was hearing Isaac frantically looking for his car keys after Owen called. You know the rest.”
He tossed the chourico into the pot with a little more force than necessary, then leaned back against the counter, arms crossed tight over his chest.
His eyes, usually vibrant, were dull.
“The media made it out to be a grand scheme after the extra information I gave them,” he smiled bitterly.
“All of us—every founder—fired in one clean sweep. The one thing they didn’t realize is that we planned for something like this years ago.
The second we were fired, our shares were sold automatically.
That’s how we built it, as a safeguard. I never thought we would ever need it,” he said angrily.
“The stock prices have tanked hard, but Tyler got exactly what he wanted. Now…” He gave a hollow laugh. “There’s nothing we can do about it. The company’s lost.”
Aurelia stared at him, heart breaking all over again. The number of life-altering changes that happened over the last few days would make a regular person buckle under pressure.
“What’s going through your head right now?” she asked softly.
Levi shrugged, but it was a miserable, defeated gesture.
“I let everyone down,” he admitted in a broken whisper. “They trusted me to protect what we built, and I failed them. Failed you…failed everyone.” The memories from the last few days settled over them both like a dense fog.
Aurelia felt like she couldn’t breathe. One disaster after another. Her recent trauma was still a fresh, open wound. Their marriage teetered with fragility. His career and company were gone in a very public scandal.
The investigation at the Harvest Charity Ball was still open, and—then something clicked, like finding the missing piece of a complex puzzle.
Martin Strasburg works for Neuronix.
Her head snapped up, her mind racing back to that conversation at the event.
Martin had seen Levi there. Had congratulated her on their wedding. And mentioned so casually that he was a software engineer for Neuronix.
“He even let us keep partial rights to the technologies we helped create. That kind of leadership is rare. If Levi ever left Neuronix, I think half the company would walk out the door with him.”
At the time, it hadn’t registered as anything important other than a polite conversation with one of the featured charities. But now…now, it was everything.
Her heart thundered in her chest as she sifted through the recollections. There was something else—something she had seen in the paperwork from when they married. She couldn’t quite place it, but it was there.
A wicked grin spread across her lips. Eyes flashing with purpose, she turned to Levi and said, her voice electric with excitement, “I think I know how you can take your company back.”
Levi’s head snapped up, his eyes locked on hers like she had dropped a live grenade between them.
Levi
A genius. His wife was an evil, brilliant, drop-dead gorgeous genius. Levi could only stare, absolutely awestruck by the brilliance of her idea.
With one simple question, she had flipped everything on its head. What had felt like an irreversible loss was suddenly a whole new ball game, and there was still plenty of time left on the clock for a comeback.
“Don’t you, as an individual, still own partial rights and patents to your products?”
The answer hit him like a jolt of electricity.
He sure did…so did Owen and Isaac. Like him, they had never let go of their direct involvement in the development process, not even after the company went public. They hadn’t wanted to become those executives who sat in corner offices and forgot how to code.
They had stayed in the trenches and kept creating and building. And because of that…they still owned the rights to the original code base. The foundation of everything Neuronix had become.
As Aurelia recounted her conversation with Martin Strasburg at the charity ball, her eyes practically glowing with excitement, the puzzle pieces snapped perfectly into place.
Martin had been there from the beginning. And if Martin was already talking about leaving Neuronix if Levi ever started something new…
Daring hope sparked to life in his chest.
“I can give you Martin’s contact information if you’d like,” she offered, her smile nothing short of luminous. Then she tilted her head, her expression turning sly. “Oh…and I might know someone willing to invest in a new venture,” she added sweetly.
Levi barked out a disbelieving laugh and didn’t waste a second. He rounded the island in two long strides and captured her mouth in a deep, soul-stealing kiss.
Because his wife didn’t just save him—she had also handed his closest friends and most loyal employees back their future.