Page 56 of Alpha's Embrace
I’d made a promise and I’d keep it. But it hurt. It hurt so bad.
I would never see my king again.
Chapter Sixteen
Geo
Mathias was a hard man to see. He had people. And his people wanted to talk to my people, only I didn’t have any. He was far too busy and important to answer my texts, or the messages I left on his service.
I wondered if he even remembered me.
Time was passing by too quickly. I needed to get everything on my checklist done.
When we finally connected and we agreed to meet, I worried I had no time left to accomplish what I needed for a clean break at a new life.
It had been six years since I’d seen him. We’d been roommates for the first two years of college even though he could certainly have afforded his own place. The last two years of school, we’d stayed friends attending the same parties, hanging out with the same crowd even though he was a richer than all of us put together.
Now he walked into the meeting room at the bank as if he owned the place—which perhaps he did, or his father did—and he was more beautiful than ever.
Always in college he’d gotten his way in everything because of his money and his looks. His black hair glowed, absorbing all the colors of any room he entered. He wore it long in a single braid. He was tall and lean and his suit fit him probably better than the model who’d worn it on the runway. In fact, he’d probably bought it for thousands of dollars right off the model’s body.
Mathias was like that. He had the best of everything and expected it, too.
At thirty, he was more breathtaking than ever. I might’ve had an Alpha-Alpha crush on him in school if he’d shown any heart at all. If his dark eyes weren’t so hard and the words from his mouth so foul. And if his gazes when they raked my body weren’t so full of frozen ice.
“So,” he said, walking into the bank’s second floor meeting room. “You need my help.” No preliminaries. Nohow are you. Just straight to the point.
“Nice to see you again, too, Math,” I replied.
He made a little grunt. “It’s kinda funny, you coming to me like this.”
“Why is that?”
“I never figured you for a guy who needed anyone, really. You stayed to yourself like you were just too good. The good good boy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, here I am.”
He looked me up and down. Eyes depthless, hollow. He was fine, so fine, but I really wondered if he had a soul.
“So you need a fast liquidation?”
It sounded terrible, somehow. I almost said no. But I nodded yes.
He shrugged as if it were no big deal and sat at the head of the conference table. “I’m your guy.”
“I can’t pay your fee right now.”
He frowned up at me. “Sit.” Then he chuckled. “Idiot, you think I need money?”
“I don’t know, but I can pay. Just later. When I get re-settled.”
“You don’t have to pay. But maybe I’ll askyoufor a favor some time, how’s that?”
I stared at him, frozen. What did that mean?
Mathias chuckled again. “Just kidding. I’m happy to help out my old roommate. We had some good times, yeah?” His eyes sparkled now. There was something alive there, then. For real.
“Yeah.”
