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

Chapter 94: Bonding Time [FIXED!]

Vanessa got out of the car with the compoure of someone who walked like she owned the building.

It mostly worked as she did give that illusion.

She straightened her jacket, lifted her bag onto her shoulder, and walked toward the entrance of the branch office without looking back. The building was mid-sized, unremarkable from the outside, the kind of address that housed professional services without advertising the fact. Nobody at the door knew Liam’s face. Nobody had context for the car idling at the kerb or the man behind the wheel.

As far as the building was concerned, she’d arrived by Uber.

And this was the best case scenario for him.

Liam watched her push through the entrance and didn’t pull away immediately.

Vanessa, halfway through the door, glanced back over her shoulder. The look lasted two seconds — checking whether she was being watched by Liam.

Liam wasn’t looking at her, of course but from this distance, she couldn’t tell for a fact.

He had his phone up, screen active, working through something with the focused attention of a man who had already moved on to the next item on a list that didn’t have her name on it.

She disappeared inside.

-

Liam was making arrangements.

Sophia had sent a message two hours ago — an invitation, casual, the kind of message that wasn’t meant to pressure him but left the door open. He read it properly now and thought about it for a few seconds.

The Mateo situation required caution.

He had enjoyed it more than he’d planned to. That was the honest version. The gaming, the dynamic, the slow and entirely unannounced process of a sixteen year old deciding to tolerate him — it had produced something he hadn’t budgeted for when he’d first followed Sophia up those stairs with her shopping bags.

Attachment was the wrong investment right now.

He knew that. If things between him and Sophia ran their course the way most things did when the foundation was primarily physical, Mateo wpuld be the casualty that neither of them had signed up for. A boy who didn’t make friends easily, raised by his older sister, who had spent two sessions with Liam and asked if he was coming back.

He should keep the distance manageable.

He pulled out and merged into traffic.

He was going over anyway.

-

The accident was on the interchange — two cars, one serious, the kind of scene that compressed four lanes into one and turned a twenty minute drive into forty-five. Liam sat in the crawl and looked at the crumpled bonnet of the closer vehicle being attended to by two paramedics and hoped whoever had been inside it was okay. The damage looked significant.

He moved past it when the lane opened and put it out of his mind.

The parking lot at Sophia’s building was nearly empty.

He registered this pulling in — three cars where there had been considerably more on previous visits, the lot quiet which must mean this residential building was packed with working citizens that took no time off.

He took the stairs and rang the bell once he had arrived at the door.

The door opened in under ten seconds.

Mateo stood in the doorway in a school shirt that had been untucked at some point, looking at Liam with a facial expression he clearly rehearsed standing in front of the mirror.

They looked at each other without saying a word.

Three seconds of silence.

"I heard you got me a PS5," Mateo said. The delivery was careful. Calibrated nonchalance, but Mateo wasn’t a very good actor.

"Did I?" Liam tilted his head. "Hm. That must have been a mistake actually." He reached past Mateo and gestured vaguely toward the living room. "I came to take it back actually."

The nonchalance left Mateo’s face like air from a punctured tyre.

"W—" He stopped. Cleared his throat. Restarted. "Wait, really?"

Something flickered — genuine, unguarded, the kid underneath the performance surfacing for a full second before the composure tried to reassemble.

"I mean." Mateo straightened. "Who cares. I was doing fine with the PS4."

Liam laughed.

It wasn’t a gentle laugh whatsoever— a real one that rose from his chest all the way to his face. He put his hand on top of Mateo’s head briefly as he walked past him into the apartment.

Mateo didn’t move the hand away.

He also didn’t acknowledge that he hadn’t moved it, which was its own kind of progress as it showed he was slowly accepting Liam.

"Where’s Sophia?" Liam asked, moving to the sofa.

"Groceries." Mateo closed the door and followed him in. "She left like — a while ago."

"Two hours ago by the timestamp on her message." Liam sat. "She’ll be a while."

He looked at the room properly.

The television was off. The textbook on the coffee table was open to a page that had clearly been open for some time without much progress being made on it. The PS5 was powered on, the console light pulsing in standby mode with the patient readiness of a machine that had been very recently active or rather, was even still active.

Liam picked up the remote and turned the television on.

The screen came to life in the middle of a game that had been paused, saved with the speed of someone who had heard a doorbell and made a rapid transition from gaming to studying that had fooled nobody.

Mateo was terrible at this and Liam just shook his head before looking at Mateo.

Mateo looked at the ceiling, refusing to make eye contact.

"Let me guess," Liam said. "Sophia told you to do the assignment before touching the console. You gamed for an hour. Heard the bell and turned off the TV so it looked like you’d been at the books." He gestured at the textbook. "Same page it was on when she left, I’d imagine."

Mateo crossed his arms. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Which subject?" Liam took an interest in his homework somewhat.

A pause. "Maths."

"What topic?" Liam pressed further.

Another pause, shorter. "Quadratic equations."

Liam held out his hand.

Mateo looked at it. "What?"

"The book."

"You know maths?" Mateo asked with a raised brow.

"I passed the bar exam." Liam kept his hand out. "I know maths."

Mateo picked up the textbook with the reluctance of someone handing over evidence and placed it in Liam’s hand. Liam looked at the page, read the problem set, and turned it back around.

"Which one’s giving you trouble?"

Mateo sat on the other end of the sofa as he pointed at the third problem.

Liam read it.

"Okay." He set the book on the coffee table between them and reached for a pen from the cup on the side table without asking. "The mistake everyone makes with these is trying to factorise before they’ve checked whether factorisation is even clean. You use the discriminant first."

"The what?"

"B squared minus four AC." Liam wrote it on the margin of a piece of paper he found under the textbook. "Plug in the values from the equation. If the result is a perfect square, factorise. If it’s not, use the quadratic formula directly." He circled the values. "You were trying to factorise a problem that doesn’t factorise cleanly."

Mateo stared at it.

"That’s not in the notes," he said.

"It’s in the curriculum. Your teacher probably assumes you’ll read ahead." Liam handed him the pen. "Try it."

Mateo took the pen slowly and looked at the problem. He worked through it with his tongue pressed slightly to the inside of his cheek — a concentration tell that Liam didn’t comment on.

He got it wrong on the first attempt.

Identified where he’d gone wrong on the second without being told.

Got it right on the third.

He sat back and looked at the answer.

"Huh," he said.

"The rest follow the same pattern," Liam said. "Once you see it, it’s the same problem wearing different numbers."

Mateo looked at the remaining questions. "How long will this take?"

"Forty minutes if you focus. Twenty if you’re fast."

Mateo was quiet for a moment. "And then I can game?"

"And then you’ve earned it," Liam said. "Which means you’ll enjoy it more and feel less guilty doing it."

Mateo considered this with serious deliberation, stress testing it for flaws.

"That’s actually kind of smart," he said finally.

"Kind of?" Liam responded with a raised brow.

"Don’t push it." Mateo replied right away.

Liam almost smiled and looked at the television, where the paused game was still waiting.

Liam wanted to tell him he had a console of his own now but would rather show Mateo.

From somewhere outside, he heard the faint sound of the stairwell door — the particular rhythm of someone carrying bags up stairs. Sophia, probably, navugating two flights of stairs with groceries.

Mateo heard it too and looked at Liam.

Liam looked at the textbook.

Mateo picked up the pen and started on the next problem as Liam played the game in his stead, that was the only reason for the game to be on.