The M.I.L.F Rebate System: Every Woman I Spoil Makes Me Richer!

Chapter 88: Old Friends. [FIXED!]

Sleep came fast and stayed long, Liam fell asleep in the middle of a video he was watching that was approximately five minutes long.

Liam surfaced slowly the following morning with the clarity of a man whose body had finally stopped filing complaints and started cooperating with what his mind wanted.

He lay still for a moment taking stock of the ceiling, the quality of light coming through the curtains, the absence of any immediate pressure as he had no task to complete.

He worked on his own time and had already dissected Rachel’s case in less than an hour.

Liam missed that feeling, and knew he had to hasten his firm plans.

It was already a week, and Liam needed to absolutely seal the deal with Mrs. Harriet in the 72 hours.

He thought briefly about the Instagram conversation with Vanessa the night before — it had gone longer than he intended — and then the thought moved on without him chasing it.

Liam knew fucking her wouldn’t do any of them any good once they start working together as people would assume that would be why she gained any promotion he might otherwise hand to her.

That’s one way to reinforce the workplace cliche of sleeping your way to the top.

He got up, showered, brushed his teeth, and stood at the mirror, and he looked like someone who had slept properly for the first time in what felt like a significant stretch.

The eye bags had retreated. The tension that had been sitting across his shoulders since the hospital visit had loosened considerably.

He checked his phone.

Nothing from Mrs. Harriet which made him know he had to be more proactive.

He looked at the last message he’d sent her — the one about needing to meet urgently, the one she hadn’t responded to — and the absence of a reply sat differently this morning than it had last night.

Last night it had been a loose thread. This morning it was a timeline because the more time that passed, the more delicate the situation became.

Whatever Arthur was coordinating, it was moving. The fake phone call, the fishing for information, the silence from Mrs. Harriet’s end — these weren’t isolated incidents. They were a sequence, and sequences had conclusions.

He needed to get in front of her before whatever they were building reached her first.

He put on a clean shirt, dark trousers, and reached for his jacket because Liam had no intention of spending the rest of the day gaming, at least not today.

-

The drive to Harlan and Associates took just over an hour through mid-morning traffic that had no particular interest in accommodating his schedule. He sat in it without frustration, using the time to organise his thinking — what he wanted from this visit, what he would and wouldn’t say, how far he was willing to go if Arthur decided to make the visit uncomfortable.

He wasn’t going there to cause a scene.

He was going there to be seen.

Arthur finding out that Liam had walked into the building voluntarily, casually, without apparent concern — that information would do its own work once it travelled through the firm’s internal ecosystem, which it would within twenty minutes of his arrival. Firms like this ran on information the way other places ran on electricity.

He pulled into the visitors’ parking and killed the engine.

The building looked exactly as it always had — glass and steel, understated branding, the kind of entrance that communicated institutional weight without vulgarity.

He had walked through it five days a week for three years and it had never looked particularly significant to him.

It looked smaller now even.

He pushed through the front door.

The lobby received him with the ambient indifference of a space that processed large numbers of people daily and had long since stopped registering individuals.

The receptionist at the front desk looked up, looked at him, and looked back at her screen with an expression that suggested she had been briefed on something and was executing the briefing.

Two associates near the elevator made brief eye contact with him and found urgent reasons to look elsewhere.

The temperature of the room had adjusted to his presence to do because he wasn’t supposodd to be there at the end of the day.

Liam kept his face entirely neutral and moved toward the side entrance that led to the external smoking area.

The door opened before he reached it.

Bob came through it smelling faintly of cigarette smoke, tucking his lighter into his breast pocket with the sheepish efficiency of a man who had been managing this habit around colleagues for twenty years. He looked up and stopped completely.

Then his face broke into a smile that had nothing complicated behind it.

"Liam." He covered the distance between them in four steps and pulled him into a hug that was fully committed and slightly awkward and entirely genuine. "It’s good to see you, man."

Liam returned it awkwardly because he was not expecting a hug. "Good to see you too, Bob."

Bob stepped back and looked at him with amusement. He was glad that despite everything that had changed, Bob remained the same.

"You look well. Better than I expected honestly."

"What were you expecting?" Liam questioned with a cocky grin.

"I don’t know." Bob shrugged. "More damaged, I suppose."

"I’m still standing! Stronger than ever!" Liam exclaimed.

"Clearly." Bob smiled again. "How are you actually? Not the rehearsed version you tell people but really."

"Better than I was," Liam said. "Things are moving in the right direction."

"Good." Bob nodded with the satisfied finality of a man who had wanted a specific answer and received it.

"Good. That’s what matters."

He launched, without particular transition, into his family. Not complaining — the opposite. His eldest had placed in a regional mathematics competition and Bob had the results screenshot saved in three separate places on his phone in case one of them failed. His youngest had apparently said something at dinner last week that had made his wife laugh so hard she’d cried, and Bob recounted it with the enthusiasm of a man who had told this story several times already and intended to tell it several more.

His wife had taken up pottery. She was terrible at it and loved it completely and Bob described her coming home with lopsided bowls she presented like trophies with a warmth in his voice that had nothing performative about it.

Liam listened and smiled and meant the smile.

Bob was one of those people whose goodness was structural rather than situational — it didn’t depend on circumstances or reciprocity or whether he was being observed. He was kind, that was simply who he was.

"What brings you in?" Bob asked eventually, the family portion of the conversation reaching its natural conclusion and Liam was the best audience he could have asked for.

"I was hoping to speak with Mrs. Harriet."

Bob put his hand on his chin. The thinking gesture — Liam had seen it across conference tables when Bob was working through something he wanted to get right before he said it.

"She hasn’t been in," Bob said. "Last time I saw her here was three days ago." He paused. "She does have a meeting scheduled for later today though. This afternoon."

"Here?"

"That’s what the calendar shows. I happened to see it this morning." He looked at Liam steadily. "I’m not sure what time exactly."

"That’s helpful, Bob. Thank you."

Bob waved the gratitude away with one hand. "I haven’t told you anything you couldn’t have found out yourself."

Liam was already doing the calculation — arriving before her meeting, positioning himself somewhere visible within the building, ensuring the encounter read as coincidental rather than orchestrated because he had to be in her good graces for the rebate system to be substantial.

He turned toward the exit.

"Liam." Bob’s voice stopped him.

He looked back.

"You can wait inside if you want," Bob said. "You’re a former employee. Not a criminal." He paused. "There’s no policy that says you can’t sit in the lobby."

Liam looked at him.

Bob shrugged with the easy authority of a man who had read the employee handbook more carefully than anyone gave him credit for. "I’m just saying. It’s a public facing lobby."

Liam almost smiled. "You’re going to get yourself in trouble one day, Bob."

Bob laughed — a genuine sound that came with a slight movement of his entire torso that could generously be described as a dance. His lanyard swung. His ID badge caught the light.

"I have three kids and a pottery hobby to fund," Bob said, still laughing. "I’m already in trouble."

Liam shook his head and went to find a seat in the lobby.